Board of Trustees discusses program updates, seeks contract approvals

By  Taylor Williams, Melissa Puppo and Kimberleigh Anderson

Finance and Administration Committee

Changes to Summit Street, ALEKS software and PARTA were among the topics discussed during Tuesday’s Finance and Administration Committee meeting.

Gas line relocations and other utility movements have already begun at Summit Street, but the construction and road/lane closures seen now are minor compared to what is coming.

“Most of the work will really start next spring,” said Tom Euclide, associate vice president for Facilities Planning and Operations. “[They will] start to go to a single lane traffic, one direction.”

The project is estimating to need two full construction seasons. Majority of the work should be complete in the Fall 2017, but some minor work will stretch past that season, including tree planting.

The committee is also looking for approval from the board on multiple contract renewals.

Kent State received three bids for the online math learning and assessment software, but chose to continue partnering with McGraw-Hill Education because it was the best value – if approved, the initial contract of 1.16 million will be for two years that will be paid by University College and an existing fee that students already pay.

[pullquote]“This is the key transportation service for the main campus as well as connecting our students to the community. It’s truly a partnership. – Stephen Colecchi
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Committee members said the ALEKS software system is currently being used by Kent State students and has increased success rates in beginning math courses for students who receive a C or above from about 60 percent to 75 percent.

“We have about a third of our students utilizing this software system, and it allows the instructors to have a detailed assessment of where their students start with their math knowledge making it easier to tailor their instruction to the level where the students are,” the committee said.

University College “fosters student academic success by providing academic advising services as well as coordinating advising support throughout the university,” according to the Kent State website.

Academic partnerships are not the only opportunities Kent is looking to keep.

Kent State has partnered with PARTA since 2004, a contract that was amended in 2009 and again in 2012. The committee is currently seeking approval of a two-year renewal contract with hopes of signing a new, long-term contract down the road.

“This is the key transportation service for the main campus as well as connecting our students to the community,” Stephen Colecchi, the chair of the finance and administration committee said. “It’s truly a partnership.”

Students have asked administration to create an app, similar to Uber, that has the ability to track the location of the buses. An app like this would require students to stand out in the cold for shorter amounts of time during the winter months and view exact locations of transportation.

This renewal was proactive, beginning July 1, 2015, leaving the board with roughly 18 months to design a new contract with PARTA.

Colecchi also said he is in disbelief at the state in regards to the off-site storage for library collections that are rarely used.

“The cost of this stuff just amazes me,” he said. “I just can’t believe that the state and other universities can’t figure out a way to come together to do this collectively.”

Kent State currently uses AssureVault to store items and has a regional storage system at NEOMED that is at capacity.

Colecchi said while he knows there are some collections unique to Kent State, he is sure other universities are storing a lot of the same material, especially digital copies.

Academic programs and success

Member of the Board of Trustees also discussed reviews of courses, programs and enrollment at its meetings on Tuesday at Akron Children’s Hospital.

Provost Todd A. Diacon reviewed several key mandates by State Budget Legislation of Ohio that the Board of Trustees will need to evaluate by Jan. 1. These four mandates include review of all courses in enrollment, review of all courses for performance, a review of all academic programs for enrollment and a review of academic programs for performance.

“Kent State is very good about reviewing courses for enrollment and performance so much that you will see that since 2010 we’ve inactivated 1,595 courses,” Diacon said to the Board in his presentation.

Kent State defines low enrollment for undergraduate courses as enrolling 12 students or fewer at the undergraduate level and six students or fewer for the graduate level.

After filtering out several courses that do no pertain to Kent State’s low-enrollment classes — primarily programs that focus on one-on-one learning — 12,580 sections of classes offered on Kent State’s campus are still considered low enrollment, with 1. 5 percent on Kent’s campus and systemwide averages to about 2.6 percent for both fall and spring semester, Diacon said.

The board also discussed how to better collaborate internally to meet the state mandate of collaborations with regional institutions. This could potentially start a sharing of tenure faculty among regional campuses, as well as coordinating online distance-learning courses that are also offered online at multiple regional campuses to condense.

Diacon also presented his future plans to reduce high D,F or withdrawal (DFW) rates. DFW includes students who receive a D, F or those who withdraw from a course during their semester.

“I made this a priority to start looking at DFW grades and particularly on the Kent campus, we became far more intentional about reducing these numbers,” Diacon said. “You can see that we’ve had a considerable decline in the number of courses on the Kent campus that have 30 percent or more of students earning a D, F or W in courses that enroll more than 100 because that’s where we’d have the biggest impact.”

Associate Provost Mandy Monroe Stasiuk also discussed how DFW has been shown to fare well to determine how well a course is performing or not.

“Every single school in Ohio is using DFW as the standard for this particular reporting mechanism,” Stasiuk said. “It’s a stand measure.”

In addition to looking at DFW, Diacon discussed the need to start meeting with students and helping them learn about distance-learning, self-directed course to reduce high DFW rates. This would also result in adopting a co-requisite model for remedial or basic skill instructions — in which many of the DFW rates are found in math courses, specifically a beginning credit-bearing course.

Diacon introduced the need to include cost of textbooks in a student’s initial course fee to reduce DFW rates. Diacon said The University of Cincinnati has seen a lower DFW rate by 25 percent by incorporating their textbooks into the fee and is something Kent should begin looking into.

“When you roll that textbook into a course fee, [students] will have [an electronic textbook] from day one in the course,” Diacon said. “[The University of] Cincinnati has great success with students when they register.”

Enrollment report

Kent State is looking at an increase of 1,023 applications and admits from fall 2015 to fall 2016.

There also has been an increase of freshman diversity — last year’s class brought in 3,500 student applications and 2016 is up to 4,117 applications thus far — an increase of 617.

[pullquote]“We have high-quality kids applying for Kent State and early,” Garcia said during his presentation. “We are very aggressive with our strategy. – T. David Garcia
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T. David Garcia, Senior Associate Vice President for Strategic Enrollment Management ,noted a decreased outreach of students in Northeast Ohio during his presentation.

“Looking at last year’s class, we brought in our second largest freshman class, but we found some gaps that we need to close for 2016,” Garcia said. “We’re trying to close the gap and meet enrollment goals for diversity.”

Garcia discussed a pilot program with Cleveland-Metro School District in partnership with the non-for-profit organization Racelab supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for high school students to build an online profile and indicate their grades and classes.

Expanding to other schools will occur if the outreach to Cleveland-Metro School District is deemed successful.

The plan would allow students to earn micro-scholarships once admitted that could potentially total up to $4,800 — with a student earning $1,200 a year. The scholarships would act as an incentive for a high school student to earn good grades and to continue doing so once at the undergraduate level.  

Garcia said he has called upon Kent State President Beverly Warren for an enrollment strategy for next year that would allow the University to gain more scholarship money for competitiveness in diversity and quality. The increase in scholarship money has been approved by Warren to meet enrollment standards for 2016.

“We have high-quality kids applying for Kent State and early,” Garcia said during his presentation. “We are very aggressive with our strategy.”

 

A Look Inside: Kent State University Board of Trustees Meeting

TV2’s Kimberleigh Anderson has a closer look at the issues from the meeting.