2022-23 Audit-HIST-POLS

2022-2023 Transfer Program Audit Report FALL

PROGRAM QUALITY – TRANSFERABILITY:

1. Discuss how your department determines that the courses offered are still viable and relevant?
   To determine the viability and relevance of courses in the department, faculty monitor historical enrollment trends and concurrent offerings at other community colleges statewide. The vast majority of students enrolled at BBCC who take courses in our department are part of the Running Start program. Sadly, this dictates the courses we offer which means there are very few college-level electives such as are found at institutions with a more diverse student body. It’s also sent us the message that as long as this doesn’t change, and our courses meet the requirements of the relevant RCWs, our courses will remain viable and relevant.
2. Does course curriculum satisfy DTA requirements? How do you know? What needs to change?
   Yes, all course offered by the BBCC History and Political Science Department satisfy DTA requirements and transfer to all of the public universities in Washington State. When creating courses at BBCC, we are careful to take into account several factors: whether the course is a CCN course; whether other community colleges in the state offer the course; whether the public universities in the state offer an equivalent to the course at the 100 or 200-level; and whether the course meets the RCW requirements for Running Start. Moving forward we will also begin looking to see how and whether the course fits into the DEI
   requirements and standards set by the college.
   (Snarky but painfully honest answer): The BBCC Instructional Council signs off on the courses and, in so
   doing, tells us they meet the DTA requirements. Although it’s the department’s job to construct courses
   which meet the requirements, it’s the Instructional Council’s job to tell us if we got it right.
3. Please construct a table to show all courses offered by your department and how they transfer to CWU, EWU, and WSU. Identify any courses that do not transfer or transfer as general electives.

Course	Common	Title	CWU	Transfer as: EWU	[SSCI] HISTORY Elective	WSU
HIST110		American Experience	no mention	no mention
HIST&116	YES	Western Civilization 1	HIST101	HIST 105 EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION TO 1500 (5)	HISTORY 101	Ancient, Med, Early Mod Europe
HIST&117	YES	Western Civilization 2	HIST102	HIST 106 EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION, 1500 TO PRESENT (5)	[HUM] HISTORY Elective
HIST&118	YES	Western Civilization 3	HIST103	HIST 199 SPECIAL STUDIES (1-5)	HISTORY 102	Modern Europe
HIST121		Mexican History	no mention	UNIVLIS LOWER DIVISION GLOBAL STUDIES	[SSCI] HISTORY Elective
HIST&126	YES	World Civilization 1	HIST101	BACRLSS LOWER DIVISION SOCIAL SCIENCE	HISTORY 120	World History I	[DIVR] Diversit y
HIST&127	YES	World Civilization 2	HIST102	BACRLSS LOWER DIVISION SOCIAL SCIENCE	HISTORY 121	World History II
HIST&128	YES	World Civilization 3	HIST103	BACRLSS LOWER DIVISION SOCIAL SCIENCE	HISTORY 105	Roots of Contempora ry Issues	[ROOT] Roots of Contem p Issues
HIST&136	YES	US History 1	HIST143	HIST 111 AMERICAN HISTORY TO 1877 (5)	HISTORY 110	American History to 1877
HIST&137	YES	US History 2	HIST144	HIST 112 AMERICAN HISTORY SINCE 1877 (5)	HISTORY 111	Amer History Since 1877
HIST&210	YES	Tutor England	no mention	BACRLSS LOWER DIVISION SOCIAL SCIENCE	[SSCI] HISTORY Elective
HIST&215	YES	Women in US History	no mention	UNIVLDV LOWER DIVISION CULTURAL AND GENDER DIVERSITY	HISTORY 298	History Women Amer Soc	[DIVR] Diversit y
HIST&219	YES	Native American History	no mention	UNIVLDV LOWER DIVISION CULTURAL AND GENDER DIVERSITY	[SSCI] HISTORY Elective
HIST245		American Civil War	no mention	UNIVLEL LOWER DIVISION ELECTIVE	[SSCI] HISTORY Elective
HIST230		Ancient Near East	no mention	HIST 199 SPECIAL STUDIES (1-5)	[SSCI] HISTORY Elective
HIST250		Ancient Greece	no mention	UNIVLEL LOWER DIVISION ELECTIVE	[SSCI] HISTORY Elective
HIST270		The Roman World	no mention	UNIVLEL LOWER DIVISION ELECTIVE	[SSCI] HISTORY Elective
POLS&101	YES	Introduction to Political Science	POSC101	POLI 100 INTRODUCTION TO US POLITICS (5)	[SSCI] POL S Elective 1XX
POLS&202	YES	American Government	POSC210	POLI 100 MODERN GOVERNMENT IN AMERICAN CONTEXT (5)	POL_S 101	American National Gov	[SSCI] Social Science s
POLS&203	YES	International Relations	POSC270	POLI 204 INTRODUCTION TO INTERNATIONAL POLITICS (5)	POL_S 103	International Politics	[SSCI] Social Science s

