Chapter 3

The Response of Seminole State College to the Six Concerns of Previous NCA Team (1990)

1. The mission statement needs to be updated to reflect the present role of the College. The mission must be stated consistently in all publications and the mission must support measurable results.

During the 1994-1995 academic year, with active support from various constituency groups on campus – faculty, staff, and students – Seminole State College, led by the administration, rewrote the College's mission statement. This revision responded to the concern of the prior NCA Team to update the mission statement. The SSC Board of Regents received and approved the proposed change on May 11, 1995. The mission statement read:

Seminole State College exists to enhance the capabilities of individuals to achieve their goals for personal development by providing quality learning experiences and services that respond to both individual and community needs.

The adoption of this mission statement followed a year-long study instituted by former President Dr. Jim Cook, for the purpose of revisiting and re-writing the institution's mission as well as reworking the College's purpose and philosophy, function, institutional beliefs and commitments, and vision statements. A representative committee of campus personnel participated in drafting the new statements, which was first published in the Seminole State College Catalog 1996-1998. In 1997, the Regents reaffirmed the revised mission by approving the College's re-accreditation process and the NCA Self-Study Plan (see Self-Study Report, Chapter 6).

During 1998 and 1999, Seminole State College again re-examined its mission statement. When NCA's liaison officer, Dr. Cecilia Lopez, visited the campus in August 1998 to approve the College's Self-Study Plan and Report outline, she encouraged the institution to take advantage of the self-study process in order to further discuss and review the mission. The advice of the last NCA Team, "to update the mission statement to reflect the present role of the College," also encouraged the NCA sub-committee Mission and Governance Committee to take up the challenge.

With constituency deliberations and input from the entire College through the submission of written ideas and e-mail, the NCA Committee reorganized the language of SSC's mission statement by combining sentences contained under the Purpose and Philosophy heading. Approved by the Board of Regents on July 15, 1999, the revised statement of mission reads:

Seminole State College is maintained as a two-year public college authorized by the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education to offer courses, provide programs, and confer associate degrees. Seminole State has the primary responsibility of providing post-secondary educational programs to residents of Hughes, Lincoln, Okfuskee, Seminole, and Pottawatomie counties in east central Oklahoma. The College exists to enhance the capabilities of individuals to achieve their goals for personal development by providing quality learning experiences and services that respond to diverse individual and community needs in a changing global society. Seminole State College prepares students to continue their education beyond the two-year level, trains students for careers and other educational opportunities, and makes available resources and services designed to benefit students and the community at large.

The newly revised mission statement is published in the: Seminole State College Catalog 1999-2002; Board Policies and Internal Administrative Policies and Procedures of Seminole State College; Seminole State College 1999-00 Adjunct Faculty Handbook; the Student Handbook; Seminole State College Academic Plan; various program brochures of the College, and the Student Guide to Academic Success at SSC (a student orientation piece).

This new mission statement supports accountability and outcome measurement at every level. With state funding, SSC begins the new millennium as a two-year college under the auspices and governance of the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education. The College has a local seven-member governing board called the Seminole State College Board of Regents. Seminole State College answers to both the executive branch of State Government that nominates and the legislature branch that confirms state and local Regents. As a result, College constituents have adopted measurable mission, function, institutional beliefs and commitment, and vision statements. Measuring, evaluating, and reshaping these beliefs and claims help the College conscientiously and consistently build on knowledge gained through the varied assessments of institutional functions and student outcomes.

In capsule form, Seminole State College directs its courses, workshops, seminars, business training programs, TANF (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families) offerings, and short courses toward "the needs of the varied communities it serves." These offerings support the mission, "to enhance the capabilities" of persons enrolling in diverse programs. Seminole State College's Assessment Program evaluates what happens in these classes. Through various course-embedded assessments and other measuring tools, the formal program evaluates success building upon this record and changing to accommodate needs. Seminole State College published its Assessment Plan in 1991. Through the aegis of the Assessment Committee, faculty and staff participated in drafting and discussing the document. The North Central Association granted Seminole State's plan an exemplary award of achievement. Courses, students, and faculty dictate the ongoing Assessment Program.

Assessment measures vary from tests of prospective students to student reviews of instructors and from ACT course testing to community and graduate satisfaction surveys. Seminole State College uses standardized vehicles such as the Nelson-Denny Reading Test and the ACT COMPASS and ACT ASSET tests. Functioning as an academic standards and curriculum committee, the Division Chair Council makes final evaluations, adjustments in courses, and programming changes. The Administrative Council participates as an oversight body, making recommendations that were adopted institutionally, such as the needed adjusting of cut-off scores of Compass tests and the establishment of the Business and Industry Training Program.

External oversight reviews and evaluations also exist at Seminole in the form of Program Advisory Committees in SSC's Nursing, Medical Lab Technology, and Business and Computer Science Programs. State and national accrediting bodies help guarantee the measurement of student learning on the Seminole State College campus. Evaluation and accreditation of these programs derive from Oklahoma Board of Nursing visits, Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education peer team reviews, National Accrediting Agency for Clinical Laboratory Sciences reviews, and National League for Nursing site visits (see Self- Study, Chapters 8 and 6; and see Self-Study Resource Room for Assessment Reports and Accreditation Reviews).

