Student Enrichment

NIAGARA COUNTY COMMUNITY COLLEGE

STRATEGIC PLAN

2019-2022

Student Enrichment

Goal: The College will reduce barriers for students throughout the enrollment experience to foster success from application to graduation by prioritizing resources that support student success and completion.

• Stabilize enrollment by coordinating efforts across all units both to recruit new students and to retain existing ones in an increasingly competitive marketplace. (AMP)
  1. Develop a communication plan to engage all students and eliminate gaps from inquiry through acceptance and enrollment.
  2. Engage in comprehensive recruitment activities that support admission of traditionally underserved prospective students and those representing emerging excluded population demographics. (D&I) (Embedded Diversity and Inclusion Objective)
  3. Evaluate the effectiveness of current methods of communication with continuing students across student services.
  4. Expand recruitment territories and enhance the penetration of existing markets in order to grow the inquiry pool, which will improve the applicant pool.
  5. Develop pathways for non-credit to credit.
  6. Explore reducing international and out-of-state tuition rates to remain competitive with other institutions. (See related objective under globalization in Academic Excellence.)
  7. Attract non-traditional and part-time students through marketing of new and existing programs in partnership with Admissions and Academic Affairs.
  8. Explore the full capabilities of Starfish and assess the cost-benefits of the comprehensive early warning system (Starfish and success coaches) for enrolled students by establishing clear data metrics for effectiveness and a timeline for improvements or replacement.
  9. Assess recruitment and retention efforts just as the College assesses student learning outcomes and program learning outcomes so that data-driven, transparent improvements in recruitment and retention can be made.
• Create new transfer articulation agreements to address common student transfer pathways and update existing agreements.
  1. Document the number of articulation agreements, number updated, and how many students utilize the transfer process each year. (SJ-Post)
  2. Survey the students after transfer to gauge their ease in transferring and acceptance of SUNY Niagara courses. (SJ-Post)
• Improve student billing procedure to better communicate with students; review the de-registration process, tuition deadlines, and payment plans and options.
• Improve student services delivery and problem resolution to ensure the College provides high-quality student services in multiple modalities and locations.
  1. Explore funding options to scale the student support specialist in Online Learning to full-time if SUNY Niagara is able to get programs into SUNY Online and if online enrollments and course offerings grow.
  2. Evaluate and address the needs for services for online/hybrid/hyflex students.

• 3. Explore and assess the expansion of evening and weekend course offerings and align student services hours of operation to meet the needs of the growing nontraditional student population while maintaining services for and offerings for traditional populations.

5. Improve advisement.
   1. Create a one-stop center that offers services in a centralized area to include admissions, financial aid, first-time advisement, registration, housing, immunization, and payment. Implement the same concept at NFCI.
   2. Offer a centralized office for academic counseling to create a liaison for continuing students to include a proactive case management approach to identifying and addressing student issues, including academic deficiency, attendance, academic progress, change of major, housing, course concerns, identifying appropriate on and off-campus resources and connecting students who need support, and working directly with faculty to resolve issues and improve retention.
   3. Offer advisement training for adjuncts and new advisors and create a mandatory advisement certification training for all advisors. (SJ-Recruit)
   4. Encourage earlier career path guidance and college preparation guidance both in feeder schools and in SUNY Niagara’s admissions process. Specifically, offer assistance to feeder high schools to help them better advise their students on the prerequisites needed to prepare for SUNY Niagara’s curricula, particularly in the STEM fields.
6. Implement comprehensive retention management.
   1. Improve retention rate of current students through academic, financial, and emotional support initiatives that will assist students in achieving successful course outcomes. Include tailored academic support and retention strategies for NFCI students.
   2. Provide support to students in identifying academic pathways that lead to career or transfer.
   3. Document through determined follow-up with students, both those who take the X grade and those who simply disappear, specifically why they left the College in order to design targeted retention strategies.
7. Improve the on-campus experience for students at the Sanborn Campus and Niagara Falls Culinary Institute.
   1. Work with current food service to ensure fair and competitive prices, create more options, and give more freedom to clubs and organizations when it comes to purchasing smaller items. Compare what it would cost to bring in an outside company to having in-house dining services. (SJ-Extra)
   2. Increase Wellness Center services to expand transitional mental health counseling.
   3. Increase Student Life activities that will enhance the sense of community at NFCI.
   4. Increase the number of co-curricular Student Life/Student Services activities that are academic in nature and conducted through collaboration with faculty.

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