 

Note: None of the major universities in the State of Washington will accept 100 or 200-level courses in History or Political Science as equivalent credits for their 300 and 400-level offerings. Community colleges across the state, however, continue to offer electives which examine the same areas within the two doctrines at the lower-division level knowing they will only transfer as general elective
credits toward a four-year degree. Students taking these courses who wish to major in History or Political Science are generally
required by the universities to take upper-division courses with similar content but greater rigor to satisfy graduation requirements setby the majors programs. On occasion a student may be able to petition for 300-credit to be awarded to a 200-level course if the
student is able to demonstrate that the transferred course covered the same material using the equivalent resources and assignments. Additionally, students seeking elementary education and secondary social studies education certification are required to take a selection of 100- and 200-level history courses to satisfy the state certification requirements (e.g. HIST&126, HIST&110, HIST 121, etc.)

4. If some of your courses are not transferring to universities as you expected, what information and/or assistance do your need to help you resolve these transfer issues?

The History and Political Science department only offers courses which will transfer as part of the DTA to the major public universities in the State of Washington. When or if a course no longer transfers in the way faculty expect, the course is retooled to ensure transferability. To accomplish this, we seek to acquire course syllabi from the transfer institution and other community colleges. We don’t require assistance from BBCC.

ADVISING RESOURCES:

5. Please review your department catalog and website information. Is the information current and accurate?
What changes need to be made or would you like to make to better assist students? Submit catalog changes with this report. If you need to make changes to the bigbend.edu website, you will need to submit a work order in the Kace system (where BBT and Advising Map work orders are submitted) in the Communications area to arrange for website changes.

Catalog:
The BBCC online catalogue lists the courses offered by the department and the quarters during the year when they are most likely to be listed in the schedule. The department faculty are satisfied that the course descriptions are accurate. In a concurrent request from the college for catalog updates, the faculty modified the information regarding which quarters that courses are most likely to be offered to match our current annual schedule. Faculty also requested the removal of courses no longer being taught due to a long-term lack of student interest. These courses were:

HIST&116-118: Western Civilization 1-3
HIST&210: Tudor England
HIST&245: American Civil War and Reconstruction

Website:
The departmental website is aligned with other departmental websites on campus in that it lists faculty contact information, courses, and links to generic doctrinal resource pages. However, the site leaves something to be desired in three areas. First, the link to “courses” suggests that this is a link to the specific courses offered by the department with their descriptions, when in fact the link takes users to the BBCC catalogue where they can look up the various courses for themselves. Secondly, although the faculty are listed by name with basic contact information, there are no photographs giving a friendly face to the department, nor are there any links providing users with basic introductory information about the faculty. Finally, the “Contact Us” tab doesn’t link to someone in the department. Rather it links to a generic ‘areas of interest’ form sent to “someone” at the college. Meanwhile, Christopher Riley is listed by name as the contact person on the departmental webpage separately from the link. This is not to imply that he should be the contact person—just that the “Contact Us” tab should reach someone relevant to the department.

6. Has your department developed advising resources/maps to assist students majoring in your discipline or in a related field? Please describe these advising resources/maps. Have you considered developing transfer resources (such as four-year advising maps) for students intending to transfer to CWU, EWU, or WSU and major in your discipline or in a related field? How could BBCC assist you in developing these resources?

