CH AN GE MAKERS
Change Makers: Phi Theta Kappa Journal of Student Leadership | 1
Journal of Student Leadership 2023 Edition
Phi Theta Kappa Mission The mission of Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society is to recognize academic achievement of college students and to provide opportunities for them to grow as scholars and leaders.
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About Phi Theta Kappa
Phi Theta Kappa is the premier honor society recognizing the academic achievement of students at associate degree-granting colleges and helping them grow as scholars and leaders. The Society is made up of more than 3.8 million members and nearly 1,300 chapters in 11 nations.
Publisher
Phi Theta Kappa, Inc.
Editor
Jennifer Stanford
Senior Director of Student Leadership
Production Staff
Tracee Walker
Content Manager
Makayla Steede
Project Coordinator
Lori Brechtel
Graphic Designer
Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society
International Headquarters | 1625 Eastover Drive Jackson, MS 39211 ptk.org | 601.984.3504 Phi Theta Kappa is committed to the elimination of unlawful discrimination in connection with all employment relationships, business operations, and programs. Discrimination based on gender, family or marital status, race, color, national origin, military of veteran status, economic status, ethnic background, sexual orientation, gender identity, transgender status, genetic information or history, age, disability, political affiliation, and cultural and religious backgrounds is prohibited. @2023 by Phi Theta Kappa, Inc., in the United States and Canada. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the consent of Phi Theta Kappa. The name, logo, and various titles herein have been registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Change Makers: Phi Theta Kappa Journal of Student Leadership is published annually by Phi Theta Kappa, 1625 Eastover Drive, Jackson, MS 39211, 601.984.3504.
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Table of Contents
Letter from the Editor................................................................................. 6 About the College Project........................................................................... 7 Editorial Board............................................................................................ 8 College Projects.......................................................................................... 9
9
CCsmart– Community College Is for Everyone Beta Zeta Mu Chapter Western Iowa Tech Community College Sioux City, Iowa
13
24
“How to be a Student” Week Alpha Kappa Alpha Chapter Normandale Community College Bloomington, Minnesota
28
Fortifying Campus Inclusivity Through DEI and Alumni Outreach
Pa’ani the Kula (Play the School): Promoting Student Engagement Through Play
17
32
Alpha Epsilon Phi Chapter Bergen Community College Paramus, New Jersey
Mentoring Dual Enrollment Students Alpha Alpha Iota Chapter York Technical College Rock Hill, South Carolina
21
The Little Library That Could
Beta Alpha Tau Chapter Community College of Baltimore County Dundalk Campus Baltimore, Maryland
Alpha Kappa Iota Chapter Honolulu Community College Honolulu, Hawaii
International Day of Thanks Chi Kappa Chapter Carl Sandburg College Galesburg, Illinois
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35
Establishing a Call Center to Help Applicants Navigate the Enrollment Process Alpha Sigma Iota Chapter Louisiana State University – Eunice Eunice, Louisiana
39
55
Student Videos That Humanize the College Website Beta Zeta Nu Chapter Cañada College Redwood City, California
59
The Impact of COVID-19 on Students
Chomp’s Hangout: Creating Student Lounges
43
63
Sigma Lambda Chapter Calhoun Community College Huntsville and Decatur, Alabama
Alpha Xi Pi Chapter Motlow State Community College Lynchburg, Tennessee
Alpha Kappa Upsilon Chapter Massasoit Community College Brockton, Massachusetts
Supporting and Promoting the Campus Food Pantry
Alpha Nu Sigma Chapter Horry-Georgetown Technical College Conway, South Carolina
The Road to a Happy Mind: Mental Health Education on Campus
47
67
Beta Nu Eta Chapter Citrus College Glendora, California
Iota Mu Chapter Pearl River Community College – Poplarville Poplarville, Mississippi
Beta Nu Eta Cares Resource Fair
51
iBelong Campaign: A Focus on Students’ Sense of Belonging on the Campus Beta Lambda Mu Chapter Lone Star College – CyFair Cypress, Texas
Final Exam Study Week
71
Changing the Narrative – #CCsmart Alpha Omicron Alpha Chapter Lehigh Carbon Community College Schnecksville, Pennsylvania
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A Letter from the Editor In this third edition of Change Makers: Phi Theta Kappa’s Journal of Student Leadership, we bring you more evidence of the remarkable accomplishments of community college students working collaboratively to spearhead positive transformations across their campuses. Whether by pinpointing obstacles to college enrollment or implementing tangible measures to enhance students’ sense of belonging, these College Projects illuminate the profound mission of our community colleges and the individuals who diligently uphold this mission every single day. Within this edition, you’ll find a compilation of award-winning College Projects implemented in 2022. Out of 420 submissions to our College Project Hallmark Award competition, we proudly present 17 projects that epitomize the dedication of Phi Theta Kappa chapters worldwide. Phi Theta Kappa chapters thrive on strong college administration support. The College Project is specifically crafted to fortify the relationship between chapters and colleges through collaborative endeavors, all centered on a core question: How can PTK members contribute to their college’s mission? Every successful College Project begins with members reviewing the college’s mission and strategic priorities, meeting with their college president or other top administrators to discuss where they can best serve, and then collaborating alongside college personnel to make a difference. While the 17 showcased projects encompass a wide array of focus areas, they collectively stand as exemplary examples that we hope will ignite the potential of students everywhere to become catalysts for change. With gratitude,
Jennifer Stanford
Senior Director of Student Leadership Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society
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About the College Project The Phi Theta Kappa College Project is designed to engage students in leadership and service that support their college’s mission and to establish a positive rapport with the college administration. The process of completing the College Project fosters student growth and helps fulfill our mission to provide college students opportunities to grow as scholars and leaders.
Learning Outcomes Planning, developing, and implementing a College Project contributes to personal, professional, and soft-skills development. It also provides opportunities for students to have a positive impact on their college campuses by implementing projects that support the college’s mission. Members who engage in the development and implementation of a College Project will be able to: 1. D esign, organize, and implement a plan of action that results in a project that supports their college’s mission. 2. D emonstrate leadership, critical thinking, problem-solving, and reflective skills throughout the project process. 3. F orm and develop teams that collaborate and communicate with college administrators to determine and implement an appropriate project. 4. Engage in professional written and verbal communication.
5. Provide evidence of project impact using quantitative and qualitative assessments. 6. Compile a report using clear, correct, and effective language.
Achievement of these learning outcomes builds the analytic and collaborative problemsolving and leadership skills necessary and valued in advanced academic pursuits, workplaces, and communities.
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Editorial Board The Change Makers Editorial Board is comprised of officers of Phi Theta Kappa’s Association of Chapter Advisors (ACA). The ACA board includes four ACA officers, one from each of Phi Theta Kappa’s four divisions. ACA officers are responsible for providing feedback to Phi Theta Kappa Headquarters staff on a variety of Society programs and priorities. The ACA board is made up of Phi Theta Kappa chapter advisors. ACA officers are nominated and elected by fellow Phi Theta Kappa advisors. Prof. Octaviano Gutierrez ACA Chair Representing Division IV Big Bend Community College Moses Lake, Washington
Dr. Annie Tuttle ACA Vice Chair Representing Division I Onondaga Community College Syracuse, New York
Dr. Samantha Levy ACA Secretary Representing Division III Ivy Tech Community College - Bloomington Campus Bloomington, Indiana
Dr. Molly Harris ACA Immediate Past Chair Representing Division II Grayson College Denison, Texas
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CCsmart – Community College is for Everyone Beta Zeta Mu Chapter Western Iowa Tech Community College Sioux City, Iowa
Abstract Our chapter wanted to choose a College Project which would emphasize the current strategic initiatives of our college. Part of this initiative is the visibility of our community college in the Siouxland area. During the summer of 2022, our chapter met multiple times to brainstorm ideas for the selection of an effective college project. Our chapter members met with our college president and vice president multiple times to discuss the topic of our College Project which would benefit the college and the community. Our chapter presented a variety of projects to the college administrators. We had very productive conversations, as they also shared their own ideas with us. In collaboration with the college president and vice president, we mutually agreed on the topic “CCSmart – Community College is for Everyone.” Breaking the ongoing issue of negative stereotypes surrounding community college was an important topic for our chapter and college. Our project primarily focused on promoting the benefits of attending community colleges, discussing the negative stereotypes that surround them, and emphasizing a focus on empowering current and future community college students. After getting full support from our college administration, with the help of the college president and our chapter advisors, we invited PTK President and CEO Dr. Lynn Tincher-Ladner, KCAU Channel 9, Vice President/ General Manager Mr. John Curry, and Thompson Innovation General Manager Tasha Barker to present their insightful knowledge regarding CCsmart topics during our forum. Both Curry and Barker are alumni of our college. We also collaborated with the director of marketing and the dean of information technology (IT) to facilitate advertising and
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provide technology during the forum. The speakers presented to hundreds of college and high school students, faculty, administrators, and members of our community about the topic of CCsmart and how attending community college can be invaluable. This event had also been provided via Zoom to our satellite campuses and area high schools and was broadcast by our local news station KCAU Channel 9 to potentially 100,000+ people in our community. Our College Project brought awareness of the quality of the programs at community colleges to the public.
Planning During the summer of 2022, our chapter officers and members met several times with college administrators such as the president, vice president, the dean of IT, and the director of marketing to collaborate on our chapter’s College Project. Both our college administrators and our chapter members had one main goal: to promote CCsmart. This created a sense of strong cooperation and collaboration between our chapter and all senior members of the college administration. With their full support, our chapter was able to secure the use of our college’s Rocklin Center facility for our project’s forum and provide a lunch for attendees. With their help, we were also able to advertise our event and our silent auction fundraiser to raise funds for purchasing laptops for students in an underprivileged community college as part of our CCsmart College Project. Our chapter president was in charge of creating an agenda for the October 24 forum and meeting with the college president and our advisor to invite the three speakers. Another officer was in charge of meeting with the director of marketing to help with creating posters and advertising our forum to media outlets. Another chapter officer confirmed with IT that all technology-related components were prepared for the forum event. A chapter member, with the help of the chapter advisor, contacted the manager of the cafeteria and ordered lunch, which was pre-approved by the college president, to be served at the end of the forum.
Our chapter planned to inform all faculty and students about our College Project forum in advance. The chapter officers asked our college vice president to send weekly emails to all faculty and students, informing them about our College Project forum and encouraging them to attend. All chapter officers were responsible for poster distribution around the college, as well as around the community. The officers also asked marketing to help in advertising the CCsmart forum within the area high schools. Furthermore, the forum live-streaming and videotaping of the event were requested by the chapter officers, so they could be shared on our social media platforms. Every chapter officer and active member was responsible for the success of the College Project by setting up decorations in the Rocklin Center, in addition to all the planning. The chapter president also created a post-survey which the members distributed for collection after the event.
Leadership Development Our chapter officers and active members attended the Regional Honors Institute and the Regional Institute hosted by PTK Headquarters and learned about the programs offered by Phi Theta Kappa, including PTK Edge courses. Furthermore, three officers who are serving in the student government at the college had attended several legislative events to represent the college as student representatives. Several officers and members are also in leadership positions in different clubs such as education, LGBTQ+, TRIO, and mental health. One of the officers is also a tutor at the college Comet Learning Center, which requires effective interpersonal communication and strong leadership skills. The officers were frequently invited to speak in front of the board of directors. The chapter officers were invited to meet with the state’s Board of Education as student representatives and answer their questions as part of the college’s five-year review process. The officers increased their knowledge of PTK programs during their weekly meetings with the advisors. These leadership opportunities allowed the officers and members to be visible and then have effective communication with the college administration
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which led to the successful planning and implementation of the College Project. For example, to successfully implement the CCsmart College Project, the officers built on each other’s strengths. One officer oversaw direct communication with the college president and vice president. Another officer was in charge of working with the marketing and IT departments. An active member posted the events on the college website and social media.
Collaboration Our chapter officers and members communicated with college administrators, faculty, students, and members of the community throughout the entire planning and execution of the CCsmart College Project. These meetings were conducted first with our chapter officers and members, and then with our college president, vice president, director of marketing, and dean of IT. In collaboration with the college president and other top administrators, our College Project topic of “CCsmart - Community college is for everyone” was selected. We were able to invite and host three high-level speakers, including the President and CEO of Phi Theta Kappa. Their presentations focused on bringing awareness of the quality of community colleges and all they have to offer to all students. In collaboration and continual communication with the marketing department, posters were created to display in various locations of the college and community and the event was promoted among area high schools and media outlets. Additionally, we collaborated with the IT department to utilize their technology equipment for the forum event. They also provided technical assistance to live stream the event. The information about CCsmart was also communicated to all high school principals, counselors, and local media outlets. With the help of our college vice president, information regarding our project was communicated to all faculty and students via email. Chapter officers and members with the help of the chapter advisor contacted the manager of the college cafeteria for their assistance with catering lunch for all attendees. The officers and members promoted our CCsmart forum event through the college website and
Figure 1 social media. Our advisors and chapter president updated all members throughout the process and reported progress.
Impact
Quantitative: There were 125 people in attendance during our CCsmart forum and 17 participated via Zoom. Forty-eight people filled out a post-survey that was created by the chapter and given to all attendees. The KCAU local news channel attended our forum and reported about the event on their evening news, reaching potentially over 100,000 people in our community who learned about our chapter’s College Project “CCsmart Community college is for everyone.” Through our silent auction fundraisers, we donated a combined 14 laptops and iPads to Jackson, Mississippi, for use by underprivileged students promoting the quality of community college. Additionally, we also donated $2,500 to different agencies promoting community college visibility (Figure 1).
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Figure 2 Qualitative: The results of our survey indicated a better understanding of the quality of community colleges and their offerings. The forum event (Figure 2) lasted longer than anticipated. The question-and-answer period continued into the lunch break and reflected the idea that this presentation had piqued interest. Following the event, the verbal feedback about the CCsmart presentation gave our chapter members a sense of accomplishment.
Chapter-College Relationship This project made our chapter members much closer to our entire college administration. Since our project made our college more visible in the community, the college administrators asked us to represent the student body on several different committees. Collaboration between chapter members and the college administration led to mutual respect and increased travel funding for attending regional and international PTK events.
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Fortifying Campus Inclusivity through DEI and Alumni Outreach Alpha Epsilon Phi Chapter Bergen Community College Paramus, New Jersey
Abstract “When can you start?” were the first words our dean of institutional research said when we proposed a collaboration with her for our College Project (CP) in August 2022. During the spring, she sent out a campus climate survey for the President’s Advisory Council on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (PACDEI) which assessed the diverse needs of our student body. When we met with her, she immediately expressed her gratitude for our assistance. Our project aimed to help fulfill two of our college president’s goals. One goal was: “lead and support efforts to use data from our comprehensive climate survey to inform DEI initiatives and the college’s first DEI Action Plan.” The second was: “establish the Office of External Affairs as a partnership development hub. Lead and support outreach efforts to strengthen external relations and expand our donor base.” Therefore, we aimed to provide materials in support of a comprehensive DEI Action Plan, a first of its kind at our college. We also aimed to establish a more robust strategy to increase alumni engagement. Our CP team members analyzed the data from the campus climate survey distributed to students on topics of discrimination/bias/harassment, campus safety, and LGBTQIA+ issues. Then, we developed a PowerPoint presentation and infographic based on the survey’s findings. Additionally, through the direct request of the president, we published a DEI booklet (Figure 1) to spread awareness of DEI initiatives on campus. We also prepared a portfolio highlighting a list of higher education’s best alumni outreach practices. Through this approach of disseminating the results of the Campus Climate Survey, publishing
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12 schools across New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania. Our chapter president divided the list, giving two schools to each member to contact. The list included a mix of in-state and out-of-state schools, as well as community colleges and four-year schools. Our publications team of five students brainstormed ways to display the survey data. We determined the details for the PowerPoint down to the hex codes of our school colors. Our chapter’s publication team leader also provided email updates about the DEI booklet to the college administration. The data analysis team of three students selected a design for the Likert scales with the dean of institutional research’s approval and adjusted errors in the collected survey data. This helped finalize the presentation which was shared with PACDEI.
Leadership Development Figure 1 a DEI initiatives booklet, and collating best alumni outreach practices, we helped create a broader picture of diversity on our campus and formed a way to engage alumni for future college initiatives.
