Mid-Plains Community College has made great strides the past three years. That’s according to data indicating significant improvements to policies and procedures.
“Every three years we come up with a strategic plan for shaping our future,” said Andy Long, area vice president of student affairs and McCook Community College. “It’s developed based on community input sessions, employee feedback, a student engagement survey and feedback we receive from our accrediting body, the Higher Learning Commission.”
MPCC is required to demonstrate continuous advancement as part of its accreditation process. The college participates in the Academic Quality Improvement Program, one of several pathways leading to reaffirmation of accreditation through the Higher Learning Commission.
Accreditation is important to MPCC because without it, credits would not be universally transferrable, and the college could not administer federal financial aid.
A total of 19 action projects were focused on during the 2012-15 cycle. Of those, nine tie directly back to MPCC’s strategic plan.
“With each of the action projects, an objective was determined,” said Long. “Team leaders then had to demonstrate how the objective was reached.”
The action projects included:
- Improving intra-college communication
- Improving intra-college communication 2
- Restructuring of the college’s website
- Support for technology users
- Student support services awareness
- Meeting the needs of business and industry
- Employee development training
- Enhancing career service offerings
- College readiness
Among the many improvements, a systemized approach was developed to communicate existing strategies to align with business and industry.
The college’s website was divided into three sites. The mpcc.edu section was redesigned to make it more attractive to potential students. A CampusWeb area was created as a resource for current students, and a third site, The Portal, was built with an employee focus. It became the “go-to” place for budgets, leave requests, transportation reservations and other internal employee documents.
Another action project led to the development of a plan that would ensure all students seeking employment had prepared an acceptable resume and cover letter, knew how to complete a suitable job application, could locate job opportunities and had the chance to prepare for a job interview. It also called for one-on-one counseling between a career development professional and students in the last semester of their planned programs.
A Help Desk was implemented to provide technical and maintenance support to students and employees of MPCC, and a “You Rock” award was introduced to recognize MPCC employees who demonstrated exceptional customer service skills.
A new training team was put together to make sure developmental training opportunities were provided to all employees – regardless of full-time or part-time status. Training opportunities included webinars, job aids, articles and audio programs among many other things.
“The great thing about this process is we use a variety of data to identify our needs, have collaboration from all parts of the college to develop solutions and do this on an ongoing basis,” said Long. “We’re always looking to make Mid-Plains better with the processes we put in place.”
Now that the 2012-15 cycle is coming to an end, attention is turning to the 2015-18 cycle. The community input sessions have already happened.
“During those sessions, the public, in all six campus areas, students and staff were asked three questions,” said Chuck Salestrom, area associate vice president of public information and marketing. “The questions were, ‘What is the college doing well?’, ‘What improvements can we make to better serve our constituency?’ and a general overall question asking what the college should be doing.”
According to Salestrom, more than 1,000 responses were collected. From those answers, a new set of objectives and action projects will be formulated. Details about the action projects will be released in the near future.