No, the History/Political Science Department does not have independent advising resources or degree maps. As a ‘non-program’ department, it falls under the General Studies DTA and faculty utilize those resources. However, we are able to easily tailor the DTA for a student anticipating to major in history or political science and/or social studies education.

SCHEDULING:

Please review your course offerings and enrollments over the last three years as well as the FTE information
for your department.

7. Discuss how the scheduling for your courses has been evaluated. Describe how scheduling has been altered or maintained to meet the needs of other programs or populations of students.

The History and Political Science Department was one of the first on campus to begin scheduling classes using an annual schedule. We’ve always tried to ensure that if a course was part of a sequence of courses (ex: Hist&116, 117, 118), we offer the entire sequence during the year taught by a single instructor for continuity’s sake. In pre-pandemic times the department sought to offer a combination of survey courses and more focused electives each quarter, taking into account the needs of the base constituency (Running Start), and the interests and specialties of departmental faculty.

• Webb Waites is a scholar of European history, so he taught primarily European history courses with a focus on ancient civilizations—an area which held some interest for students.
• Christopher Riley holds a specialty interest in American history, so he taught the majority of those classes.
• Jody Quitadamo is an Asia-expert hired to broaden the department catalogue to include nonWestern course offerings.
• The three share the Political Science department between them with Waites and Riley teaching most of the courses.

Running Start has been a major constituency for the department for over twenty years and it has increased in its importance to the point that post-pandemic, it represents the majority of students enrolled in department courses. This has presented scheduling challenges for the department and challenges for two student cohorts: 1) students seeking a social studies teaching endorsement and 2) students anticipating a well-rounded liberal arts education.

• Firstly, the non-western course offerings promised in the 2016 position announcement have failed to materialize. Jody Quitadamo developed a sequence of World History (Hist&126-128) intended to introduce students to the broader historical geography which was, for a time, offered alongside the more traditional Western Civilization sequence. But we watched as student enrollments in both waned to the point that neither sequence is viable, and for the 2022-23 and 2023-2024 academic calendar both have been removed from the schedule. This is a major setback for students who either require or desire courses with global perspectives. Often these courses are cancelled due to the 15-seat minimum requirement. The only non-American history courses that are being offered this year are HIST121 (Mexican History) and HIST270 (Roman History)—one section each. Both classes are taught by Webb Waites. Jody Quitadamo and Christopher Riley are teaching only American history courses. In Political Science, Riley and Waites are offering one section each of POLS&203 (International Relations). All three instructors are teaching POLS&202 (American Government) across the academic calendar. POLS&101 (Introduction to Politics) is not being offered due to a lack of enrollment in the 2021-2 academic year.
• With the growth of Running Start and the refusal by these students to take non-Running Start required courses from the department, the majority of electives have been removed from scheduling consideration. Department faculty predicted several years ago that this could happen as the population continued to increase and displace the older students from the classroom. To preserve as many of these courses as possible, Christopher Riley introduced a diversity credit requirement to the Instructional Council in 2017. Other community colleges across the state had already instituted such a requirement, and at many of those colleges the history courses figure prominently among the offerings. Big Bend’s requirement came into effect in the fall quarter of 2022 and immediately POLS&203 was placed on the schedule as a diversity course. HIST 121 (History of Mexico), HIST&215 (History of Women in America), and HIST&219 (Native American History) are also listed as diversity courses. HIST 110 (American Experience) has evolved into a multicultural history course, and Jody Quitadamo is currently modifying the MCO in order to propose it as a diversity course. Other departmental offerings are also being considered.
• Post-pandemic enrollments have dropped across the state, and this has made it more difficult for the department to fill its scheduled courses. Department faculty recognized early in the pandemic lockdown that the likelihood the college would return to a fully face-to-face class format in the near future (if at all) was distant at best. With that in mind, the department began planning for all of its courses to be offered either fully online or on a hybrid schedule. The online courses at BBCC have historically been the first to fill each quarter so faculty decided that any elective courses which might face low enrollment would be offered online to try enticing as many students as possible into them. Running Start required courses would be offered in both online and hybrid formats.
• When creating the annual schedule each year, the department faculty have always recognized two things: 1) the vast majority of students want to be on campus between the hours of 9am and 1pm; and 2) that not every course can be offered during those hours. Faculty have sought to create schedules which offer courses at a variety of times—both to try and create a more lasting and vibrant campus community and to prevent our courses from competing with the more popular courses in the division (Psychology and Sociology). Pre-pandemic we offered courses as early as 8am and as late as 7pm in addition to online. Post pandemic we recognize that students are reluctant to return to campus. Perhaps this is due to fears of contagions or maybe it’s a general feeling that BBCC is far from town (a common complaint across the years). Faculty don’t know the reasons, but we’ve responded to try and take them into account. Although we’re still trying to spread our courses through the day, and not compete with other departments in the division, we’re also cognizant that a hybrid campus works best as a community when there is a variety of courses offered throughout the week. To this end, the department strives to ensure that our course schedules include offerings which are relevant for students regardless of their preferred days on campus.
  • It should be noted that the faculty have also realized that they largely prefer teaching in the hybrid format as it provides greater flexibility for students and better introduces them to the expectations of the universities which largely employ a MWF and TTh teaching schedule. (Big Bend’s MTWTh teaching schedule always seemed out of step in that regard.)
  • The department is planning to offer a block schedule in 2023-2024 to provide more student-faculty contact hours while also maintaining the popular hybrid schedule of meeting two times per week. 