Planning We began in the afternoon on August 11 by discussing our college president’s 12 presidential goals. We narrowed the list down to two goals where we felt we could make the most difference. We sought a formal meeting with the college president and vice president of academic affairs to have a conversation about our initial thoughts. The president expressed excitement that we wanted to assist with his DEI goal. He also gave the suggestion of working on alumni outreach and a booklet emphasizing all the current campus DEI initiatives. Our process of creating this booklet included working with both the dean of institutional research as well as the dean of adjunct administration. Our chapter president led an alumni outreach team of six students who compiled a list of
Our teams set a timeline to organize our projects’ main obligations. We met multiple times per week and tracked our experiences in a journal. Team members additionally grew their skills by completing all five PTK Edge courses over the summer. The leader of the data analysis team taught relevant Excel skills to team members and determined periodic deadlines to make sure the project was completed on schedule. Looking to advance our knowledge of Likert scale graphs, our team watched various YouTube videos as well as read articles until we felt confident with our skills. When we submitted our graphs for approval to the dean of institutional research, we received feedback to redo the formatting. Since we essentially had to start from scratch, the team learned the importance of being flexible and learning from challenges that may arise. While the data analysis team was tackling their responsibilities, the publication team was creating a template for PowerPoint and the infographic. To implement a consistent color palette for all the DEI infographics, the team learned how to create a brand kit on Canva. The alumni outreach team used direct emails, voice calls, and video calls to connect to the
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alumni network directors of 12 different schools which required practicing professional communication skills and language.
Collaboration
To ensure the projects were closely aligned with the mission set forth in our first meeting with the administration, we had frequent communication with the dean of institutional research and the dean of adjunct administration. We periodically asked for opinions about our work via email, Figure 2 video conferencing, and Google Drive. Furthermore, our chapter president provided regular email updates to the college president that included points of clarification. When he responded, our chapter president and members of the CP team incorporated his feedback into their ongoing efforts. After completion of the project, our team’s leaders and members met with the college president and vice president of academic affairs to present our final results in the form of a presentation (Figure 2) and an open-ended conversation. We handed out our completed DEI initiatives booklet as well as a folio containing further documentation of our CP process. As a response to our presentation, the college president remarked that the progress made on DEI by our team members will be useful to include in the Middle States Self-Study, an accreditation process for community colleges beginning in 2023. He also plans to incorporate our campus climate survey presentation for his 2023 DEI Action Plan, which will address the campus issues that came to light from the survey.
Impact
This project has had a powerful impact on the college community and our team - 15 individuals working together throughout the semester. We worked with 19 questions from the campus climate survey which was distributed to 1,199 students. The PowerPoint that the publication team worked on was presented during a PACDEI meeting by the dean of institutional research,
in a room of approximately 50 staff, faculty, administrators, and Board of Trustees members. After viewing the presentation, the advisor of our college’s Pride Club sparked a lengthy discussion about expanding resources for LGBTQIA+ students on campus. The implementation of the DEI action plan we assisted with has the potential to impact all students. The president indicated that the publication team’s completed infographic (Figure 3) will be considered by PACDEI to be posted on social media platforms and around campus, potentially reaching 12,000 students. A PACDEI logo designed by the communications team was placed on over 60 mugs that were presented and distributed at the conference for the Association for Community College Trustees held in New York with hundreds of attendees. Our list of 10 best practices to expand our alumni network provides the administration with a better understanding of the best approaches to improve external relations. Our frequent communication with administrators was an incredibly beneficial professional development experience for our members, who are interested in pursuing careers in economics, social work, project management, and computer science. As students, corresponding with administrators was a bit of an intimidating experience at first, but it became a true partnership where feedback on both sides was taken into consideration for the final project. Not only did this allow space to grow professionally,
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but our members also felt empowered to make real change at our institution. As one of our team members who worked on the booklet noted, “Attending the meeting with the president gave me a lot of insight into how the college functions… It was like a totally new dimension had opened for me that I had never imagined.” Caroline Sabsoul, the communications coordinator for Phi Theta Kappa Headquarters, sought out our chapter’s communications team to create videos for CCsmart on their social media page after seeing that we were creating quality content for the student body. As such, our content will engage PTK alumni to promote the value of community college to the public. By working with external as well as internal professionals over the course of these seven months, our chapter members built strong interpersonal bonds with each other, which bolstered our overall chapter dynamic.
Chapter-College Relationship Through personifying the survey data, we increased the administration’s awareness of how our students perceive the campus. With our chapter members working in tandem with multiple college administrators, we were able to compile and organize relevant insight collected from student surveys into graphs that consequently helped aid in the implementation of creating a more inclusive community at our college. One of our original goals for CP was to work with the vice president of external affairs, which was a new position created on our campus this semester. However, the vice president did not start until midway through the semester, which limited our engagement. She came to our fall PTK induction as one of her first on-campus events. We will be working with her to find ways to engage alumni to “promote the value of community college to people of all ages in the community” in accordance with CCsmart. She will also be attending her first Catalyst with us in April. The college president expressed that the work done by the CP teams helped solidify a strong rapport with the student body now and in future endeavors.
Figure 3
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Mentoring Dual Enrollment Students Alpha Alpha Iota Chapter York Technical College Rock Hill, South Carolina
Abstract The College Project was formed to address the preparation and success of dual enrollment and early college students, an increasing population at York Technical College (YTC). We have almost 2,000 dually enrolled and early college students this year, a tremendous increase from previous semesters. The project had four major outcomes: 1) Student participants will navigate their scheduled courses and related course tools on the first day that classes open, three days prior to the official start of the semester; 2) Student participants will utilize a preparatory checklist to access key tools and resources prior to the official start of the semester (i.e. Simple Syllabus, D2L, Honorlock, Kaltura, course materials and third-party platforms, academic tutoring, and support); 3) Student participants will utilize available resources provided by the project team to prepare for and maintain academic standards in their college-level courses; 4) Student participants will participate in peer mentoring with successful students in a variety of programs (PTK members and officers) as well as other college personnel. The goals of this project, which culminate in the success of incoming freshmen, particularly those dually enrolled in local high schools, directly address our mission statement: “Through the pursuit of student success, the college seeks to contribute to the economic growth and development of York, Lancaster, and Chester counties and of the state.” Not only did our project support student success, but it also provided a more equitable experience for students in Chester County, who tend to receive less support because of their distance from the main campus.
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Planning
Leadership Development
The planning process for this project began with a meeting about the declining success of dual enrollment and early college students, particularly at the Chester campus. In this meeting, several administrators from the college gathered with other stakeholders (i.e. instructors, members of the Institute for Teaching Excellence, members of the Chester County School District, and coordinators in the Academic Coaching and Tutoring Center) to determine potential causes for this decline in success as well as brainstorm ways to prevent the decline from happening in future semesters. In the meeting, stakeholders revealed that, historically, dual enrollment (DE) students are overall the most successful students academically at YTC. However, there are always students who meet the academic requirements for college but are not successful.
Prior to implementing the project, our chapter required all participating members to meet the following goals:
Based on faculty and administrator observations and feedback since 2013, the primary contributing factor for a dual enrollment student to not be successful is non-cognitive. Time management, communication, and motivation rise to the top contributing factors to non-success. Supporting data was reviewed to include the following: historic YTC DE success (C or above) rates are 90% or above; 2021-2022 success rate is 87%. Furthermore, after a post-pandemic rise in spring success rates, there was a decline in 2022 Spring: 2019 Spring 88%, 2020 Spring 78%, 2021 Spring 91%, 2022 Spring 87%. In this meeting, a suggestion to pair successful PTK members with struggling students launched a discussion about what would become the Alpha Alpha Iota College Project: Dual Enrollment Mentorship Program. The conversation progressed to the president’s office, and the officer team developed a proposal for what the project could look like. The proposal required multiple meetings with the officer team and administrators involved with the Dual Enrollment Program, including those at the Chester County School District. Subsequently, the proposal was accepted by the college president as well as the stakeholders who would need to participate on some level, including the director of off-campus centers and the associate dean of educational partnerships.
• Complete a training sequence or workshop on communication, professionalism, and procedures regarding working with DE students and following college protocol on reporting incidents if needed. • Collaborate with the academic coaching and tutoring program on materials to assist DE students with study techniques and other college success strategies and tips. • Collaborate with DE program stakeholders to ensure that the project and its components meet the needs of the college and the DE program, including its students. • Develop resources for this student population, including in-person workshop presentations and on-demand LibGuides resources. PTK members and officers who participated in this project had to maintain professionalism, model leadership, and practice effective communication throughout the project. They also had to be willing to receive constructive criticism and remain flexible to scheduling and programming changes. Furthermore, participating members and officers had to research and present on topics important to the target population, including study strategies, text anxiety, notetaking methods, grit and persistence, and active reading.
Collaboration To ensure proper follow-through and communication with all collaborators, we did the following: • Posted introduction videos from participating PTK members and officers (video bio and August 12 event at the Chester Center) Figure 1 • Provided assignment of peer mentors (selected from the participating PTK members) Figure 2 • Provided in-person teaching or on-demand programming with Q & A sessions to include the following:
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Figure 1 oG etting Off to a Good Start in Classes (wrapped into August 12 event in Chester with on-demand version available) o Communicating with Instructors and Peers o Test-Taking Strategies oB ecoming a Part of the College (clubs and organizations, opportunities, participation in events, etc.) o Study Tips and Techniques o Active Reading o Grit and Persistence o Organization and Time Management o Peer Mentoring Sessions and Meetings We also provided additions to the Dual Enrollment LibGuides site based on live events (recordings), links to YTC resources and channels for assistance, and personal stories on college challenges and successes from PTK students.
Impact The Dual Enrollment Mentorship Program focused its efforts broadly, on providing on-demand resources for all York Technical College dual enrollment and early college students, as well as specifically on the dual enrollment and early Figure 2
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college students attending the Chester Campus. Across campus over a span of seven months, the Dual Enrollment LibGuides site received 128 visits from students. We offered six inperson sessions/workshops for these students in Chester, beginning on August 12 and ending on November 18. Out of the six sessions, four of them had 12 participants each (the same students each time). One of the sessions focused on dual enrollment welding majors and had 14 participants. The initial half-day workshops that occurred on August 12 had 41 dual enrollment participants. Anecdotally, staff and instructors at the Chester Campus reported that the students who attended the August 12 event as well as the workshops were better prepared for their courses and had fewer issues with navigating the technology and preparing for course assignments and assessments. The PTK members who participated in this project had to take personal responsibility for the presentation of workshops for these students and were responsible for communicating with college stakeholders, including the director of off-campus centers, the early college coordinator for the Chester County School District, and the associate dean of educational partnerships. These PTK members provided guidance, tips, and strategies for success as well as shared their personal stories of overcoming hardships and obstacles, thereby developing effective communication, leadership, and professionalism skills. The courses they had to take prior to engaging in the mentorship developed their understanding of college procedures for reporting issues of concern as well as industry standards of professional behavior and communication.
Chapter-College Relationship The idea for this project emerged from a meeting about the declining success of dual enrollment and early college students. Our chapter officers and members connected with College President Dr. Moore to explore how our project would align with the mission and strategic plan for York Technical College and meet the specific needs of these students. After that meeting
and the approval of the idea, the team met with stakeholders from the Dual Enrollment and Early College Program, including the dual enrollment coordinator, the associate dean for educational partnerships, and the director of off-campus centers to begin proposal development. The associate dean of educational partnerships provided our chapter the data on dual enrollment success over the past few years. Both the associate dean for educational partnerships and the director of off-campus centers met routinely with PTK officers to determine which workshops should be offered and what times and locations would be suitable for the offerings. PTK officers and members alike coordinated each session with the stakeholders from the administration and followed up with a summary of the experience and the students’ responses to each session. After this project was underway and our PTK officers and members were actively providing mentorship and tutoring, our chapter president was hired by the Academic Coaching and Tutoring Center as a part-time tutor specifically for the Chester Center dual enrollment students.
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The Little Library That Could Beta Alpha Tau Chapter Community College of Baltimore County – Dundalk Campus Baltimore, Maryland
Abstract Our College Project was the creation of a mobile Little Library for our campus. The mission of the Community College of Baltimore County (CCBC) notes that our college “...transforms lives by providing an accessible, affordable, and high-quality education that prepares students for transfer and career success, strengthens the regional workforce, and enriches our community.” Our Little Library’s mobility made it accessible. As the books were free, it was certainly affordable. Finally, we enriched the community by giving, sharing, borrowing, and discussing the books.
Planning As we began to discuss plans for the year, our chapter reviewed the mission, vision, and values of CCBC, discussing our commitment to create projects that support them. Four members and an advisor brainstormed potential projects prior to scheduling a meeting with our college president, Dr. Kurtinitis. We scheduled a dinner meeting with the president, during which she shared her thoughts on potential projects and listened as we shared our ideas, and through this discussion, our plan was finalized. We decided to build a Little Library for our campus. Dr. Kurtinitis suggested we make it a mobile library that could move around the campus, giving more people access to it and making more people aware of its existence. She also suggested that we consult with the library and bookstore to ensure we were not in conflict with their operation. We subsequently met with the librarian and the manager of the bookstore. They were supportive of our efforts, donating books to the
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Little Library. Their only request has been not to offer textbooks; we have abided by those wishes.
Leadership Development Our chapter members were able to use and hone our communication, critical thinking, teamwork, and perseverance skills. Before implementing the project, we met with a member of our communications department to discuss ways to initiate contact with administrators and other potential collaborators. Our teacher education department chair worked with us on critical thinking skills and assessing our strengths and needs. She also recommended some strategies to continue to build on those skills. Our student life assistant director worked with us on developing a team and working as a team. One way we have continued this is the institution of a chapter bowling night. It has indeed strengthened our work as a team, even when our competitive spirit comes out during the games. Perseverance skills were strengthened as we progressed through our project. One of the psychology department faculty worked with us to relieve the anxiety that resulted from the roadblocks we hit.
We needed to communicate with Student Life to determine our budget limitations and the process for purchasing. Perseverance was required as the ordering did not happen in the timeline communicated with us, requiring us to patiently revise our timeline.
As a team, we determined the materials needed to construct the library. We bought a drill for the project. Of the four of us, two had never used a drill in the past but were able to master that skill with the construction process and the assistance and guidance of the more experienced members. Patience and perseverance were required as the pieces were put together without the use of a guide. Via multiple efforts, we were able to construct the Little Library, as well as the cart on which it lives. We further used communication skills as we worked to tell the campus and community about our Little Library. The communication happened through an internal website, social media, and email. As a result, we were flooded with books. Collection boxes overflowed with donations. Teamwork was needed to examine the books and display them. Finally, we developed sleuthing skills as one day the Little Library disappeared. We searched the campus. Our advisor contacted campus leadership to find out if anyone had seen the library. Security reviewed the video from the cameras in the halls. One of the maintenance staff had moved it to a closet, as she thought it would not be appropriate for the event to occur the following day. Diplomacy was required as two members and the advisor met with the campus director to discuss this further, suggesting that the Little Library would have been a perfect addition to the event. Our college president hosted the event, who later communicated that she would have enjoyed “showing off” the chapter’s initiative. In addition to the above for implementing the project, we realized we needed to improve our Hallmark writing skills as we did not score very high last year. To that end, we emailed Dr. Susan Edwards at PTK Headquarters, asking if she would join us to discuss the skill of Hallmark writing. She did join us for a meeting, sharing a PowerPoint demonstration with detailed directions and hints for our writing. As we were writing these, we constantly asked each other, “What Would Dr. Edwards Do?”
Collaboration Throughout this project, the chapter had four active members. Two of those are provisional
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members who have not yet reached the GPA requirement for PTK. The chapter has two advisors, but one provided most of the direct advising with the other advisor assisting with ordering and paperwork. From initial brainstorming through today, the chapter primarily communicates via texts. Communication with collaborators (Student Life, college administration, Plant Operations, and other PTK chapters) tends to be via email and Zoom meetings. Once we determined what was needed for the project, we contacted the bookstore and library to discuss our plans. We have maintained contact with them and our college president to update them on our progress. We used the college’s internal website to publicize our efforts and request book donations. Our chapter president contacted student life to order the Little Library, discussing available options. Finally, we communicated via email and Zoom meetings with the other chapters at our college to discuss all chapters’ projects. The other two chapters had not finalized College Project plans then and decided to create Little Libraries across all campuses. We suggested that they review the rubric for the College Project to ensure they included all recommended steps in determining a project.