2. The College needs to adopt an affirmative action policy and establish procedures that insure results at all levels of the College.

"SSC will make its programs and services broadly accessible to students of diverse backgrounds and experiences." This philosophy is printed in the Institutional Beliefs and Commitments section of the Catalog, page 3. "Universal Access" is also an "institutional belief and commitment" applying to the recruitment of students, faculty, staff, and administrators.

Section II-4-1 of the newly revised Board Policies manual includes the Seminole State College Equal Employment Opportunity/Affirmative Action policy, which states:

Seminole State College declares and affirms to its students, employees, and to the public that it is committed to equity in recruitment, employment, and promotion in all job classifications and in all educational programs without regard to race, creed, color, religion, gender, age, marital status, national origin, ancestry, or disability. In order to assure that equal opportunity is afforded to all students, employees, and applications, Seminole State College recognized the need for, and the implementation of, an Equal Employment Opportunity/Affirmative Action Program.

The College believes its policies, philosophies, and procedures consistently support affirmative action and are put into practice. Ads touting the recruitment and hiring of SSC personnel are published in all area newspapers, large urban regional papers, the Black Chronicle (an African American newspaper in Oklahoma City), and The Chronicle of Higher Education. Notices of new staff positions are routinely mailed to appropriate graduate departments throughout the State and region, including Northeastern State University, with its high proportion of Native American students, and Langston University, an historically Black institution. Seminole State College's Affirmative Action Officer, Associate Vice President Lana Reynolds, maintains a pool of applications (see Self-Study Resource Room for search materials for President/Coordinator of Media Relations).

In addition, SSC "does not discriminate on basis of race, color, national origin, sex, age, religion, handicap or status as a veteran in any of its policies, practices or procedures" in student recruitment or in student services. The College "is in compliance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Executive Order 11246 as amended, Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972, Section 504 of the Social Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the American with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990." These policy statements are published the College Catalog as approved by SSC's Board of Regents. In admitting students, awarding scholarships through the Seminole State College Educational Foundation, Inc., and recruiting Native Americans by choosing to make contact with the Bureau of Indian Affairs or recruiting among area tribes, such as the Seminoles, SSC practices the principles of equality that its pronouncements on affirmative action profess.

3. While the institution has an operational three-year plan, the planning process needs to be extended. By so doing, the focus of the vision of the College will transcend a short-term plan or temporary issues.

In 1993 and 1994 respectively, the administration responded to the concern of the past NCA Team (1) by strengthening the strategic planning process on the Seminole State College campus to make it more responsive to longer-range needs of the academic program, such as assessment, and (2) by broadening areas of the three-year planning process to include new components for development, fund-raising, the advancement of technology, and physical plant improvements.

Through the administration's leading efforts, the scope and vision of SSC planning was deliberately extended to areas that had, in the past, received passing or ephemeral attention. For example, assessment received immediate long-range planning attention, with the establishment of a formal plan and director in the second year of SSC's rolling, three-year strategic plan of an area. The College opened its initial Development Office in 1995, another tangible result of the planning process, and it prepared its first-ever three-year resource development plan a year after planning for the office was proposed in the strategic plan. Since 1995, private foundation and government grants amounting to over $1,500,000 million were obtained through an organized and long-range approach to resource development.

Encouraging constituent participation in visioning activities, SSC administrations have contributed to the success of long-range planning. This approach was fostered during the search for the current President when the Board of Regents and constituencies set increased enrollment, cooperative arrangements, and the use of instructional technology as institutional goals for the future.

In 1997 (repeated 1998-2000), the new President held a day-long "visioning" retreat during which all constituencies – Regents, administrators, faculty, staff, students, classified staff, Foundation Trustees, and community members--participated in group discussions aimed at engaging and agreeing to common perceptions of the College vision. These combined efforts led to formal planning strategies to increase enrollments, concentrate on business and industry training, promote off-campus courses with other partners, and plan several SSC facilities that use technology to stimulate student learning. These retreats also encouraged offices representing key administrative functions, such as student recruitment and marketing, to develop strategies or "area plans," for their respective areas (see Self-Study Report, Chapter 6).

Seminole State College's new administration has also reaffirmed the strategic planning process, beginning with faculty development of goals and objectives through academic divisions. The process encourages input and review by other constituency groups and key offices on campus, obtains contributions from the Administrative Council, and assesses and builds on results summarized and forecast in annual reports (see Self-Study Resource Room for Strategic Plan, the Seminole State College, 1998-1999 Academic Plan, the Assessment Plan, and the Resource Development Plan).

4. The College needs to establish policies and procedures for emergency management and safety.

The previous NCA Team was particularly concerned with the lack of formally written and published policies and procedures designed to protect students from major disasters, particularly natural disasters such as tornadoes, which are common in Oklahoma. The previous administration addressed this concern in the spring of 1996. With constituency input and Board of Regents approval, Seminole State College published and disseminated its first-ever Emergency Response Procedures Manual. See the updated, 1999 "Emergency Response Procedures" (IAP). In 1995, responding to requests from the Department of Labor, SSC developed and implemented a Chemical Hygiene Plan (see the Self-Study Resource Room for copies of these plans).