 

8. Has this program considered providing other options for offering the program content; such as, online, hybrid, nights, competency-based, weekends, etc? Discuss.

1. If yes, what is being considered and why?
2. If no, is this something that should be considered and why/why not?

This was addressed in the previous question, but to expand and preen a little…. The History and Political Science Department is a leader at BBCC when it comes to innovative teaching.

• 2002: Experiential learning was introduced into POLS&202 with a quarter-long constitutional convention. This was expanded the following year with the introduction of a Supreme Court case which students would research, argue, and decide.
• 2003: The Icelandic Forum was born in POLS&203 as part of an interactive telecourse taught between three sites. Each site represented a single country seeking to negotiate a treaty with the other two.
• 2004: The first web-enhanced course was offered in the History department (HIST101: Western Civilization, currently HIST&116).
• 2005: The History Department offered its first online class as a summer section of HIST102 (Western Civilization II, currently HIST&117). Online courses continued to increase to one per quarter and they slowly replaced night section offerings over the next several years. As the number of online courses increased, the number of students interested in taking night classes dropped until they were no longer viable.
• 2005: The Social Sciences Division began using annual scheduling to plan all of its courses.
• 2006: POLS&203 was flipped and the Icelandic Forum moved into the Hardin conference room to create a more realistic setting. In 2006, enrollment in the course was only 10 students.
• 2010: Team-teaching was introduced into the political science courses, starting with POLS&203 and rapidly expanding to include POLS&202. Enrollment in POLS&203 soared to 50 students soon after. To maintain these levels, the course was only offered once per year. The Icelandic Forum moved into the MASTO conference center.
• 2012: POLS&202 was flipped and experiential learning became the focus. Students were asked to participate as members of the House of Representatives, conduct their own presidential election, and argue their own Supreme Court case. The class had 60 students. The course also began making use of conference rooms around campus to provide students with more realistic settings for their projects.
• 2014: The Political Science Department relocated all of its classes to the Wallenstein Theatre in order to take advantage of the increased space for student activities. Student enrollment in the team-taught POLS&202 thereafter was routinely 100 students per quarter and the class was offered in the fall and spring. Activities continued to include various small conference rooms on campus. POLS&203 continued to be team-taught with the Icelandic Forum in the Masto conference center.
• 2017: The first flipped courses were offered in the History Department.
• 2018: Block classes and hybrid-learning were introduced to the History and Political Departments.
• 2020: Online synchronous courses were offered in both departments. POLS&203 continued to be team-taught with the Icelandic Forum offered as a hybrid activity through BigBlueButton—a zoomlike feature of Canvas.
• 2021: Hybrid-learning was re-introduced to both departments with the return of some in-person classes at BBCC. Political science classes continued to be team-taught when on-campus. The department introduced a new online community-building feature into POLS&203 called Yellowdig. This integrated app allows students to work together in a variety of social media type discussions and encourages their interaction by awarding different levels of points depending upon the types of interaction. Student discussions—both inside the physical classroom and online—have become much more free-flowing, encompassing everything from course materials to study techniques.
• 2022: Yellowdig was introduced into all of the Political Science Department courses.
• 2023: POLS&203 offered its first fully online section.
• 2023-2024: The Social Sciences Division is introducing a mixed schedule of hybrid, online, and block classes. The History and Political Science department hopes to spend the year assessing whether the pre-pandemic student success numbers hold up for face-to-face classes when offered as multi-hour blocks in a two-day-per-week format and compare this with the hybrid and online success data gathered during the last year. It’s our goal to become the ‘diversity department’ at Big Bend Community College: diversity in courses, diversity in quarterly offerings, and diversity in modality.