Impact Regarding quantitative outcomes, our Little Library can hold approximately 100 books. To date, there have been 435 books contributed and distributed. These books have covered all genres including children’s, non-fiction, fiction, history, religion, and books on tape. We ask people to note how many books they are taking and contributing but do not ask for names. Assuming the self-report is accurate, 153 people have used the Little Library at this writing. Regarding qualitative outcomes, this project has far exceeded our expectations. The provisional member who originally suggested the idea has grown in confidence. She has noted that when she began attending meetings, it was to “humor” our advisor, who was her professor. However, since then, she reports feeling like she belongs in an honor society, as it was her suggestion to
launch this pivotal project for the chapter. Other members have mentioned that it makes us feel good; whether we are discussing it or working to maintain it, we are helping to expose people to a wide range of literature. One patron told us this was his only opportunity to access books as he had no time to go to the library or bookstore. Faculty and staff have commended the chapter on the project, noting it is not a one-time event. This is ongoing, allowing people to visit as often as needed. We are most excited about an informal Little Library Book Club that has emerged. It began with various religious books in the library. These books represented many religious perspectives. Students asked if we had more books on religion as they were using them to educate themselves about each other’s religious beliefs. We have advertised this book club and now have five-10 attendees at each meeting. People from many cultures discussing their beliefs and customs attend the meetings that have included an exchange of food as attendees cook for one another and exchange recipes. That resulted in an upsurge of cookbooks gracing the shelves of the Little Library. We have invited the college president and other administrators to join us in the discussions and exchange of ideas. This has led to our favorite qualitative outcome - the breaking down of walls between the many cultures represented on our campus.
Chapter-College Relationship Our chapter has long enjoyed a positive relationship with the college administration. Our college president reaches out frequently to discuss various issues. With this project, we feel it has taken yet another upward step. When she has seen our members or advisors on campus, she has asked specifically about the Little Library. She has posted photos of it on our college website. What we consider a huge step forward is that she has agreed to join us on one of our chapter’s bowling nights.
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“How To Be a Student” Week Alpha Kappa Alpha Chapter Normandale Community College Bloomington, Minnesota
Abstract After analysis of the Normandale Fact Book and the college’s mission statement, and discussions with College President Dr. Ester, we created a project that addressed the college’s focus on student diversity, inclusion, and college success. We developed a week-long project that would target different Normandale communities facing specific challenges (Figure 1). On Monday, we offered a student-parent resource class with Counselor Lavonne Evenson. On Tuesday, we hosted a productivity and organizational skills seminar with tips and tricks to succeed in college, including discipline and motivation. This seminar was led by Student Life Graduate Assistant Debra Katona. On Wednesday, we hosted a women’s support group with participation from the LGBTQIA+ community, led by sociology Professor Nancy Claycomb. This group offered a safe space to discuss the success of women in education and how to improve Normandale as a supportive college for marginalized communities. On Thursday, we held a career and major exploration event with Counselor Valerie Dean. This event gave students multiple online tools and guided activities to evaluate potential careers and majors. On Friday, we hosted a seminar on learning how to approach mathematics. This seminar was student-led by Valeria Diaz, PTK president and physics major, who is currently taking Calculus IV. This seminar offered helpful tips on tackling difficult problems, explored learning styles for math, and discussed effective note-taking strategies for difficult exams.
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Planning First, we devised a survey asking students about their experiences at Normandale, including their thoughts on what could improve the quality of their experiences here. In 43 responses, students talked about a lack of resources for non-traditional students as well as diversity and inclusion programs that could be offered. From this, we compiled a list of potential projects in PowerPoint, which we then presented to the college president Dr. Ester. Some of our ideas included improving the Normandale safety app, making an informational seminar for creating and joining clubs, and working with Marvis Kilgore to collaborate with Sirtify (the Black Men in Teaching program) to improve diversity in various fields. Dr. Ester informed us that our student services department was currently working on similar ideas for student engagement and suggested we check out the Normandale Fact Book, which contains statistical data for Normandale students throughout the last five years. From the Fact Book, we analyzed data about student demographics such as parttime and full-time status, degree-seeking, postsecondary enrollment option (PSEO), transfer students, and completion rates. This data allowed us to build a project around diversity and success rates. For example, the Fact Book states that 67% of degree-seeking students are from underrepresented communities, and the highest withdrawal rates are from math courses, such as Introduction to Statistics (22% withdrawal rate) and College Algebra (16% withdrawal rate). After planning out our week-long project, we met with Dr. Ester again to confirm our mission to contribute to Normandale’s “Big 3 Goals”: racial equity in educational outcomes by 2025, 50 percent or higher degree completion or transfer by 2030, and a sustained culturally competent and service-oriented campus culture. Dr. Ester approved this project. We then contacted various faculty and staff who could lead and give out resources each day of our project. Our leading collaborators include Counselor Lavonne Evenson, Student Life Graduate Assistant Debra Katona, sociology Professor Nancy Claycomb, Counselor Valerie Dean, and math Instructor Patrick Fingerson.
Figure 1
Leadership Development First, we needed to understand fully the College Project expectations. Officer training, as well as workshops at our regional convention and PTK Catalyst, provided much of this, including the scope of the project and the importance of faculty and administrative involvement. As new officers, we also needed to learn how to work as a team and be effective leaders of our committees. At Catalyst, we attended leadership and professional development seminars that strengthened our ability to make decisions and run meetings and complete the planning process of the project. We completed a Strengths assessment and application with Student Life Coordinator Justin Martin, a certified Strengths instructor. This helped during the execution of the project, as team members were assigned tasks that best fit their strengths. To better communicate professionally with faculty and staff, Linda Tetzlaff, our chapter advisor, gave a
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but was now excelling and currently succeeding in Calculus IV. Val would be able to target students’ specific mathematics concerns and offer them first-hand tips and tricks from a student’s perspective. The students who attended seemed more comfortable having a fellow student as the speaker, as they were engaged and asked questions.
Figure 2
professional email writing workshop. We helped complete the project within a limited time period and attended a goal setting workshop on SMART goals. We also had to inform ourselves of Normandale’s background, goals, the effectiveness of current programs, and potential areas of improvement, so we had to learn whom to talk to and where to find all this information.
Collaboration After we reviewed Normandale’s Fact Book, Dr. Ester agreed that students needed specific targeted support groups to help overcome their struggles. We first narrowed down to five groups to target and then determined who would be best to collaborate with for each. Each committee member took responsibility to contact the collaborator best suited for their day’s topic, sharing their progress at weekly team meetings, and brainstorming ideas to help each other. After receiving confirmation from each collaborator, the team members each worked closely with their collaborator through emails, phone calls, and in-person meetings to plan the details, and each met with their collaborator at least three times throughout the project. We encountered scheduling problems on the math support group day. Our math professor had some unforeseen complications and was no longer available. We decided to have Valeria Diaz, PTK president, host the Math Support Day. Val previously struggled with mathematics
After the week-long event ended, the chapter met with all the faculty and staff involved to gather feedback and provide an overview of the project’s outcome. The collaborators were pleased with the overall effort and concept.
Impact Overall, we had a total student attendance of about 50 people at the events. Each faculty collaborator gave out well-planned resources; most had around six handouts for their session, as well as a well-prepared presentation and discussion. The event with the best outcome both quantitatively and qualitatively was our women’s support group on Wednesday (Figure 2). About 30 students representing diverse elements of our population attended this event, including the LGBTQ+ club. This diversity of attendees made it possible to hear from many different viewpoints, which provided a significant and valuable discussion. About 10 people attended the math event to learn tips and tricks for studying math. Many attendees felt comfortable asking questions and sharing their experiences as math students. One student began crying because she finally realized it’s okay to be “bad” at math, and that she was not alone and could get help. Our productivity event only had about eight attendees, but the participants were very engaged and entertaining. Debra Katona had worksheets and informative slides about time management, motivation, and the use of uplifting music. The student-parent support group and the career and major exploration were two events that could have gone better. We knew that not every day would go perfectly due to student availability and
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interest. These two events had lower attendance than expected. Because our collaborators had worked hard to prepare materials for these events, we developed a College Project Student Resource pamphlet, which provided the information from each event and some additional information on PTK (Figure 3). This pamphlet would share information from our collaborators with students who could not attend the events. We printed out 100 copies, which we placed in highly trafficked areas around campus. By handing out these pamphlets, along with the resources that were handed out at each event, we were able to spread awareness of services and resources both on and off campus that students said they were not aware of in our beginning survey.
Chapter-College Relationship In previous years, Dr. Ester would let the PTK team choose a project based on what the team thought would be valuable for the campus. This year, we had the pleasure of strengthening PTK’s relationship with the administration through our conversation with Dr. Ester on her vision for the campus. After we presented our original ideas, she told us many stories about previous fun activities (such as a women’s discussion group) that she really enjoyed. While she did not tell us this should be our project, we decided to use her vision to expand the scope by including more
Figure 3
student communities, advisors/collaborators, and resources. The College Project this year fits the administration’s vision of equity, success, and support for the campus. Because of this, Dr. Ester is working on including our project in her Strategic Framework statement. In addition, one of the professors we worked with for the women’s support group, Nancy Claycomb, said she admired Phi Theta Kappa’s initiative to create an inclusive and diverse space for students on campus. She proposed continuing the discussions among different communities at Normandale, as well as potentially creating a project on voting and political representation for marginalized communities. Through our project, Nancy Claycomb is more connected to PTK and will contact us for future projects, events, and ideas. We also talked with our professors to get them involved in the advertising by asking them to promote the events in their classes. Having professors involved in advertising the event not only benefitted us but also made this a community, not just a Phi Theta Kappa, project. Our whole project included working with faculty and administration from different fields, by planning and carrying out each event alongside them. Every faculty member who collaborated on the events told us that they would be interested in hosting more events.
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Pa’ani the Kula (Play the School): Promoting Student Engagement Through Play Alpha Kappa Iota Chapter Honolulu Community College Honolulu, Hawaii
Abstract Using the aspect of play, our College Project aimed to transition students back to campus following the COVID-19 pandemic. Pa’ani the Kula was an event of 10 activities across our campus courtyard, including board games, party games, Minute to Win It, and traditional Hawaiian games (Figures 1 and 2). Participants who completed a set number of activities also earned a free bento lunch. To establish what we wanted to focus on, we met with our chancellor to brainstorm ideas based on her immediate priorities. One of the main goals she wanted to focus on was bringing students back to campus after spending the past few years online. We also addressed four other institutional missions listed on our college website: (1) “Student-Centered and Student-Focused” by including various student groups in our event such as our Micronesian Wayfinders Club as volunteers and our MELE (Music & Entertainment Learning Experience) academic program featuring student musical talents/performances. (2) “Foremost Indigenous-serving Institution” by hosting our event during La Ku’oko’a (Hawaiian Independence Day) and including traditional Hawaiian games. (3) “Sustainability” by borrowing resources from other UHCC campuses.
Figure 1
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our campus’s design center. She also maintained transparency with all officers and advisors in all movements in her work. In our meetings, the communications officer also recorded detailed meeting notes that helped us remain on the same page working toward our larger goal. Our communications officer also coordinated our event volunteers, who were primarily PTK members. Our vice president of service managed our financial budget throughout the event and planned the layout of our event. Our advisors handled the administrative bulk of our project and maintained communication with the officers in what they had done. They worked with the college administration to coordinate and reserve space for our event, covered our logistics in building facility request forms, and assisted management in the evaluation forms presented to students.
Figure 2 (4) “Diversity and Equity” by opening the event to all Honolulu Community College students from diverse cultural/racial backgrounds and academic programs.
Planning Both the PTK officers and advisors had significant roles when planning the event. Each PTK officer used their strengths to finish our project efficiently. Our chapter president created a series of online documents that guided all officers and advisors throughout the process, including a to-do list, email drafts, and meeting agendas with our chancellor. He also connected with our chancellor on multiple occasions and with our PTK advisors and maintained transparency with all his actions. Our communications officer has worked closely with our campus marketing coordinator to discuss promoting our event and working with
Our chancellor frequently updated us on our event through emails and in-person meetings. Our leadership, including advisors, met at least once a week during the fall 2022 semester to plan Pa’ani the Kula. Our first meeting was dedicated to our planning stage, where we needed to create an event aligned with the chancellor’s and college’s goals. We coordinated a second meeting with the chancellor to finalize our idea of our “play” event. A detailed budget was reviewed and planned for our coordinated event. After completing this planning phase, our officers communicated with campus resource staff to create and implement promotional materials for our event. They contacted other community colleges to borrow some games from their campuses. Our PTK advisors got campus services to participate and spread the word about our event. Our leadership also worked closely with the advisors to compose a post-event evaluation survey to capture essential data for our project.
Leadership Development Our officers maintained four abilities during the planning process: teamwork, communication, critical thinking, and organization. We
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experienced adversity and perseverance in a change in staffing/leadership and finding a suitable topic for our project at the beginning of the semester. It was also new to us because we were new and needed clarity to be successful as a chapter.
relationship with the chapter. This trajectory of multiple disconnections and doing things alone led to the brighter and more fulfilling light of doing things together.
We had to build a good relationship between the officers and new advisors before we planned our event. Outside our scheduled meeting times, the officers met regularly to build relations in our shared struggles and strengths, which helped us to learn about everyone’s progress and find a way to move forward.
With the challenges faced early in the semester and our commitment to complete this project as the college wished, we understood that communication and collaboration would be crucial to our project’s success. For example, Student Life was using the Hale ‘Aina (campus cafeteria) for an event the same day, and La Ku’oko’a was taking place in our campus garden. We first saw this as an obstacle but then decided to collaborate with Student Life and the Hawaiian Center to agree on how hosting our events on the same day could benefit each other’s turnout. With a day of wide-ranging, campus-wide activities, there was more student attendance and participation at each group’s event.
It should also be noted that most of our officers were also student workers, which helped us reach out and connect with advisors and other campus resources effectively. As a team, we wanted to prioritize communication after the changes we endured at the beginning of the semester. Communication is an imperative skill in any relationship, and the officers/advisors displayed consistent communication in sharing their schedules through all platforms (email threads, phone calls, and text messages). We also held weekly meetings with all officers and advisors to coordinate their planning updates. Throughout the year our chapter survived and thrived through adversity and commitment. When we began shaping our vision for the College Project, we were met with multiple disappointments, including the retirement of our lead advisor, the departure of the new lead advisor, rejected topic proposals, and several other pushbacks on an administrative level. Whenever we believed we found a perfect topic, it would be dismissed, which ultimately pushed us to think outside the box—to think about improving a goal rather than a physical area. However, our ideas became more evident through the efforts of our advisors and officers. The advisors dedicated a lot of their time (beyond their professional duties) to our PTK officers. This opportunity to bond together as a team has resulted in our successful College Project. We stayed determined to finish this project strong. We also received assistance and support from our chancellor in putting all the pieces together and building a strong
Collaboration
Another obstacle was finding the funding to pay for our event’s food and activities. We used chapter funds raised by previous officers to fund the event. Our chancellor also felt that our event aligned with the college’s mission so much that she offered to pay for half of the event’s expenses. Additional collaborations included the following: • entertainment provided by talented students from the MELE program • board games borrowed from student life and liberal arts programs • instruments and instruction on traditional Hawaiian games, Ulu Maika and Moa Pahe’e, provided by Kulana Hawai’i (Hawaiian Division) • welcoming students at the sign-in table with a game by support services • Micronesian Wayfinders Club and PTK members monitored the games, gave instructions, and played with students who needed a challenger. Waves of students and faculty members poured into our event to enjoy what we observed to be a celebration of campus life after a long virtual silence.
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Impact To ensure participation, we made food tickets that required students to play at least three games to get a free bento lunch. Our advisors staffed the lunch table, distributing lunches after students completed our event survey. According to our evaluation form, we had 71 students complete the survey, but our headcount was about 100 participants. Of the 71 that filled out the survey, 90% felt like Pa’ani the Kula helped them rest and relax before finals. About 68% were strongly inspired by the event to incorporate play into their daily life. When students were asked what their favorite part of Pa’ani the Kula was, some responded by saying, “Meeting people on campus,” “The games and interacting with faculty and other students,” “The games allowed people to relax,” and “The fact we got to come out of our academic minds and allow our playful mind to take over so we can also interact with other students and staff who we never get to see.” It was nice to hear that we accomplished the missions we had set out with and the goals that the chancellor had in mind. Many students approached the officers and advisors to request that we hold this event more often on campus. They wanted it two to three times a semester. Many agreed that it was valuable for college students like themselves to relax and recuperate (play) every so often to ensure they are happy and healthy while they work hard to progress in life. Our chapter members loved seeing the officers’ efforts with this event, inspiring them to participate in future events and projects. Most importantly, the officers and advisors were grateful for the project’s outcome and happy to see the joy and pilina (relationships) all our hard work had brought.