5. Student records need to be duplicated and placed in a safe location for backup security.

From the College's inception to 1980, students' and other important records have been imaged and stored in the basement of Tanner Hall, the Administration Building. Hard copies are also stored in appropriate Tanner offices. However, because these documents have been stored basically in the same location on different floors, the system was not fool-proof.

In 1980, student and other records were computerized in systems partially backed up weekly. However, addressing NCA concerns and recommendations by the College's auditors for better security, partial backup disks are made daily and complete backups are now made weekly. Since the mid-1990s, backup disks have been also stored at the David L. Boren Learning Resources Center. As an extra precaution, hard copy transcripts are stored in fireproof cabinets in the Admissions/Registrar area of Tanner Hall (see the Self-Study Resource Room for a list of these back-up documents).

As currently published in the Catalog, pages 38-39, SSC's degree program mandates 15 General Education (GE) courses (47 required GE hours) as "absolute requirements" for "transfer oriented programs" leading to either the Associate of Arts (AA) or Associate in Science (AS) degrees.

These General Education course hours include six hours in American Government and American History, six hours in English composition, six hours from other humanities offerings (including art, English, history, humanities, music, or philosophy), eight hours from among the life or physical sciences, three hours of mathematics, and three hours in wellness/human development. Requirements also include twelve hours of electives consisting of at least one course from four of the following five areas: behavioral science, world environment, fine arts, business/marketing, and computer science. Added to fifteen field hours for a major, Seminole State College requires a total of 62 hours of coursework for students pursuing an associate degree.

Since 1990, the College has made important strides to identify and to strengthen the College's General Education offerings and requirements, particularly in the areas of the humanities within the fine arts. This scrutiny followed a determined effort, led by the Vice President for Academic Affairs along with the Division Chair Council to respond to the concerns of the previous NCA Team and to offer students more choices in those particular disciplines.

In summary, seven new humanities courses and one general orientation course, including three subjects in the Fine Arts, have been added to the General Education coursework at Seminole State College since 1994. These efforts to strengthen SSC's GE requirements since the last NCA Team visit are supported by new policies and standards of the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education.

The impetus for these improvements are directly traced to the new mission and function statements adopted and approved in 1994-95 that called for "providing quality learning experiences" for individuals enrolled in "General Education and other university-parallel coursework." Since the last NCA Team visit, the following humanities/fine arts subjects came into SSC's course schedule: Drama, Studies in America's Writings, Introduction to Mass Communications, Black and White Photography I and II, Special Projects in Journalism or Photography, Leadership Development, Issues in Social Science as Perceived Through Hollywood Movies, and Women Writing: Studies in Fiction and Nonfiction. A student orientation short course, Personal and Academic Success Strategies (PASS), was also added. The Seminole State College Student Opinion Survey (SOS)(fall of 1998) indicated that overall 89% of those polled were very satisfied/satisfied with the variety of courses offered at SSC.

Oklahoma State Regents policies helped stress the importance of General Education for the public colleges statewide. In the mid-1990s, the Regents mandated that students enrolled in AA and AS degree programs complete a three-hour course in mathematics; heretofore, only entry-level basic, zero-level math was required. Second, the requirement for a general course in physical education was replaced with the mandate for students to enroll in at least one, three-credit course in wellness and human development. Finally, the Regents approved an articulation agreement that strengthened the transferability of students from the two-year college to the university or four-year college in Oklahoma.

This cooperative articulation arrangement includes statements supportive of General Education in a two-year college curriculum:

Students who complete an Associate Degree at a state-supported two-year college will not be required to complete the General Education requirements of the state four year institution to which the student transfers as long as the student transfers into a program in the university's college of arts and sciences and has completed all requirements for the Associate in Arts or Associate in Science [see above] at the two year college from which they are transferring (see Catalog, p. 37).

Finally, as part of the 1997-99 self-study process, Seminole State College for a second time since 1989 took the opportunity to re-define its General Education philosophy. The Division Chair Council led this effort, assisted by the Vice President for Academic Affairs and several faculty members. The revised General Education philosophy, published in the Catalog, page 37, reads:

Seminole State College believes General Education forms the central core for all associate degrees. The College is, therefore, committed to requiring students in all degree programs to participate in basic General Education courses. The College also believes that General Education experiences form bridges between the various educational endeavors of the institution, including terminal and transfer programs and life-long learning. General Education is designed to broaden students' exposure to commonly recognized areas of knowledge; introduce students to diverse subject areas that will encourage informed choices to be made in today's society; and equip students with essential skills necessary for careers and life-long learning.

In addition, the General Education requirements for the Associate of Applied Science degree in Business and Information Systems was increased from 6 to 18-19 credit hours with more coursework centered on the General Education requirements set by the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education, such as mandated course credits in English Composition I and English Composition II, or Technical Report Writing, and History and Government (see the Catalog, p. 54).