9. Discuss future plans for annual scheduling based on this audit review. Please share how annual scheduling will need to change to meet future student needs as well as any department needs you have identified with respect to instruction.

The department expects that in the short term (5 years?) the Running Start program will continue to dominate enrollment in our courses making it difficult to offer anything beyond the required few: HIST&136 and 137, POLS&202, and POLS&203. We expect to continue offering our courses in a hybrid and online format to attract as many students as possible. We also intend to offer elective —mostly online, sadly—which meet the diversity requirement at BBCC. But without administrative support, we worry that these too risk cancellation, eroding the school’s guiding principles to “Honor our Role as a Hispanic-Serving Institution” and “Advocate for Equity, Inclusion, & Diversity.”

Given the way in which we teach our classes, we require more flexible teaching spaces on campus and greater access to quality online course materials, including ebooks (with active support from the college) hardbound textbooks (with a physical bookstore), and interactive community building apps. Classrooms need to be equipped with up-to-date technology which does not require the faculty member’s office computer to make it work, desks/workspaces which can be quickly and easily reconfigured to make student-focused activities more feasible, and real telephones in our offices and classrooms for security.

Faculty also need to be able to receive up-to-date trainings from the college for the technology available to us and current educational trends like inclusive classroom policies, DEI, indigenous-cultural communications, single-story biases, and cultural humility. These are all things for which BBCC is not known.

Finally, with the statewide push for more diversity courses offered in the community and technical college system, it needs to be understood that the majority of diversity courses for the Social Sciences division at BBCC will most likely come from the History and Political Science department. Faculty will be seeking college support for the development, advertising, and enrollment of students in these courses in order to make them successful. Given that the majority of students currently enrolled at BBCC and taking history or political science classes are Running Start, and their seeming determination to take only the bare minimum of courses required for their graduation (which doesn’t include diversity courses for the high schools), active support for non-Western history courses by the college as an institution will be crucial to their success. Department faculty remember well that Jody Quitadamo was hired in 2016, in part, to develop and teach non-Western courses, but receiving little college support her efforts were for naught. Today, the department offers fewer non-American courses than at any previous time since 2001. Even the European history courses have been retired and no non-Western courses are currently scheduled.

 

TRANSFER PARTNERSHIPS:

10. Provide information about how this department is involved in building and/or maintaining specific partnerships/relationships with one or more of our three transfer institutions (WSU, CWU, EWU). List and identify the partners/transfer institutions, describe the relationships that have been established, and what is planned for the future to establish better connections with our transfer institutions.

The History and Political Science department attempted partnerships with the three transfer institutions largely served by BBCC students in 2016, but found them less than enthusiastic. In a post-pandemic world, new relationships are being forged, specifically with CWU; the History Department is currently working with faculty and the interim Dean to develop a mentorship program. Relationships with area high schools are minimal and center on CiHS.

CAREER GUIDANCE:

11. How does your department provide career counseling with information on employment trends, wages, and opportunities to assist students plan their education? What resources do you need to assist you in providing career counseling information to your students and advisees?