Chapter-College Relationship Fortunately, our chancellor was very kind and flexible in working with us to develop a project that would best benefit our campus at this given time. With the college’s administration, faculty, staff, and students recovering from the effects of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, we felt it was best to bring everyone together. Our event was primarily focused on implementing de-stress through activities and play within our campus.
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International Day of Thanks Chi Kappa Chapter Carl Sandburg College Galesburg, Illinois
Abstract Our PTK chapter came together to expand diversity and inclusion on our campus. We met with the college president to discuss how we might best serve the institution, and together, we decided that working to create a more inclusive environment for our international student population was the direction we should pursue. We decided to host an International Day of Thanks to celebrate the various cultures of our international student body. We wanted to recognize that different cultures celebrate diverse holidays, so we threw an International Day of Thanks instead of having a Thanksgiving event on campus. We wanted to give our international students an opportunity to share some of their favorite things – like food and music – from their homes with the rest of the campus population. The mission of Carl Sandburg College is to provide all students with opportunities for success. When we met with the president, we began to realize that our international students might not have had access to resources needed to help them be successful in college. They leave their homes and families to come to a strange place, and many of them might not have a community. We know how hard it is to be successful in school when you have a whole support system, so we could not imagine how hard it would be to do school without that. We thought it would be possible for PTK and other organizations on campus to create a more welcoming and supportive environment for those students, so we made that our College Project goal. As a chapter, we united international and U.S. students alike and celebrated diversity, inclusion, culture, and thanks. We asked our
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international students to share some of their favorite recipes from home, and we made those dishes in bulk and shared them with the whole campus. To do this, we collaborated with multiple administrators on campus and several other student organizations. We set goals, made plans, and created the International Day of Thanks on our campus, something we plan to do annually. In the end, we served food to 100+ people on campus. Our international students were able to have some favorite food items from home while also meeting a lot of new people on campus. We were happy to see not just students attending the event but also college faculty, staff, and administrators. We believe we successfully achieved our goal of expanding diversity and inclusion on our campus.
Planning One of our officers was responsible for keeping records of every meeting, including meetings with administrators and other clubs and organizations. We bounced ideas off each other, trying to come up with something positive and fun for all our peers to engage in. We came up with some things we were interested in and consulted with the president of Carl Sandburg College. During our meeting with him, he stated that he wanted our College Project to include international students since they make up a lot of our student population and often don’t feel included. We ultimately decided that having an International Day of Thanks might be a good way to highlight our international students and make them feel like they were integrated into our community. We met together as a chapter and decided what we wanted the event to include and how to best execute it. After the meeting with the president, we knew we needed to work with other campus administrators, so we started with Coordinator of Diversity and Inclusion Anthony Law III and Director of International Student Services Veronica Thor. We wanted to find out the number of international students we had, the specific countries our international students came from, and the percentage of students from those countries. After we got this information, we directly emailed our international students. We
asked them if they would be interested in coming to this hypothetical event and if they would be willing to share their favorite recipes from home.
Our officer team had been meeting regularly with our advisor to ensure that we had reserved a date and space for the event on campus. We also communicated with each other and our advisor via text throughout the entire College Project, in addition to all our face-to-face planning meetings. Once we had the information and willingness to participate from our international students, we met again as a chapter to discuss how to move forward. We planned out how we would divide the work necessary to host the event. We assigned officers to oversee things like getting groceries from the store, purchasing decorations, collaborating with other campus organizations, and setting up for the event. We made a schedule to help us stay on track. We also planned the ingredients we would need, an estimate of how much we would need for each dish, who would make what dish, and how to properly display the flags from each country. We also consulted with Eric Johnson, the director of the foundation at Carl Sandburg College, to help us promote the event. We planned a rough estimate of how many students would show up to our International Day of Thanks depending on how publicized it was. As the day approached, we met more frequently to ensure nothing was overlooked. We made a schedule for the day of the event so that every chapter member had a job. This really helped us to stay organized and complete each task to ensure a successful event.
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Leadership Development To complete the project, we had to learn many new things and polish some of our existing skills. We participated in team-building exercises as a chapter officer team before we started. We had meetings with our advisor to go over how to communicate with college administrators. We learned a lot about the structure of the college because we had to work with so many different people to execute the project. Because the project was about increasing the connection between U.S. and international students, we also learned a lot about the ways people from different cultures communicate and the things they find important. We know this will be valuable as we leave our institution and go to other places. We had to make a budget (to buy food and supplies) and we had to stick to that budget, which is something not all of us had done before.
Collaboration During the implementation phase of the project, we worked with other campus organizations like Men of Distinction, Women of Character, Hispanic-Latino Student Association, Black Student Association, and the International Student Club. We worked closely with the coordinator of the Office of Diversity and Inclusion who oversees these organizations. We kept in regular contact with him. It was not always easy working with so many different organizations and people but because many PTK officers were already a part of one or more of the other organizations, things were easier. We also set things up, so our vice president of service was the ultimate decision-maker if there were disagreements about what we wanted to do. We communicated with the president of the college and his assistant to schedule our meetings with him, and we met with him face-to-face to discuss what the chapter could do to serve the institution. Once we decided on a project with him, we went to work on its planning and execution. After we fully formulated a plan, we let him know and invited him to the event. Thanks to our college’s marketing and PR teams, he was able to see how successful the event was even though he could not be in attendance. We also spoke with him after the event to let him know how it went. We avoided many pitfalls, including missing deadlines, by staying in such close communication
throughout the implementation of the project and by using a joint calendar.
Impact Our College Project had many qualitative and quantitative outcomes. Our quantitative outcomes were as follows: • 13 different countries were highlighted at our event, representing 42 international students • 100+ people were brought together, ate food, and connected. • We worked with five different student organizations across campus. • We worked with four different college administrators, strengthening our relationship with all of them. • We engaged 100% of our officer team in College Project completion. With all the work for the event, Phi Theta Kappa members learned valuable lessons, formed many new relationships, and gained many new skills. These make up our quantitative outcomes. Some of them are: • new relationships • more inclusion on campus • more interaction with other student organizations on campus • the building of leadership skills
Chapter-College Relationship Our project strengthened PTK’s relationship with college administration. Since our chapter has never had the opportunity to work directly with the college president, it was exciting to do that this year. We were also fortunate to work with the college foundation, office of diversity and inclusion, and international student office. This helped us to increase campus awareness about PTK and the things it can do to help the college. Our college president has already asked us what we are going to do next year and said that he is looking forward to working with us again. Because the event was a success and because we had such effective communication with all stakeholders and each other, we believe that our relationship can only get stronger in the future, giving us many more opportunities to have a positive impact on campus.
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Establishing a Call Center to Help Applicants Navigate the Enrollment Process Alpha Sigma Iota Chapter Louisiana State University – Eunice Eunice, Louisiana
Abstract Our college’s mission includes “encouraging traditional and nontraditional populations to take advantage of educational opportunities,” and one of the college’s four strategic goals is “ensuring student access.” Our college has a vested interest in increasing enrollment to maximize access to best serve our community, our region, and beyond. The establishment of a call center supported that interest by providing individualized support to new, transfer, and re-entry applicants to help them navigate the enrollment process. Eight student volunteers made 1,131 calls to applicants leading up to the fall 2022 semester, and 31% of these calls resulted in the volunteer being able to effectively communicate next steps to applicants. This initiative contributed to an enrollment increase of 3.4% for new, transfer, and re-entry students for the fall 2022 semester in support of our college’s mission and goal to ensure student access.
Planning Our chapter president, vice president, and advisor met with the chancellor in the middle of the spring 2022 semester to discuss the institution’s mission, assess institutional priorities, and identify opportunities for our chapter to contribute in a meaningful way. Although many opportunities for student support projects were discussed, the dire need to increase enrollment prevailed as the most pressing issue facing our institution.
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Figure 1
In addition to having access at the core of our mission, increasing enrollment is critical to ensure our institution remains financially viable. With state funding steadily decreasing over the past 15 years, the college’s reliance on tuition and fee revenue has steadily increased over that same period. At our next chapter meeting, we discussed specific projects that might have a positive impact on enrollment. One student stated that she found the enrollment process confusing and that communications from the university were unclear and infrequent. Other students shared similar feedback. The idea of establishing a call center staffed by volunteer chapter members began to formulate through this discussion. Chapter members would be trained on the basic steps for student admissions, including submitting transcripts, registering for orientation, and scheduling appointments with academic advisors, and they would proactively reach out to applicants to ensure they were aware of their next steps in the enrollment process. Our chapter advisor reached out to the director of admissions to ask if this was an area of need for the office, and he agreed that the proposed project would certainly have positive gains on enrollment. He shared data (Figure 1) that shows that approximately 25% of applicants who ultimately do not enroll report that
they remember receiving phone correspondence from the college. Following the procurement of full support from admissions and recruitment, our chapter leadership met again with the chancellor to propose the idea of establishing a call center. The chancellor was visibly excited by this idea from our original and subsequent conversations, and she gave our chapter her full endorsement of this initiative.
Leadership Development A call center training was built by our chapter advisor in conjunction with staff from recruitment and admissions. Each project volunteer from our chapter was trained on how to use the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system Radius to view assigned cases, make notes to document the details and outcomes of the calls, and close them out after completion. Using Radius to delegate calls to applicants allowed admissions to track the efficacy of the calls and to ensure that they were completed in a timely manner. In addition to being trained to use the Radius system, our project volunteers were trained by recruitment staff on how to sell the value of an education at our college. For students who expressed that they were no longer interested in
Call Center Final Results Call Center Final Results Call Center Final Results Change Makers: Phi Theta Kappa Journal of Student Leadership | 37
Call Center Final Results Call Center Final Results
attending, our project volunteers were trained to communicate our college’s primary appealing factors, including affordability, flexible offerings, and the quality of our academic programs. These trainings were held in mid-April, and calling campaigns started in late April.
Each project volunteer was given a basic script from which to start each call based on where the applicant was in the enrollment process and whether they were online or attending on campus. Each project volunteer held mock calls with recruitment staff, which provided an opportunity for feedback on strengths of the call and areas of improvement. The project volunteers were encouraged to be authentic and to add their No answer No longer interested in LSUE Unknown Success own personality to the calls, but the basic script No answer No longer interested in LSUE number No answer No longerUnknown interested Success in LSUE Wrong Unknown Success served as a guideline to ensure the call provided No answer No longer interested in LSUE Unknown Success Wrong number No answer No longer interested in LSUE Unknown Success Wrong number helpful and accurate information. Call Status # Call Status No 557 Call Status Callanswer Status # No answer No longer interested in LSUE 168 No answer 557 No#answer No longer interested in LSUE Call Status % Unknown 37 No longer interested in LSUE interested in 168 No longer LSUE Success 343 A total of eight chapter member No answer volunteers 557 49.00% UnknownUnknown 37 Unknown Wrong number 26 Success 343 Success No longer interested in LSUE 168 15.00% agreed to participate in the call center. To ensure 1131 Wrong number Success Total calls 26
Collaboration
% 49.00% % 15.00% 49.00% 3.00% 15.00% 31.00% 3.00% 2.00% 31.00% 2.00%
# % 557 # 49.00% % 49.00% 168557 15.00% 168 15.00% 37 3.00% 37 3.00% 343 31.00% 343 31.00% 26 2.00% 26 2.00% 1131 1131
Wrong37 number3.00% Unknown that all chapter volunteers were assigned an Wrong number Total calls 1131 Success 343 31.00% Total calls equal caseload, the caseWrong assignment process Total calls number 26 2.00% Figure 2 was manually completed on a weekly basis by Total calls 1131 an admissions staff member. The first calling campaign was the largest. By the time the the issue. However, volunteers were encouraged first campaign started in late April, there were to try to contact someone immediately to find an approximately 700 applicants, resulting in answer to the problem while the applicant was on approximately 88 calls per volunteer. the phone.
After the initial campaign, new applicants were assigned to volunteers in much more manageable numbers, approximately 5-10 per week. Our chapter advisor was given access to the CRM to track case completion along with admissions, and admissions staff communicated with our chapter advisor and chapter volunteers regularly throughout the implementation of this project. At chapter meetings, there was an open forum discussion to communicate issues, problems, or other things related to the project, and admissions staff attended several chapter meetings to address such issues as they arose. Each volunteer was given the contact information for a staff member in the admissions office to call, text, or email if the student applicant had an issue or question that the volunteer was unable to answer. Some volunteers referred the applicant to the appropriate office depending on the nature of
Of the eight volunteers, there was only one who delayed in completing the assigned calls. Our chapter president reached out to remind this member, but there was no progress. Our chapter advisor met with the member and asked if he wanted to continue to volunteer to serve the call center. The student member expressed that his academic workload was too great to allow him to continue, which allowed our chapter to find a replacement to absorb the cases assigned to this student. The student who stepped down as a volunteer is still an active member of our chapter and attends meetings regularly. This situation was appropriately resolved with minimal conflict and an amicable outcome for all involved parties.
Impact From this initiative, there were a total of 1,131 calls (Figure 2) that were made from the call
Wrong nu Wrong
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center, and of those calls, 343 (31%) yielded success, which means that the volunteer was able to inform the applicant of their next steps in the enrollment process and that the applicant intended to move forward with that process. Of the 1,131 calls, 557 (49%) resulted in no answer, which prompted volunteers to send a text message to the applicant. Of the 1,131 calls, 168 (15%) indicated they were no longer interested in LSUE, which prompted volunteers to contact admissions to change their application status. Only 26 (2%) were wrong numbers, and 37 (3%) were marked with an “unknown” status, meaning the volunteer was not sure if their call yielded success. Chapter volunteers journaled their experiences throughout the summer. One student wrote, “Before participating in this project, I had an anxiety about cold calling people. My first few calls were pretty rough and awkward, but I eventually realized that my calls were meant to be helpful. I like helping people solve problems, so I remembered that before I dialed every number, and it helped my conversations flow more smoothly.” Another student recorded their experience as follows: “LSUE is such an amazing place that it really makes making these calls easier than I expected. I truly believe in how special this place is, so if I can help another person navigate challenges to become a student here, that is worth the time and energy that it takes to make the calls and texts.” In fall 2022 new, transfer, and re-entry student enrollment was up 3.4% from fall 2021. It is difficult to attribute how much of this enrollment increase was a result of the call center initiative, but it was certainly one of the many contributing factors.
Chapter-College Relationship Our chancellor invited our chapter leaders to an Executive Cabinet meeting on July 19, 2022, to speak about the call center and provide an update on the project to the 12 administrators who serve on the cabinet. Our chapter advisor introduced the chapter president and vice president who played vital roles in planning and
implementing the project. The chapter president presented a graph to show the efficacy of the calling campaign. The chancellor and several other administrators praised the efforts of our chapter and thanked them for their efforts. For our chapter leaders to have the opportunity to sit in on an Executive Cabinet meeting was very special and provided our team with a valuable perspective to sit at the table where so many important decisions are made that affect the college.
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The Impact of COVID-19 on Students Alpha Kappa Upsilon Chapter Massasoit Community College Brockton, Massachusetts
Abstract In examining the mission statement of our college, “Massasoit Community College is a dynamic, diverse learning community that supports all students in their education,” we found that supporting students in their education is an integral part of the mission. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, some students felt unsupported. With a new president in the college who started in August 2021, and some funding from the State of Massachusetts through the SUCCESS grant, our college established a Participatory Action Research (PAR) Office that engages students with issues that affect retention and student success. At a meeting with our college president, we determined that our college’s priority was to find out why many of our part-time students did not return. Our PTK officers and members, at a later meeting, discussed ways to carry out this project, agreed to create a questionnaire, and planned to perform a calling campaign. To learn more about the impact, and to recommend action, our officers and advisor collaborated with the PAR office to examine the effect of COVID-19 on our students’ progress. Our chapter’s goals for this project were to find out the following: • What were/are Massasoit students’ educational experiences during COVID-19? • What are support recommendations from Massasoit students?
Planning When our officers met with our college president, he updated us on new institutional research
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data indicating that 66% of our current student population are part-time students and have a low retention rate, specifically after COVID-19. He asked us about our thoughts, and we suggested that we survey students to see why they did not return. To get us started with our project, our advisor connected us with the Office of Participatory Action Research (PAR). The PAR director encouraged us to think about what we would like to do. We related our interest in our original objectives of finding out about the experiences of the students during COVID-19, and in giving recommendations from our findings to the college administration. Moreover, we identified groups of students we wanted to survey. We identified the following three groups of students: Group A: part-time students currently enrolled at Massasoit during the spring of 2022. Group B: part-time students who were students in the fall of 2021 but did not re-enroll in the spring of 2022. Group C: currently enrolled students whose status ranged from full-time to part-time to Early College students. Then, we connected with institutional research and examined retention data for part-time students. We worked with the Office of Student Services and gathered a list of names and phone numbers for student groups we had identified with the PAR director. We met with the dean of students and discussed our plan. She offered us space in her office to perform our calls to students.
Leadership Development In order to succeed in completing this project, our PTK officer team and participating members needed to refresh a variety of academic, social, and interpersonal skills. Our officers needed to learn interviewing skills, so we worked with a speech professor on campus to learn about intonation and clear enunciation
of questions. Officers learned to listen and only ask follow-up questions as needed. They also practiced mock interviews and gave feedback to each other. The project required research skills, and our officers, although familiar with some research techniques, sat through a workshop with our library staff and writing center director to refresh their research skills. Members read through the following article to further understand the research process and participated in a discussion session. Fox, M. (2015). Embodied methodologies, participation, and the art of research. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 9(7), 321-332. Moreover, to help us create pie charts and interpret data, our advisor invited a statistics professor to explain charts and data presentations. Finally, we spent time in brainstorming sessions with the PAR director to categorize the data and investigate the similarities and differences between the student experiences in the different groups.
Collaboration After our initial meeting with the college president, our officer team met and discussed ways to carry out the plan. We all agreed that the most effective way to find out why students did not return was to ask them. To better articulate our objectives, we then collaborated with the PAR office where the director helped us focus on what we really wanted to know, and what to do with that knowledge. We determined that a calling campaign would be beneficial and that we would need to synthesize the data after we collected it. We collaborated with multiple offices on campus to facilitate the project. We worked with academic instructors to hone our skills. We worked with a librarian and the writing center director to develop better research skills, and we collaborated with the Office of the Registrar, the Office of Student Services, and the Office of
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Figure 1 Student Success to generate the lists of students targeted for our calling campaigns.
Impact Our officer team started the calling campaign with a semi-structured phone interview. We called 522 currently enrolled students (spring 2022). We called 154 re-enrolled students (fall 2021-spring 2022). While the total number of calls was to 676 students, only 70 students agreed to participate in the interview. The number of student interviews fit as follows: Group A (n=39), Group B (n=19), Group C (n=12). As shown in Figure 1, we found a common theme in the three groups of communication issues (highlighted in yellow): students who did not return in group B reported difficulties in communicating with faculty and staff, while students who returned in both groups A and C reported lack of connection and interaction to their peers or professors in general. Internet connectivity and familiarity with online learning created the most obstacles for students
who did not return in group B, whereas the students in groups A and C did not have such a strong obstacle. Some only reported having poor internet access to which the college was quite responsive providing students with hotspots. Furthermore, students who returned to school reported experiencing financial difficulties, as well as isolation while studying, both of which, robbed them of a typical college experience, and may have contributed to mental health issues. Our results showed 15.3% of students surveyed reported having a good experience at Massasoit in an online and remote environment, while 13.7% reported a negative experience with online learning. Of the positive experiences, 1.4% of the students used college resources, 4.7% liked the online experience in general, and 1.3% attributed their positive experience to the preparedness of their instructors in an online environment. The members of our officer team shared similar experiences with the students they were interviewing. The project had a positive impact on our team; we were able to share our experiences with our interviews and were able to encourage them to continue to seek support even if they are continuing with online learning. The members and
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the officer team discussed the effect of isolation and talked about how they managed to keep going. This led to a wider campus conversation where we shared with college constituents our results and recommendations. After synthesizing the data, our chapter recommended to the college that students receive better communication from advisors, faculty, and staff, as well as keeping students with one advisor to build a successful rapport and facilitate interpersonal communication. Students recommended using cohort models more widely for better peer support and encouragement. Moreover, students wanted to have more office hours and involvement from their faculty to make better connections with them. A recommendation of mental health support and learning support — especially for those with learning differences — would also contribute to an improvement in the students’ experiences at the college.
Chapter-College Relationship With a new president at the college, this project certainly was a gateway to develop a strong relationship with our president. Our chapter also developed a great working relationship with the PAR office to the effect that four of our officers have accepted paid internships in the PAR office for the upcoming spring semester. Our members and officers carried out the calling campaign from the dean of students’ office. As a result, they developed a great relationship and are now included in student focus groups along with members of the Student Senate. Our chapter created a PowerPoint presentation in collaboration with the PAR office and have presented our findings and recommendations to the board of trustees, faculty and staff, and are currently scheduled to do a campus-wide presentation on the first Friday of February. Furthermore, our chapter has identified a new group of students, English Language Learners (ELL), with whom they would like to explore ways that the college can enhance their experience. From a meeting with a new president to an idea of performing phone calls, our chapter learned along the way new research skills and data analysis as well as built strong relationships with college administration and fellow students.
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Supporting and Promoting the Campus Food Pantry Sigma Lambda Chapter Calhoun Community College Huntsville and Decatur, Alabama
Abstract Food insecurity causes students to have a lack of focus in class. Ensuring every student has access to food allows them to focus on their success in the classroom. To that end, our College Project focused on promoting and supporting our campus food pantry. Our school’s administration indicated that supporting the food pantry and making students aware of its availability as a resource was a top priority for them. It also directly ties to our school’s mission statement, “Success for Every Student.” Previous student surveys at our school have indicated a high need for food and hygiene product resources, and over the past year, our food pantry has experienced increased demand. To meet the project objectives decided on between chapter members, administration, and staff, we: • Designed QR code stickers promoting the food pantry to place on desks and table surfaces across our college campuses. • Facilitated a reusable tote bag drive for the pantry to meet a need identified by the pantry director.
Planning The chapter’s planning process began with a review of our school’s mission statement, “Success for Every Student.” We used the statement to create a few suggested projects to propose during a meeting with school administrators. Our chapter officer team and advisor met with the college president, vice president of student services, chief academic officer, and a campus site director.
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During the meeting, the administrators indicated that one of their top priorities was promoting and supporting our campus food pantry. Administrators indicated that one component of a previous College Project, creating QR code stickers advertising the food pantry, had been immensely successful and led to an increase in the number of students requesting food assistance from the pantry. Unfortunately, the stickers were not made of durable material and had already begun to peel from desktop surfaces. Our chapter officers and administrators mutually decided on a plan to address this problem: one component of our College Project would be designing and investing in new, more durable QR code stickers. The next step in our planning process was a chapter officer and advisor meeting with the food pantry director (a faculty member) and our school’s student advocate (a staff member). The goal of this meeting was to gain additional perspectives on how PTK could support and promote the food pantry. During this meeting, we established an additional goal for our project: collect reusable tote bags for the food pantry to package student food requests. The coordinator indicated that they are constantly in need of bags and that helping to create a stockpile would be extremely useful. After working with college administrators, staff, and faculty to establish project goals, our PTK project chair emailed administrators to recap our project goals and our proposed plans for accomplishing them. We then set about determining the best way to implement our plans. We first decided to plan a school-wide reusable tote bag drive for the food pantry and set a goal of collecting 150 bags. We also decided that a chapter officer with knowledge of online design software would create new QR code stickers.
Leadership Development Throughout this project, it was essential for members to possess a solid understanding of the needs of our college. We also needed graphic design abilities and effective communication skills. To successfully address the needs of our school, officers held periodic meetings and engaged in email and GroupMe correspondence with the college’s administration, food pantry director,
and student advocate. This communication aided officers in acquiring insight into the needs of our college and helped us create strategies for addressing these needs. Once needs were identified, it was vital for officers to possess the skills necessary to generate advertising content to promote awareness of our tote bag drive and the campus food pantry. To build this skill, we sought to learn the fundamentals of design principles by using in-depth articles, tutorials, and resources from Canva, which enabled the production of eyecatching designs for flyers, QR codes, and tote bag collection boxes. We also researched websites that would allow us to generate free QR codes and track engagement statistics for the codes. Communication skills were integral for officers when professionally communicating with administration, staff, advisors, and each other. We learned proper email etiquette through tutorials and tips from advisors and also created multiple drafts of emails, which members and advisors revised and proofread. Members also strengthened their soft skills by participating in professionalism courses. For example, our chapter president completed a work-based learning module offered by our institution that was geared toward providing students with training in professionalism. Additionally, the team honed their communication skills in oral, written, and speaking deportment by completing PTK’s professional development course Competitive Edge.
Collaboration Our project had two major components: • Designing and distributing QR code stickers (Figure 1) to promote the campus food pantry. • Facilitating a reusable tote bag drive (Figure 2) to create a stockpile for the food pantry. QR codes: Chapter members gathered a rough count of how many tables and desks were in classrooms on our two main campuses. We also communicated with the department chair on our fine arts campus about providing codes in their non-traditional learning spaces. A chapter officer
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designed QR code stickers, which our school’s print shop printed. In total, we printed 1,500 stickers, which will be placed by PTK members working in conjunction with other campus organizations, on our three campuses. The QR codes provide a user-friendly and discrete way for students to learn about the food pantry as a resource and request the help they need. It is linked to our college webpage that explains the food pantry and contains an electronic form students can fill out to request food assistance. Reusable tote bag drive: First, we worked to set a goal for the total number of bags we wanted to collect. We decided 150 would be an ambitious but attainable goal. Next, we brainstormed the most high-visibility and easily accessible places on campus to place tote bag collection boxes. A chapter officer created seven collection boxes that were colorfully wrapped with eye-catching signs explaining their purpose. The boxes were placed in the locations we decided were most visible. Next, another officer used online design software to create an electronic flyer with information about the tote bag drive, including its purpose, location of boxes, type of tote bags needed, and our total collection goal. The flyer was emailed to all faculty, staff, and students at the college, posted on PTK’s LMS, and also posted to our chapter’s social media pages.
Figure 1
Our project chair gave monthly email updates about our project to college administrators. They also provided a final update detailing how many tote bags were collected and plans for placing QR code stickers. Additionally, our project chair and advisor communicated regularly (several times per month) with the food pantry director and student advocate.
Impact
Quantitative outcomes: We placed a total of seven tote bag collection boxes. We also emailed approximately 8,800 students, faculty, and staff the flyer promoting our tote bag drive. Our goal was to collect 150 tote bags, but thanks to an enthusiastic response from our school and community members who saw our social media posts, we vastly exceeded our goal and collected a total of 469 tote bags. We also printed 1,500 QR codes.
Figure 2
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Qualitative outcomes: Throughout this project, the chapter gained a greater understanding of our school’s food pantry, the problems facing our school, and the needs of our fellow students. One chapter member said that she “learned more about what the pantry was and how it impacted a variety of students.” She saw firsthand how students were no longer constantly worried about when and where their next meal was coming from. Additionally, the pantry director stated that the pantry has: • Assisted students who were evicted from their homes and had no other way to obtain food, • Permitted students to use the money they would have had to spend on groceries to pay utility bills and keep their heat and electricity on, and • Enabled students to continue pursuing their education. The pantry was not only successful in providing resources to students but also to their families. According to the director, “Approximately half of the tote bags donated had been used to serve over 75 families throughout the Thanksgiving holiday in addition to meeting other needs.” Through this project, members learned how to manage sensitive subject matters to help foster a safe, welcoming environment at our school. We also grew as leaders by learning to communicate professionally with college staff and administrators.
Chapter-College Relationship At the start of our project, the college had recently hired a new president. This meant that PTK had the opportunity to start from nothing and build a mutually beneficial relationship. While the president had worked with our team in the year prior as an interim, this was his first year working with us in a permanent position. We reminded the president of the important aspects of our organization (who we are, what we do) to help him understand our goal for the College Project. Our initial meeting with the administration showed that we valued their opinions, support, and time. At the conclusion of our project, College administrators expressed gratitude, saying, “Thanks for all your hard work on this project. What you’re doing is exciting!” and,
“Thank you for the update on the efforts of this important College Project. Please extend my heartfelt appreciation to PTK for their service!” This project brought our chapter closer to administration and staff through our shared sense of success.
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Beta Nu Eta Cares Resource Fair Beta Nu Eta Chapter Citrus College Glendora, California
Abstract Our Superintendent and President Dr. Greg Schulz expressed his eagerness to “develop a stronger sense of community” through “student engagement” and address “basic needs.” Our chapter reviewed our college’s vision and centered our College Project on “empowering” students and addressing student “needs.” Our chapter organized an event that encouraged academic and career success “with quality educational experiences and support services” and an “accessible and affordable learning environment” as stated in the college’s mission statement. The college’s administration and the Beta Nu Eta (BNH) chapter focused on promoting the various support services the campus offers to students, upholding Citrus College’s value of “student success and completion.” Our chapter built relationships with the president’s office and many of the department heads, thus supporting Citrus College’s value of “collaboration.” The departments we selected reflected Citrus College’s values of “excellence” by demonstrating the quality of our Career Skills Department. Our project also reflected the value of “lifelong learning” by showing the personal growth of the student volunteers and PTK leaders. Finally, it showed Citrus College’s values of “integrity,” and “diversity,” by fostering a community of various student values and goals, while supporting students with vital resources.
Planning Dr. Schulz emphasized his idea of “developing a stronger sense of community” on campus while helping to build “student engagement”
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by connecting students to campus resources. The project leaders informed the rest of the chapter and began to brainstorm, compiling a list of resources and departments that our chapter members found most beneficial during their academic journey. Dr. Schulz chose to focus on addressing “basic needs” resources, such as food and clothing and mental and physical health resources that the college offered. Our chapter and Dr. Schulz mutually agreed to create a fair to address these needs. Dr. Schulz collaborated with our chapter to identify departments to present at the fair and connected us with the Foothill Unity Center. Our chapter and Dr. Schulz decided that the event would be held around Thanksgiving to celebrate “giving.” Our vice president of service spoke with the administrative assistant/ facilities rental supervisor and was given forms to reserve the event location, layout, and necessary equipment. Advisor Qasqas and the college’s vice president of student services helped finalize the request. The chapter then contacted different department heads to invite their programs to the event including the Mental and Health Center, Cosmetology/Estheticians Department, Nursing Department, Basic Needs Department, and Citrus College Foundation. Dr. Schulz sent a personal invitation to the Foothill Unity Center.
Leadership Development BNH utilized leadership skills to demonstrate professional and proficient communication skills in coordinating the project with our college’s president and various departments. Each member of the College Project team learned proper emailing etiquette and effective communication with academic departments, including how to effectively describe the purpose of the project. The team learned necessary leadership and organizational skills to coordinate the event, dividing responsibilities among team members to assess and address our weaknesses, primarily the lack of funding and the overwhelming number of tasks. Team A focused on communications with the president’s office and strengthened its communication skills. Team B collaborated with the External Relations Department to advertise Fair Relations and used graphic design skills to
create flyers for clothes donations and event promotion. Team C submitted the necessary paperwork for the use of school equipment and space and learned leadership and people skills in planning the layout of the event, confirming the participation of collaborators, and navigating participants to their designated area on the day of the event. Team D used communication skills to collaborate with the Citrus College Foundation and Board of Trustees to invite the community of Glendora to the fair and was tasked to use fundraising skills to acquire financial support for the event.
Collaboration BNH collaborated with our president Dr. Greg Schulz to plan the resource fair. Our Vice President of Service Jair Mejia contacted the supervisor of facilities to reserve a space on campus and to coordinate the setup and breakdown of equipment. Vice President Max Suckley, Chapter President Jessie San, and our advisors also initiated communications with the supervisor of student life and dean of students to receive guidelines on how the event could operate. To comply with college wishes, BNH met with the heads of various departments to plan the fair such as basic needs, nursing, esthetician, and the foundation. We collaborated with the Basic Needs Department to create a booth outlining available student resources. President San met with the foundation to secure a budget to purchase healthy drinks and snacks for the attendees. President Schulz contacted the Foothill Unity Center who provided information about the services they offer for our community. To create a Career Closet, an idea of Dr. Schulz, we asked for clothing donations from our campus community and the Extended Opportunity Programs and Services (EOPS) counselor, who contributed their professional clothing reserves. Finally, we carried out our project through communication and advertising. We coordinated with external relations to advertise on Citrus College’s social media, marketing to over 4,400 students. Our Vice President of
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Communications and Student Trustee Serina Mummert collaborated with the Board of Trustees. Our secretary and president of Student Government advertised to the student body and various committee meetings, including the President’s Council and Academic Senate. Our officers and advisors maintained email communication with all collaborators to support event planning. After the fair, our chapter created a final report with pictures, description, and results, and emailed Dr. Schulz (Figures 1 and 2). Our officers also personally thanked each collaborator by hand-picking native California succulents, potting them, writing a thank you letter, and hand-delivering them to each department.