As stated elsewhere in this report, the majority of students enrolled in the department are high school students focused upon completing the requirements for graduation. On rare occasion the department has a student interested in majoring and/or teaching in the doctrine. Career counseling is limited in those instances to discussing with the student their long-term options and what to look for in universities and graduate programs in the field. Faculty recognize that careers in history and political science largely require a graduate degree and we explain to our students that most career counselling will take place closer to that point in their education.

 

2022-2023 Transfer Program Audit Report WINTER

PROGRAM QUALITY – INSTRUCTION:

1. Select all methods that are used by your department to integrate the academic knowledge and skills of your students and ensure that they are taught with the same coherence and rigor as all other students.

Please provide short descriptions of each selection.

☐Contextualized Instruction
☒Team-Teaching
☐Math-First Initiatives
☒College-Level Core Curriculum
☒College-Wide Student Learning Outcomes
☐STEM Initiatives
☐Tutoring
☒Flipped Classrooms
☐Just in Time Support Instruction/Accelerated
Learning
☒Active Learning/Student Engagement Techniques
☒Project Based Learning
☐Industry Standardized Tests/Exams
☐I-BEST Programs
☐Other (Please describe.)

Team-teaching: The Political Science classes are team-taught throughout the academic year. This involves multiple sections taught in a single room with multiple instructors working together to present the course information. Instructors use common rubrics when grading and a common syllabus across the sections to ensure students are treated equitably.

College-level Core Curriculum: All courses in the department are taught according to standards of rigor and Master Course Outlines are created with input from similar courses at area universities and colleges.

College-Wide Student Learning Outcomes: All department courses are aligned and adhere to the institutional and program learning outcomes, in addition to the learning outcomes approved by the Instructional Council for inclusion on the course master course outline document.

Flipped Classrooms: All of the political science courses and several of the history courses offer flipped classroom experiences for students. Depending upon the course and instructor, these classes offer students with experiential learning opportunities and/or workshops for essential academic skills.

Active Learning/Student Engagement Techniques: All the political science classes offer flipped sections geared toward active learning opportunities including running a presidential election, working as a US Senator, or in a mock-United Nations-type activity. Some history classes include Senate-hearing simulations, Socratic seminars, Plickers, museum exhibits, primary source analysis, historical monument creation and justification projects, and multimedia projects such as website development.

Project Based Learning: The POLS&203: International Relations course offers a team-taught, flipped, active learning classroom where students work together on a project throughout the quarter. Christopher Riley also offers a project-based HIST&136: US History 1 class in which students work in groups to research seminal questions related to the nation’s history. Jody Quitadamo also presents a free speech project in her POLS&202 classes and a debate series in her U.S. history courses. When Jody offered world history, students engaged in a debate series and entered into a statewide Holocaust art/writing contest. Webb Waites and Christopher Riley’s POLS&202 class focus on project based learning as well with students performing roles in the US Senate, the President’s National Security Council, and the Supreme Court.

PROGRAM QUALITY – STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT DATA:

Please use the student achievement data provided to discuss and review how successful students are within your classes. Please use the Course Success Rates tab in the About BBCC Tableau workbook and the Course Letter Grades Tableau workbook to gather the data for the courses in your department. These workbooks can be found on the Institutional Research & Planning page in the Portal.

2.

1. Are there certain classes with student success rates below 75%?

At what point were our courses required to have success rates higher than 75%? This seems both arbitrary and open to grade inflation as faculty will inevitably feel pressured to find ways to increase grades in order to escape whatever perceived failures will light upon them should they not achieve the benchmark.

To the best of our knowledge our courses are in line with their counterparts at the universities to which the students are transferring. It is the belief of the department that lowering our standards in order to make it markedly easier for students who do not possess the basic skills needed for a university level course to succeed at that class only sets the student up for failure later in their academic or professional career. To us, this is professionally unethical.

Perhaps the college should change its graduation requirements so that students may not consider their general education classes as qualifying for graduation if they do not themselves achieve a grade of 75% or higher in those classes. (Other colleges in the Washington State system already do this.) As it stands, there are many students who are satisfied so long as their grades are 60% or above and consider themselves successful even as the college does not. Those students are bound to skew our “success rates” downwards just as quickly as those students entering our courses who do not possess the basic skills referenced above.