Figure 1
Impact Approximately 200 students passed by or actually participated in the fair. More than 20 Cosmetology/ Esthetician student stylists provided haircuts to about 44-64 students during the three-hour event illustrated in Figure 2. Around 30 nurses gave health checks drawing significant crowds of students. Many articles of clothing were distributed from our Clothing Closet. One challenge we faced was that due to student Figure 2 attendees and student volunteers coming in and out of the fair, it was difficult to definitively assess how many attendees we had. As a partial solution, our chapter president collected some data by personally speaking to the student volunteers and observing how many students were helped. Another quantitative value is that out of 620 snacks, less than 100 remained. As part of our qualitative outcomes, our chapter became the talk of the Citrus College community for the rest of the week. One student attendee commented the next day to our chapter
president, “Wow, did you attend the spa day yesterday? I really enjoyed it.” Students from the Cosmetology/Esthetician department were curious why we have not held these events before and asked if this fair will take place again in spring. We discovered that students in the Cosmetology/Esthetician programs needed clients to receive their training requirements, and our event helped many of them fulfill that need. Our Citrus College social media team posted our project, stating it was a “great success.”
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Our chapter members grew as scholar leaders in service. Our members coordinated the Career Closet, where we gave free professional clothing and learned skills in customer service. They answered students’ questions and helped them find professional clothing that helped them feel comfortable. Members also learned marketing skills by promoting PTK programming to potential new members. Our officers learned skills in management, as we helped our presenters set up their booths, distribute food, and made sure the event ran smoothly.
Chapter-College Relationship We formed strong relationships in the brainstorming, planning, and implementation of the event with our president’s office. Our superintendent/president wrote to our chapter, “I want you to know that I am both proud and thankful for the leadership and service you have provided in support of the Beta Nu Eta/ PTK Cares Fair…students’ lives will be touched, and their student experience will be improved, due to the resources and information shared.” He commended our chapter for “providing outstanding leadership and service to help connect our students to all of these resources.” Our chapter strengthened our relationship with all the vice presidents’ offices. Interim Vice President of Academic Affairs Dana Hester helped promote the fair to the deans along with our vice president of student services, who both attended the fair. We worked closely with the student life supervisor and the facilities rental supervisor who oversaw the planning processes. They taught our chapter how to fill out the paperwork, request service from facilities, and receive clearance to hold large-scale, in-person events. They are now very familiar with our chapter and are also supportive of our efforts, teaching us how to correctly plan for events while maintaining protocol. Our relationship with the Citrus College Foundation was also strengthened. They were pleased with the results and told us they would be happy to sponsor a PTK event again. Our chapter also worked with and established a strong relationship with the dean of cosmetology/
esthetician, the Extended Opportunity Programs and Services (EOPS) counselor, the director of health science, our basic needs director, and the mental health supervisor. Many of these departments were grateful for an opportunity to help spotlight their programs and resources to students at our events. Cosmetology students expressed that their department is always looking forward to working with live clients. Finally, our chapter established a strong relationship with our college’s External Relations department. They helped us advertise the event on the Citrus College platform of over 4,400 followers. The communications supervisor is now an ally and helps us post information on chapter fundraisers and activities on Citrus College’s social media accounts.
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iBelong Campaign: A Focus on Students’ Sense of Belonging on the Campus Beta Lambda Mu Chapter Lone Star College – CyFair Cypress, Texas
Abstract After careful analysis of Lone Star’s mission statement, “Support students in achieving academic success by providing services and resources that promote understanding of course concepts, facilitate the development of metacognitive skills that promote self-agency and create a network of support,” the chapter took time to prepare for meeting with administration by reviewing possible project proposals promoting/ aligning with student success. The chapter met with President Jones, Vice President Matthew Dempsey, and the rest of the administrative board to present three proposals. The administrative board then had several days to discuss the proposals internally before giving us a response. The chapter was commended for supplying three substantial proposals; however, administration challenged the chapter to revise a new proposal that aligned with CyFair’s new “iBelong” campaign. With guidance from Dr. Dempsey, the team devised a new proposal that better aligned with “iBelong” and student success. Partnering with the iBelong campaign, the chapter worked to monitor all forms of campus communications for inclusivity and diversity, which was reported back to the administration regularly. Additionally, an anonymous survey (written by IRB and approved by administration) identified individuals or groups that felt not represented on campus.
Planning Beta Lambda Mu members first compiled proposals, narrowed the proposals through member discussion, and then met to review Lone
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Figure 1 Star’s mission statement and objectives. The team then compiled a list of proposals to be discussed among members and narrowed it to three ideas to present to administration. The three rigorously researched proposals selected for the college administration meeting were, “Investigative models and resolutions to the restriction of healthier alternatives other than vending machines,” “Study solutions around individuals that were both students and parents to young children,” and “Domestic violence and human trafficking awareness,” which included a model with “safe zones” for students to anonymously seek urgent help. On June 26, Chrischen Thompson, Ross Blake, and Liam Blakeway presented the three proposals to the college president and administrative board. However, after meeting with administrators, they shared that while the proposals had depth and value, they did not align with the campus’s new iBelong student success campaign. The administration attended a conference over summer break on Dr. Lowery-Hart’s “Power of Love,” and revealed plans for iBelong. Dr. Dempsey challenged the chapter to create synergy among campus initiatives by focusing on ensuring students had a sense of belonging.
After two meetings and multiple email exchanges (see photo of chapter members, advisor, and administration: Figure 1), Dr. Dempsey asked the chapter to refine the final presentation before presenting again to the campus administrative board. The newly revised College Project was met with enthusiasm, as it aligned with the college’s objectives by developing strategies and activities to strengthen the sense of community among college students. The proposal suggested monitoring inclusivity and diversity across all forms of college communication (social media, emails, advertisements, campus branding, and signage) for positive and inclusive student representation. Additionally, the proposal included student-to-student engagement and surveys (crafted by IRB-certified individuals) to give the administration direct feedback from current students. With both the chapter and administration mutually agreeing on the new College Project, the chapter was directed to work with Director of College Relations Michelle Tran to find ways to engage with students through the new partnership between her division and Phi Theta Kappa. This allowed the Beta Lambda Mu Chapter to bring their project to fruition.
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Leadership Development For the project to successfully be carried out, members had to engage critical thinking, communication, organizational, and analytical skills to ensure diversity was/is portrayed in all campus communications. The chapter first engaged in meaningful conversation and researched the types of diverse and cultural considerations available in the modern world. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provided a categorical list defining the characteristics of individuals in relation to diversified groups. A training event – facilitated by the chapter president – helped members strengthen analytical and awareness skills for monitoring inclusivity and diversity in the college’s web presence. Furthermore, analytical skills helped develop the guidelines the chapter would abide by whilst monitoring social media accounts, advertisements, and other college-related forms of communication. The chapter established Google documents for each form/type of communication to be monitored and linked the documents to a central Google spreadsheet that acted as a “dashboard” to monitor the progression of the project. Taking the lead in the project, the chapter president assigned each officer a role. The chapter’s vice president of records was assigned to monitor Facebook, TikTok, campus signage, and campus emails. The vice president of service monitored Snapchat, YouTube, and LinkedIn, while the president monitored Twitter, Instagram, and the Lone Star College website. Understanding that inclusivity and diversity could not be included in each individual post, the team met biweekly to share findings and to compile a report that would be shared with the director of college relations. Once the project was underway, the second phase of the project was implemented, which entailed compiling an anonymous survey that would collect individuals’ diverse characteristics, and then measure which diverse groups felt like they were not being seen or included. The survey took immense research to compile, was crafted by an IRB-trained individual, and was reviewed multiple times by the chapter and Dr. Dempsey before receiving final approval. The chapter then
canvassed the campus grounds over a period of two days to anonymously collect feedback.
Collaboration After the chapter’s college project proposals were initially rejected, and after listening to the administration and meeting with Dr. Dempsey, the chapter created a new College Project that aligned with the college administration’s mission and wishes. With administrative approval, the chapter met with the director of college relations, presented the project, and collaborated with her regarding the College Project. Interestingly, the college relations department was looking to possibly hire an employee to assist with monitoring social media accounts for inclusivity and diversity in communications. The chapter’s College Project saved her department the cost of employing a staff member. Open communication was established between college administration, college relations, and the chapter with the understanding that if the chapter discovered something that needed immediate attention, the chapter was encouraged to swiftly alert the college relations team. Biweekly meetings and emails ensured the chapter had open and regular communication with the college relations department regarding the progression of the project. Updates were summarized and shared in weekly member meetings. The project required the chapter to actively monitor social media platforms including Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, and LinkedIn. In addition, the chapter was required to engage with students on the campus grounds using a survey to gain valuable insight. A final report of the anonymous IRB-approved survey was shared with the administration. A future meeting will take place where future actions will be discussed.
Impact Whereas some of the quantitative and qualitative outcomes cannot be measured (because some of the original proposals were rejected), it is important to note the administration did take the initiative in addressing those propositions. A Farmer’s Fridge Kiosk was installed, with news of
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the canteen partially opening this spring semester, and a test trial of a “Parents Study Night” has been announced. Qualitative and quantitative outcomes include: the chapter monitored 363 Instagram posts, 358 Twitter posts, 352 Facebook posts, 19 YouTube videos, 26 LinkedIn posts, 17 TikToks, 11 signage/ advertisement boards, and 109 survey responses. The survey, measuring a sample of 109 diverse students, revealed the college’s strongest form of communication with students is Instagram with 61.5% confirming the social media platform as their preferred form of communication. The survey further revealed that 79.81% of students agreed with the statement, “I feel like I belong at the LSC CyFair campus.” Also, 13.14% of students at CyFair felt misrepresented or underrepresented by the campus, and 7% were unaware of whom to contact regarding concerns. Comments addressed concerns over age discrimination and the need for all-inclusive bathrooms, and they included comments thanking the campus for being inclusive towards women and people of color and promoting diversity. The chapter received multiple comments grateful for the outreach. The project has seen significant success, with the college relations department moving away from stock images for posts and advertisements and requesting diverse students to participate in photo shoots. Although the implementations to improve inclusivity and diversity are ongoing, there is already a significant difference in the inclusivity of images presented on social media posts, internal presentations, campus communications, and signage. Some of our own members from diverse backgrounds have filled photo shoot requests, with members now being featured in campus branding and college communications.
Chapter-College Relationship The project solidified our relationship with College Relations Department, allowing the chapter to form a strong bond between the two. This bond has allowed the chapter to not only strengthen a bond with the college president and her administrative board but also with
college relations. The department now focuses on personal, academic, and professional success. This connection allowed the chapter to get direct updates about upcoming events and projects to collaborate on and allowed the chapter to strengthen its own awareness on campus with the accessibility to now promote Phi Theta Kappa and PTK events on Lone Star CollegeCyFair’s social media accounts and other forms of communication. Participation in the College Project has resulted in three chapter officers being asked to join the piloted Student Advisory Committee (SAC) established by the director of student services to work together with other students, organizations, and faculty to continue other aspects of the iBelong campaign. That collaboration now connects Phi Theta Kappa directly to the director of student services and other faculty departments.
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Student Videos That Humanize the College Website Beta Zeta Nu Chapter Cañada College Redwood City, California
Abstract Cañada College is a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) serving a majority of underrepresented students who are ethnically diverse, immigrants from many countries and a diverse group of international students, in addition to a student body that reflects the communities around us. Cañada’s mission is, in part, to increase access to underrepresented groups and create avenues for educational opportunities. Given this mission, our college administration asked Beta Zeta Nu (BZN) to work with the Enrollment Services and Marketing Departments to “humanize” our new graphics-based college webpages. The college believed that this effort would make them more relevant to the students who get tripped up in the higher education enrollment process. College leaders asked BZN to work with a broad range of campus groups and a professional film production team to develop and execute a set of short and accessible videos targeted for important entry points on the college website. Finally, and somewhat unexpectedly, BZN took advantage of that adage of, “when opportunity meets preparedness.” During our work on the videos, our chapter also developed a completely new and complementary poster series and marketing campaign for the videos. We utilized some of the same stylistic elements from the video campaign to bring even greater attention to the college’s efforts at re-imagining its website.
Planning Before identifying the project’s final direction, BZN held several meetings with college administrators.
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Figure 1 During these meetings the leadership group urged us to take inspiration from different campus groups and programs. To do this we held “listening sessions” and compared our findings to the college’s mission statement. We took the information learned in these meetings to the college president and her cabinet. From these collaborative discussions emerged an issue that we felt we could address. President Lopez and her cabinet noted that the dean of enrollment services and support programs (DESSP) was in the beginning stages of creating a more culturally inclusive college website. To do this, the DESSP wanted a set of marketing/instructional videos. These videos would raise student awareness of campus resources critical to student success. Given our college’s HSI designation, these videos were to be in both English and Spanish. Filming would seek to use as many students and campus locations as possible. If we succeeded, then the college’s mission of enhancing access, inclusivity, and diversity would be well served. In addition to working closely with the DESSP and Marketing Departments, we were asked to consult with the following programs/departments: Dreamers, the International Student Program, Veterans (VROC), and Admissions, and Records. We interviewed department heads to identify key program attributes that they wished to see highlighted. We journaled the conclusions of discussions after each meeting. BZN members met weekly, in person and by Zoom, with the
DESSP, his direct assistant, and the marketing director to update them on our progress. Duties included: • Designing a questionnaire to identify which student “actor” should be used in each video. • Ensuring that the videos would depict a diverse set of students by recruiting students from identified populations. • Developing recruitment strategies for finding video participants. • Acting in the films ourselves when appropriate (Figure 1). • Locating sites for filming. • Co-authoring appropriate scripts (in Spanish and English). • Shadowing the production team, studying (and later helping with) things like shot angle, aspect ratio, atmosphere, teleprompters, audio and backdrop. • Supporting the production team with logistics and wayfinding. In collaboration with the Marketing Department, we designed original posters to market the release of the videos. We successfully pitched our idea to the director of marketing and obtained funding to create these posters. They were deployed all over campus prior to the new video release.
Leadership Development While in discussions with administration, the DESSP, and the video production team, we identified
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several key aspects of the videos. Attractive campus locations, clear and focused scripts, and diverse recruitment were all critical to the project’s success. We needed to learn skills to make these things happen. First, to ensure that the student scripts were clear and focused we had to identify members who were good writers and editors. Second, finding attractive campus locations required BZN to find the members with the best sense of the campus’ geography. This was challenging since many members were still attending college virtually due to the COVID-19 restrictions. Not only were we able to identify beautiful spots on campus, but we also identified useful offices for incoming freshmen to be familiar with. To identify students to “star” in the videos, BZN members first needed some leadership lessons. We met with administration and department heads, and they gave us important tips and strategies to ensure our student actors reflected the college’s broad diversity. Pandemic restrictions meant that our usually bustling Learning Center and campus hubs were empty of students. We were able to share with the administration ideas about the best places and times of day to find students on campus. By sharing their leadership strategies with BZN (and us with them) we were able to secure a diverse set of student actors.
Collaboration
production team. They acted as production assistants, learning about film production and film terminology. As the filming went on, they moved from learning video production to applying some of its principles. Finally, using what we had learned from our communications with the marketing director, we proposed a set of posters branded in the same fashion as the videos. The posters would have images of the students, along with a brief biography. A QR code on each poster would link to the videos to increase click-through response. After working up the initial proposal with the marketing director, the members then pitched the idea to the ESSP dean, who responded by funding the project with college dollars. These posters are now hanging all over our campus directing students to the videos (Figure 2).
Impact The project produced 10 English/Spanish videos that went live on Cañada College’s website in the fall of 2022. These videos, which the chapter helped to script and shoot, utilized a diverse set of students largely recruited by BZN members. The videos are currently helping new and returning students better understand the process of enrolling and navigating college resources. The goal of this project was to improve outreach to
We met weekly from January through April with the DESSP, the Marketing Department, the Cañada Dreamers Program, the International Student Program, Veterans (VROC), and Admissions and Records to develop: • A timeline for completion of the videos (May 2022) • Benchmarks to hit to stay on track for a fall release (February through September) • A list of duties and responsibilities to be delegated, naming specific point people or committees • Interview schedules with each program that was to be highlighted in the videos • Poster development To ensure the filming process went smoothly, we identified several members who were interested in videography and multi-media. These members then worked closely with a professional
Figure 2
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Figure 3 newly arrived immigrants, international students, and those returning after some time away from school, such as veterans. Quantitative: Since their release, the videos have been seen nearly 900 times, and because they will stay on the college webpages, we can anticipate thousands of views over the next year. The most heavily viewed videos are those relating to the process of admissions and records. This online activity has validated our belief that students needed a different way to access information on the website. Qualitative: By the end of filming, BZN members who shadowed the film team had learned all about video production. They were actively using, and sharing with other members, terms like the penultimate shot of the day on a film set (i.e., Abby Singer Shot), proper voicing of an ad (i.e., Above the Line), the importance of correct ambient light, angle, arc shot, and different aspect ratios. Additionally, the students shadowing the marketing director were given one-on-one lessons about the college’s brand, analytics the college uses for measuring access to the college’s webpages, and the importance of a “call to action” in any marketing piece. Finally, all students who participated learned about college governance, the art of negotiation, clear communication both written and oral, and a variety of planning strategies. 10 Videos • Dream Center in English and Spanish • Admissions & Records in English and Spanish (Figure 3) • VROC - Veterans
• El Programa De ESL • Residency Reclassification in English and Spanish • Steps to Success in English and Spanish
Chapter-College Relationship Working with members of college leadership, over the course of a year, our members learned how multiple departments fit college operations. Historically, BZN had frequent, face-to-face interaction with the college’s administration. COVID-19 made these instructional and informational meetings harder to hold. We realized that the way to get back to “normal” was to initiate face-to-face meetings: the College Project gave us that opening, and we ran through it! College Project meetings familiarized us with both administrators and department heads in ways that online meetings did not. This leadership and project management experience will support us in our transfer and career accomplishments. We believe that getting to know President Lopez personally helped us secure permission to attend PTK Catalyst 2023. Our district banned travel to states that have different rules around the treatment of gender. Since Ohio is one of those states, we needed to obtain an educational travel exemption. After getting to know us through this project, the president went to bat for us and successfully got BZN a travel exemption. In addition, she recommended funding the travel for a number of students and a chapter advisor. Because of her continued support we have nominated her for a Hallmark Award this year.
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Chomp’s Hangout: Creating Student Lounges Alpha Nu Sigma Chapter Horry-Georgetown Technical College Conway, South Carolina
Abstract Alpha Nu Sigma officers met with HorryGeorgetown Technical College’s (HGTC) president to discuss College Project ideas. She welcomed our suggestions and focused on the one related to student engagement because a recent analysis by an external firm indicated student engagement needed improvement. Our project was designed to give students a place to study, relax, and hang out on our campuses. We agreed our project would address the portion of HGTC’s mission statement “to provide a student-centered environment.” To develop our project, we collaborated with college administrators and staff.
Planning Understanding we would adjust our plan to the needs she identified, members reviewed HGTC’s mission statement and brainstormed ideas prior to meeting with our college president. She approved our student lounge proposal and directed us to meet with the student affairs and academic affairs vice presidents (VPs) to determine the next steps for Phase I, Conway campus. We answered their questions about our vision for the project. They directed us to create a proposal and present it to HGTC’s finance vice president, procurement manager, and building/ grounds superintendent. In this meeting, we discussed finances and details regarding the space we proposed to renovate, called Café 1100. They requested a blueprint and detailed budget, totaling $27,205, which we completed within a week. It took 45 days to receive a response, and we were directed to meet with Student Enrollment
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Services Associate Vice President Dr. Cynthia Johnston, the procurement manager, and an outside sales representative. At this meeting, we were informed the furniture order would not be delivered for up to three months, and Johnston informed us we could not renovate Café 1100. We worked with her to evaluate available spaces and decided to renovate the existing game room. After receiving quotes from the procurement manager, we revised our original budget request to $20,555.70. This budget request required approval from the Student Engagement Funding Allocation Committee (SEFAC). The committee, composed of students, faculty, and staff, deliberated for two weeks before approving our request in September and orders were placed. To incorporate HGTC branding, we brainstormed ideas, including ordering new carpet and reupholstering existing seating. Members reviewed fabric choices and selected ones incorporating our college colors. We also decided to call the space Chomp’s Hangout since our mascot is an alligator whose name is Chomp. The game room had two pool tables, one of which had to be moved. This led us to begin Phase II, which was to renovate a space on our Georgetown campus. We collaborated with the Georgetown Provost, and she requested a survey of their students and their preferences. We surveyed 92 students and 87% indicated they would like a dedicated place to hang out on campus. We prepared a budget request for Phase II in the amount of $8,629.71, which was approved in mid-December. We collaborated with: • Student Enrollment Services Associate VP • Procurement Manager • Building/Grounds Superintendent • Student Affairs VP • Academic Affairs VP • Georgetown Provost • Finance VP • Print Shop Manager
exercises during training. We learned about the importance of clear communication by completing a “minefield” exercise. We studied HGTC’s mission statement before meeting with our college president and brainstormed project ideas to discuss with her. To properly identify administrators, we reviewed HGTC’s organizational chart. We improved our presentation of ourselves by dressing professionally for meetings. Prior to meeting with the finance vice president and procurement manager, chapter members brainstormed what items they wanted in their lounge. In this meeting, administrators requested a detailed budget for our proposal, and we realized no one knew how to create one. Our fundraising vice president consulted with an accounting professor to learn how to use Excel and prepare a budget. She researched items we wanted and created an Excel spreadsheet for them, including air hockey and Foosball™ tables, rocking chairs, Xbox™, board games, and comfortable seating. Administrators directed us to submit an official SEFAC Funding Request. Once we completed the form, Johnston sent it to the committee for a vote, which was subsequently approved. Administrators also requested a blueprint of our proposal. To create it, we met and measured Café 1100 and researched measurements for items we needed to revamp the space. An officer, who was a digital arts major, used Computer-Aided Design (CAD) to design a blueprint and made a scale drawing of the space to illustrate our vision to the administration. For Phase II, Georgetown’s provost requested we survey their students to see if there was a need to revamp a space at their campus. We developed questions with her input, and she sent the results to us to compile. Our fundraising officer learned to input and interpret survey data, execute formulas, and design charts to share the information with the administration.
Leadership Development
Collaboration
To prepare for meetings with administrators, officers participated in communication
Our college president approved our proposal, including the space we identified and directed us
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to meet with the Student Affairs and Academic Affairs VPs to start the project. We collaborated with administrators throughout our project via emails and meetings. Project progress was shared in chapter and officer meetings.
students to Chomp’s Hangout on February 21. The second open house will be held later in the spring semester.
After meeting with administrators and receiving approval to renovate Café 1100, committee members measured, created blueprints, and researched costs within a week. Our first challenge was a considerable delay by administrators in response to our emailed requests and budget submissions. Once a response was received, we were directed to meet with our procurement manager, a furniture representative, and Johnston to discuss seating options.
Throughout this project, chapter members learned about many elements required to operate within a bureaucracy, plan a large-scale project, and collaborate with numerous administrators. Committee members also discovered the funding allocation process was time-consuming. Initially we were going to convert Café 1100, but we had to adapt to smaller spaces and extended timelines due to administrative delays. In addition, the budget was modified from our initial request to accommodate the new spaces. We reconfigured the spaces to include most of our original designs and delayed our open house to the spring semester.
During this meeting, we discovered it would take up to three months to receive the furniture once the budget was approved. Our second challenge was the location. Café 1100 was a publicly used space, and administrators later decided we were not allowed to modify it for our lounge. Vice President Johnston suggested using the existing game room next to the café. This space contained two pool tables, so we proposed moving the second pool table to another campus. Although the Georgetown campus, which is an hour away, was interested in the pool table, the transportation of it was a significant challenge. The procurement manager arranged transportation; however, the scheduled move did not happen. Johnston resolved the transportation issue, and the table was finally delivered to the Georgetown campus. We worked with our building/grounds superintendent to schedule maintenance personnel to move tables and hang pictures once the new carpet was installed. We noticed four chairs were reupholstered in the wrong material. Fixing this delayed our project two additional weeks. We planned to hold an open house for the Conway lounge during final exams; however, Johnston directed us to wait until all components were in place. Our college president and other administrators will cut the ribbon and welcome
Impact
We were approved for $29,185.41 from SEFAC and it was spent for Phase I and Phase II as follows: -Flooring tiles -22 vinyl gator footprints -6 Chomp’s Hangout signs -12 pictures of Chomp with students -15 picture frames - 8 sandwich boards and 16 inserts - 8 reupholstered chairs - 7 rocking chairs and 2 tables - 1 Foosball™ table - 1 air hockey table - 1 gray solar mesh window shade - 4 vinyl game board stickers - 3 round coffee tables - 70-inch television - 2 Xbox™ consoles - 10 video games - 2 virtual reality headsets - 4 bean bag chairs We created wooden game boxes in a previous College Project. These boxes were relocated from the library to our new lounges and the chapter fundraised $473.42 to contribute 22 new board games for both campuses. The library gifted us eight additional games to support the new lounges. Games purchased included Scattergories™, Battleship™, chess, checkers,
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Figure 1
Figure 2
Dominoes™, Monopoly™, and Uno™ (Figure 1). Chapter members previewed the space during a chapter meeting (Figure 2) and remarked, “More people are going to come into this building now!” and “This is awesome!” They were already discussing plans for Foosball™ and air hockey tournaments and remarked how excited they were about getting an Xbox™. We shared pictures of the renovated space with administrators. Our academic affairs vice president replied, “The space looks great. I love the gator footprint idea leading to the new space for students. Thank you all for your work to improve the spaces around campus.” Our college president responded, “What I really admire about this project is the pride the chapter is taking in the college and making for a nice environment for students. Thank you all so much.”
Chapter-College Relationship Despite frustrations with the delays in decisionmaking, we were able to compromise and work together to create two student lounges. This project strengthened our relationship with administrators and established new relationships with departments and other college leaders. We learned professional presentation skills, how to
write a combined $29,185.41 project budget proposal, and how to follow the appropriate chain of command. Our student enrollment services associate vice president stated, “Thank you for bringing this project forward and creating a wonderful new space for our students. It was a pleasure to work with members of PTK on this very important endeavor and I look forward to the Open House!”
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The Road to a Happy Mind: Mental Health Education on Campus Abstract Alpha Xi Pi Chapter Motlow State Community College Lynchburg, Tennessee
Alpha Xi Pi and three representatives of our college administration developed a comprehensive program to highlight the mental health of students over a three-year span (Figure 1, next page). The college vision statement is “to be the area’s recognized center for life-long learning and growth opportunities,” and after ongoing discussions with administration, including College President Dr. Michael Torrence, we agreed that the college’s top priority is to support students’ mental health so that they will succeed academically and will recognize opportunities to achieve their personal and professional goals. The aim of our project is to increase awareness of mental health issues, decrease stigmatization of mental health problems, and create better access to mental health support. To be impactful, we worked closely with college administrators, utilized social media platforms, and encouraged virtual conversations among students to facilitate a sense of belonging. According to Hausemann et al., (2007) and our vice president of external affairs, belonging is statistically proven to aid in retention and is thus a priority of the college. Members gathered currently accessible mental health tools and began attending professional training programs. Collaborating with the college marketing department, we disseminated available resources via email and social media. According to the marketing department, we reached over 4,000 students through email, our college learning platform D2L, and MSCC’s social media accounts. The resources include individual counseling sessions, consultation/referrals, and other mental health resources such as online resources and
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Figure 2 suicide hotlines. Most effectively, our chapter collaborated with Motlow’s licensed therapist Lisa Stone to develop a plan to educate students directly. After brainstorming with Mrs. Stone, we utilized advertising platforms and conducted two Zoom sessions in the spring of 2022 (Figure 2). Additionally, our chapter sought direct feedback from students, carrying out a formal survey to ascertain a baseline of student knowledge on mental health, what they found helpful from the seminars, and how the college could improve in addressing mental health. The administration has been extremely invested in our findings. We kept them informed throughout as we focused on their desired direction for this shared endeavor.
Planning Before meeting with administration, advisors and members reviewed the mission statements of our college and PTK. Next, members met with the college president to ask how PTK could promote the college’s mission and to discuss project ideas. Administration and members brainstormed project ideas and continually communicated throughout the project. Our chapter showed flexibility in meeting times throughout the college’s level-two pandemic policy. The president presented a project vision focused on mental health and shaped the focus of the proposal. Members identified knowledge gaps and began studying mental health, including suicide prevention training through the Department of Disability, Testing, and Counseling. Members then met with the college’s External Affairs Office (EAO) team who emphasized the significance of students engaging students. After 10 email correspondences and two in-person meetings refining the focus on mental health, the Figure 1
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EAO agreed to use the college’s social media platforms and the college’s email distribution list to reach students. Four campus-wide emails were sent to all students, and there were four social media posts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Members also collaborated with the dean of students to promote our seminars in D2L. Throughout the process, members worked closely with the college’s therapist to organize the seminars. Following each seminar, we asked for her vision, explained the focus developed with administrative involvement, reviewed her presentation, and provided her with the results of our survey. Survey questions were a collaboration between members and the college’s Office of Organizational Development and Leadership (ODL) and were designed to generate quantitative and qualitative information. Through these concerted efforts, the chapter and college administration developed a comprehensive plan to target student mental health concerns.
Leadership Development To be more effective and influential as we implemented the project, our chapter focused on training chapter members on deteriorating mental health, child advocacy, written communication, and leadership skills to enhance both the aims of our chapter and adhere to the desired focus of administration. Members underwent three trainings under the Office of the President and Office of Violence Against Women (OVW) director and earned two certificates after eight hours of training. The training included seminars from the Collegiate Recovery Academy (CRA), Suicide Prevention Training (SPT), and Childhood Sexual Assault Prevention (CSAP). Members obtained further knowledge through credible sources such as the “College Student Mental Health Action Toolkit on Mental Health Data & Statistics,” by HMN. The CRA focused on becoming allies to individuals recovering from substances abuse and identified college-related stressors. The SPT educated members on identifying signs of at-risk students contemplating suicide along with methods to prevent suicide. The CSAP course discussed
recognizing child sexual abuse and advocating for the safety of vulnerable children. The courses had benefits beyond this project, with wide application to everyday life. Suicide ranks as the second leading cause of death in individuals between 10 and 56 and presents a major concern to all students. Because children lack a voice, adult advocacy is critical, so inspired members collected supplies for the Children’s Advocacy Center and discussed a future partnership. In addition, members trained with the MSCC Writing Center to strengthen written and spoken communication. During the regional convention, members performed public speaking engagements focusing on belonging and mental health. These activities, along with meeting and communicating with advisors regularly, allowed members to effectively communicate with administrators to develop adaptive and effective strategies highlighting mental health. Through dedicated training, member-initiative, and open lines of consistent administrative communication, individual members honed their leadership skills. Significantly, our chapter and administrative team became a stronger unit.
Collaboration Communication with collaborators was a priority before, during, and after the College Project. Our chapter placed emphasis on a project based on the administration’s wishes. Initial communication with Dr. Torrence was sent via email from the chapter president on February 3, 2022. Communication with collaborators involved Zoom, D2L, campuswide email, social media platforms, and in-person meetings. Members even demonstrated flexibility by working with the dean of students to utilize their D2L specific page. This proved creative and beneficial to the project because some students would not have access to our communication otherwise. Before each meeting with administrators, members met with advisors who reiterated the importance of adhering to the mission statement of PTK that addresses the importance of fostering members’ academic and leadership skills as they carried out the project, became advocates of mental health, and enhanced MSCC’s mission statement. Because the head of the EAO was particularly invested
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Figure 3 in “giving the students a voice,” the chapter vice president collaborated with the ODL Department to design effective survey questions. In March and April of 2022, communications with our licensed therapist included designing effective seminars and relaying survey data after each. The chapter communicated regular updates to the stakeholders and uploaded a final report, including survey data, for administrators. Members effectively collaborated with the college president, the EAO, ODL, the Department of Disability and Counseling, staff, the student body, and community members before, during, and after the project.
Impact One significant project outcome was how college administration was able to better understand the student body’s position concerning mental health and the impact of attending mental health seminars on students. These mental health seminars were in collaboration with Motlow’s licensed therapist via Zoom and were accessible to the community. Chapter members worked with the ODL department to design surveys to gather this information. To quantify the impact of the seminars, participants completed surveys about the seminars, which were then analyzed by members. The administration gained impactful knowledge directly from the detailed data collected and communicated by analyzing data from survey responses. Motlow’s administration noticed the outcomes, which demonstrated how mental health discussions had a positive, significant impact on students. The survey responses from seminar attendees clearly demonstrated the value of our project. Importantly, seminar participants learned from the session that Motlow has counseling services available and that our counselor is quite knowledgeable. These
coordinated mental health sessions have also allowed the community to become aware of the effective tools established by the college. Chapter members have attended other mental health training courses that have allowed them to develop leadership skills. One member said, “I learned specific skills on how to act if I were to see suicidal signs, as well as how to help prevent suicide.” With more student leaders trained on how to help those most vulnerable, visibility increases. Data showed that 70% of students were likely or very likely to try Motlow’s counseling services (Figure 3). One hundred percent of participants felt that the presentation was easy to follow and improved their understanding of mental health. We also found that 90% of students that attended will recommend or share the session information with a friend or fellow student (Figure 3). The qualitative analysis of the project showed that students are now more able to cope with and reduce stress, learn about the accessibility of Motlow counseling services, and understand the importance of mental health
Chapter-College Relationship Altogether, this project helped establish an alliance between our chapter and college administration. Not only have members gained opportunities to associate with administration, but administration has a direct connection to their student body. The vice president of external affairs challenged members to help, “give the students a voice,” and based on our survey data, we and administration feel our project was successful. The chapter was able to maintain a close alliance with the president’s office, dean of students, campus deans, and the disability department, allowing our members to gain valuable skills and our administration to connect with the students they serve.
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Final Exam Study Week Iota Mu Chapter Pearl River Community College – Poplarville Poplarville, Mississippi
Abstract
Our College Project was to provide subjectspecific tutoring in American history, psychology, intermediate algebra, and general biology during a designated time frame that benefitted the most students. We identified these specific subjects for tutoring based on their high withdrawal or failure rates through collaboration with our college provost, institutional research, and advising offices. We set out to improve students’ exam preparedness and mental health during final exams, one of the most critical points of the semester. Our project supported the college’s mission of “providing quality educational and service opportunities for all who seek them” through partnering with course instructors, department chairs, and student services offices, to offer student-led tutoring beyond the college’s normal hours of operation in a quiet, distractionfree space.
Planning
Our College Project team consisted of five PTK members. Our team met throughout the summer and early fall to discuss potential service projects that would positively impact our campus. Our Phi Theta Kappa advisors contributed by providing student resources, points of contact, a vast wealth of knowledge to hone our skills, and different perspectives on the project. Once we narrowed and refined our project list based on advisor input, we scheduled a meeting with College Provost Dr. Martha Smith in September 2022. In our meeting, Dr. Smith shared potential project ideas with us. With Dr. Smith’s guidance, we decided that providing
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tutoring in specific subjects would be the most beneficial to our students at the time. She then provided insight into resources to pursue to determine appropriate courses, ensured that we had thoroughly planned through obstacles, and gave us a clear idea of the mechanics of our project. With Dr. Smith’s approval, we moved forward with our project’s planning and implementation process.
Leadership Development The skills and abilities that we needed to implement this College Project successfully were professional communication, teamwork, delegation, time management, accountability, organization, and flexibility. Proper verbal and written communication were critical to drafting emails, discussing project proposal and implementation with our team and campus community, creating fliers, drafting a donation request letter, creating a PowerPoint on study techniques, and marketing the event to the campus. Teamwork was essential as we needed to compromise, problem-solve, coordinate meeting times, and meticulously execute the project. College Project co-chairs understood that delegation was important to allow tasks to be evenly distributed among the team members, being sure to utilize each team member’s unique abilities and experiences. Having good time management skills was vital to our team staying on track with the implementation of our project. We also understood the importance of being accountable to each other so that we could keep to our project timeline. Organizational and notetaking skills helped us to keep up with important dates, meeting discussions, and notes and suggestions from our advisors. Finally, flexibility made it possible to work with changes and adapt to or overcome obstacles. We prepared in advance by participating in summer meetings with our advisors, completing PTK Edge courses, discussing the skills and areas we each have experience with or were interested in helping with our College Project team, setting an expectation and an overall project development and implementation
timeline, and assigning roles to each participating member. This helped each team member feel heard and seen. All team members learned to communicate more concisely through emails and face-to-face meetings. During project planning, our members were asked to propose several ideas. When ideas were introduced to our group, they each had to point out potential setbacks and how they would overcome them. This strategy allowed us to strengthen our leadership skills to build confidence and improve critical thinking. Lastly, each member received a journal to document and reflect on their actions, responsibilities, and efforts throughout the project.
Collaboration Our team began weekly Zoom meetings over the summer to brainstorm ideas and create a framework of obstacles, solutions, resources needed, and potential faculty involvement. We compared schedules and agreed on a specific time that everyone could participate. We reviewed the college’s mission statement to ensure that our project and its processes upheld the desire to provide service opportunities and quality education. With input and approval from our college provost, we decided on a project that would help relieve some stress during an essential time in our classmates’ educational careers. Throughout our project implementation, we continued to facilitate weekly Zoom meetings to keep up with tasks and hold everyone accountable. Our project co-chairs participated in weekly meetings with our PTK advisors to ensure that the project stayed on track. We chose November 14-16 for our project after assessing the class catalog and comparing class end dates to determine which date range would have the largest potential for turnout. Once dates were set, we contacted the English and Humanities Department Chair first to inquire about space availability and to reserve three handicapaccessible rooms in her building to host our study dates—one room for quiet, individual study and two rooms for targeted subject studying with tutors.
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Once we had reserved the classrooms, we scheduled meetings with the instructors of the targeted subjects for access to their final exam study guides. We also worked with campus police to arrange security for our extended hours. A flier was produced (Figure 1) and distributed by the college’s marketing team to instructors, students, and our social media audience to garner interest for the event and solicit tutors in each subject area. A unique QR code was created that linked to an application for interested tutors. Our tutors were vetted to ensure that they could effectively tutor students if they had passed the specific course or higher-level course with either an A or B grade. In the two weeks leading up to our event, we secured donated resources from the Student Government Association, Dr. Martha Smith, the PRCC Foundation Office, and Ramey’s Marketplace to provide drinks and snacks for each night. We created, edited, and proofread a PowerPoint presentation on effective studying and information retention that was displayed throughout our event. Each day of our event, our team would meet in the designated building to set up for tutoring, welcome students, and receive feedback about each session. Updates were provided to Dr. Smith by the project co-chair in the weeks leading up to the event and after successful completion of the project.
Impact Before the project event began, we received a $150 donation to use towards materials needed for our project by way of writing and submitting a donation request letter to our local grocery marketplace. During each study night, we had our participating students sign in and let us know what subjects that they were there to study. After each session, we asked those that participated to fill out a short satisfaction survey to gauge how the project affected them. This survey asked questions which included: “Do you feel like this study hall has prepared you for your final exams?” with a Likert grading scale of 1-5 where one was “Definitely Not” and five was “I feel extremely prepared”; “What did you like best
Figure 1
about the study night?”; and “What would you change about the study night?” were open-ended questions; and “Would you attend another PTK study event?” was a Likert scale question where one was “I don’t plan to attend again” to five which was “I definitely will attend again.” Out of 53 student attendees over the three nights, 12 students submitted feedback. Of those, we received a 5 out of 5 on all Likert scale responses. The written feedback was also highly consistent: students enjoyed the variety of snacks, the tutors were extremely helpful, and students liked having a space outside of their dorms to study because it helped to remove distractions and be able to focus. Overall, students felt more prepared for their exams. Some students did state that they wished that they had more than a three-day period to utilize the resource and were hopeful that this type of event would occur in the future. Our members became more proficient in professional communication, collaborating with diverse individuals, critical thinking, recognizing the social impact of exam stress on fellow students, understanding different learning types, and making new friends through fellowship. The involved members were able to connect with their
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classmates in a way that instructors cannot and develop a new level of comfort engaging with administration and faculty.
Chapter-College Relationship By working with our college administration, we were able to create a project that connected us to the college in many ways. This project helped our chapter strengthen its relationship with the administration by opening lines of communication, providing accessibility, and fostering knowledge of faculty and their positions. We worked with our PTK advisors on the chapter level; the college provost; the Office of Advisement; the director of student support services; department chair and instructors in English and humanities; department chair and instructors in science, math, and business; the Honors Institute; and campus police. Through this project, we were able to approach each sect above with our ideas, the framework used to plan our event, the confidence in our actions and thoughts, as well as an openness to input. This process made us aware of the variety of departments on campus, the purpose of each, and points of contact for future collaborations. We collaborated closely with them to ensure our administration’s concerns and wishes were met, that we supported our college’s mission, and that we allowed for the student body’s needs to be at the forefront. Because of this, we were able to collaborate closely with our campus community to produce a successful College Project.
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Changing the Narrative – #CCsmart Alpha Omicron Alpha Chapter Lehigh Carbon Community College Schnecksville, Pennsylvania
Abstract Our project, “Changing the Narrative #CCsmart,” was developed after a process in which we reviewed three key documents: Phi Theta Kappa 2022-2027 Strategic Plan, the 20212022 College Annual Update, and Many Voices, and One Vision: Strategic Plan 2021-2024. The PTK Strategic Plan introduced our chapter to the CCsmart initiative and immediately our chapter began to make the connections between the initiative and ties to our college’s goals, mission, and vision. In addition, the initiative would assist our PTK chapter in moving toward the goal to build connections and stronger relationships with various clubs, honor societies and the Student Government Association. The two college documents allowed us to determine how our College Project would have the most impact on our community. From the College Annual Update, the #CCsmart campaign supported a goal in the “Student” category: “Develop a marketing and recruitment plan that focuses on increasing enrollment and retention of diverse student populations and tracks demographic data.” Within the strategic plan, one objective really resonated due to the difficulties of re-engaging students returning to campus post-COVID. The objective was to “Increase student engagement in experiential, curricular, and co-curricular learning.” Hosting various events around #CCsmart could help to achieve this initiative. Armed with these ideas, we met with our college president to validate that our main objective would be to change the narrative by involving current students in articulating their process
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for selecting a community college education. Our best advocates and recruiters should be our current students and their commitment to community college education would be shared with potential students. Students publicly declared “I said YES to community college” and expressed why that was a great decision. Our College Project, “Changing the Narrative #CCsmart,” was an ambitious plan and included the following activities and initiatives: • TikTok campaign and contest • Essay contest • Incorporating the CCsmart campaign into the College Transfer Fair, Club and Honor Society Council, and the Fall Open House • Incorporating the CCsmart campaign into at least one campus-wide student event • Poster and social media campaign using the materials provided in the CCsmart Toolkit
Planning Our chapter advisor brought the CCsmart initiative to our college president and that same day, in consultation with the executive director of college relations, the president had enrolled us as a CCsmart College. The college president then met with our chapter during which we reviewed the selection of our College Project. The president expressed her approval of the CCsmart campaign and agreed on the impact it could have on both current and prospective students. As a part of the communication plan for the project, the College Project was a standing agenda item for our chapter officer meetings and general membership meetings. The College Project chair and the public relations chair championed the project and kept the chapter up to date on our progress. They worked with Student Government, College Relations, Transfer Services, and the Admission and Recruitment Offices to ensure a presence at campus-wide events, including the Transfer Fair and Fall Open House. We designed buttons that were assembled by chapter members and given away at events throughout the semester and prepared prompts for the TikTok and essay contests. These were
effective efforts to have current students relate their commitment to a community college education.
Leadership Development The success of our College Project required multiple skills from officers and members. • Creativity – Use innovative and resourceful approaches to problem-solving and new tasks • Information Management – Locating, organizing, and distributing information from multiple sources • Oral communication – Demonstrate strong listening and verbal abilities, particularly in terms of recruiting students to complete the TikTok campaign • Adaptability – Successfully adjust to meet the diverse activities and events • Collaboration – Working with and being accountable to diverse individuals at the college • Teamwork – Collaborate within the chapter to organize and staff the many activities throughout the semester • Inclusivity – Sensitive to individual differences and working with all individuals with respect and dignity • Leadership – Able to establish goals and the plans to achieve them. Guide and inspire others to accomplish their roles in the project The development of prompts for the TikTok videos and essays proved to be one of the most challenging initiatives and required the most time. This was discussed and reviewed at the meetings and the chairs searched the internet for ideas and sought input from faculty on successful prompts. The College Project and public relations chairs outlined the to-do list for each initiative and then delegated to other officers and members. For example, once the design for the buttons was approved and printed, multiple volunteers had to be scheduled to cut and assemble the buttons in time for the first event. Communication skills were also critical for the project’s success. The officers, advisors and members made use of the new PTK Canvas course which was designed and implemented
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Figure 1
this semester. A separate module was created for the College Project and announcements about volunteer opportunities and the essay contest were posted here as well as an overview of CCsmart.
Collaboration Collaborators for the College Project: • College President • Executive Director of College Relations • Content Developer and Social Media Specialist • Transfer Advisor • Admissions Department • Student Government Association President • Director of Student Life • Word Processing Center As previously stated, the incorporation of the College Project into every meeting agenda and use of the chapter Canvas course allowed for frequent communication within the chapter. Externally, the College Project chair and public relations chair used in-person meetings and email to communicate with the college president,
college relations department, and other individuals with whom they collaborated. One of our members happens to be the president of the Student Government Association and she identified “Spirit Week” as the campus-wide event which could support the CCsmart message and meet one of the goals for the project. She worked with the SGA Senate to add an “LCCC LOVE” post-it project to Spirit Week (Figure 1). In collaboration with the chapter, she utilized the CCsmart graphic boards and buttons at this event. The public relations chair worked with Dr. Robin Musselman, chapter advisor, to finalize the prompt for the TikTok video contest and coordinated the logistics and materials needed to include this at the fall Transfer Fair. The public relations chair also met with the content developer and social media coordinator to review technique, optimal length, and other suggestions for creating strong content for posting on the social media platforms. The College Project chair and the public relations chair worked with the director of Student Life to coordinate PTK’s presence at the Fall Club and Honor Society Council Meeting and the Fall Open House. At the Club and Honor Society Council
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Meeting, the public relations chair was able to make an announcement to the entire group of student leaders explaining the project. This was an opportunity to make videos of campus leaders for the TikTok campaign. At the Open House, CCsmart graphic boards were on display. The College Project chair was present at the entire event to hand out CCsmart buttons and make prospective students and their families aware of the CCsmart website and resources. The chapter worked with the Word Processing Department to create a fillable essay form and have it posted in the PTK Canvas Course, the Student Life Canvas Course, and emailed to students. The essay contest was also included in the weekly student newsletter, “This Week at LCCC.”
Impact
Quantitative Outcomes TikTok Videos completed - 22 Essay submissions - 9 Spirit Week, “LCCC LOVE” participants - 74 Students reached at Transfer Fair - 100+ Students reached at Club and Honor Society Council - 45 Qualitative Outcomes/Impact on Members When asked for reflections from the officers and members on this project the response below seemed to best reflect the overall sentiment: “I think that the College Project was really amazing because I was able to gather different perspectives from different students about why they chose LCCC over any other college. I appreciate the opportunity. I believe the CCsmart project has a lot of potential and with the right group leading it could help many students in high school [consider] LCCC as an option.”
Chapter-College Relationship This project is the first step in a comprehensive and ongoing initiative for the college. The activities and programs were successful in meeting the project goal of changing the narrative and getting students talking about
why community college was the best decision for their higher education goals. The responses generated from the videos and essay contest were shared with the college relations team and the admissions department as they build marketing and recruitment campaigns. Hearing directly from current students, who have lived experience with LCCC, provides real, student-centered content from which to build effective and student-focused initiatives which are genuine and resonate with various target audiences. Working on this project allowed our chapter to showcase to multiple departments how we can be a resource and support college goals and initiatives. With greater exposure and the support of the college president, our chapter hopes this will encourage college administrators to reach out to us with future project ideas and initiatives. Showcasing our leadership on this project further amplifies the prestige and recognition of Phi Theta Kappa on our campus.
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