When reviewing the data provided by the college, we find that when taken together the history courses average 60% success and the political science classes average 74% student success. The only courses to average above 75% during the last four academic years were POLS&202: American Government (77%) and POLS&101: Introduction to Politics (82%)

b. Within your courses, what achievement gaps do you observe within underrepresented groups taking your courses?

HUG students tend to perform worse overall than white students, non-first generation students perform worse than first-gen students in the history courses, and female students score higher than their male counterparts. Other than that, the data appears to be all over the place. To make matters worse, the available platform upon which to view the data doesn’t allow for ease of measurement. For example, what are the population demographics in any given course or section to know whether there is a sizeable number of affected students?

Achievement gaps are made more likely when the college does not provide for reasonable prerequisites to be placed upon courses in order to better ensure that students enrolling for them have foundational skills prior to starting the courses. Department faculty are more than willing to provide additional skillsets and to build upon commonly-held foundations, but when students are able to enter the courses without those foundations already in place, achievement gaps will become more likely and more pronounced as faculty do not have the time (or in some cases the expertise) to create those foundations and teach the assigned course content.

c. Which of these gaps are you focusing your efforts on and what are your next steps?

The college never directed the department to focus its assessment efforts upon reducing any particular achievement gaps, nor has the college provided faculty with the relevant training necessary to close the achievement gaps in any meaningful way. Training would include things like creating inclusive classrooms for DEI, bringing authenticity into the classroom, recognizing and including indigenous voice within our student groups, &c. Instead, our assessment has been focused on whether students are developing basic research skills, properly footnoting their sources, using the writing center, and formatting their papers. None of this adequately addresses the achievement gap data collected by the college Institutional Resources department and disseminated to the faculty for use in this report.

d. How does this student achievement data intersect with your assessment efforts?

It doesn’t.

Faculty-driven assessment at BBCC has never been about addressing achievement gaps in courses from one quarter to the next. Instead, it’s a process which calls upon faculty to focus on a preselected institutional or program outcome in a single class for a single quarter during the academic year. At the end of the quarter faculty are instructed to document the results of a particular assignment and address any changes they wish to make to the assignment for future quarters. Once the report is submitted, the faculty await the next year and a different course and preselected outcome.

This system of assessment does not provide for:

1) meaningful examinations of efforts made to address anything,
2) long-term data upon which to draw productive conclusions, and
3) the ability to cross-reference results from other departments which might have an impact upon our own assessment results.

Additionally, without proper training, faculty are unable to correctly identify or begin to address achievement gaps which may exist in their classes due to issues involving equity or societal status.

 

3. Please describe what you are doing as a department to increase student success, especially within courses that exhibit low success rates or that indicate achievement gaps exist for some student groups? How are you closing the loop to see if your efforts have made improvement or not? What further steps do you plan to pursue?

We’re doing the best we can. But we can’t close a loop when we don’t know what the loop is. Closing the loop at BBCC has never been about picking a particular demographic and focusing upon that group for an entire academic year. There’s nothing systematic about it—never has been. In order to properly close the loop, assessment at BBCC needs to be redesigned to be more holistic, and more responsive to college values, student needs, and interdisciplinary faculty/staff partnerships. It also needs to be designed so that assessment efforts are not “one-and-done” as they are now but are long-term lasting for at least a single academic year with follow up and follow-through continuing for another two years to ensure that datasets indicate trend lines leading to success or failure of a particular effort. Only then can we adequately answer questions such as these with any confidence.

4. Are there additional insights you have observed when looking at student grade data within courses? Please highlight one or more of these observations.

It needs to be said: being a community college student in a community like Moses Lake is difficult enough with all of the various institutional barriers BBCC throws up against its students. Making it more difficult, the college has removed important elements of community, such as the cafeteria and bookstore, so that students find themselves in a largely bureaucratic institution. In addition to providing textbooks, the bookstore also gave students a friendly and inviting space as they traversed the workings of the businessend of the college. Friendly people were available to put them at ease and help them find easy solutions as they learn what it means to be a college student during their first days on campus. The cafeteria similarly provided a welcoming space where students could connect with each other and their faculty in a less-formal setting than the classroom or office. It was here where community began. Without it, not only is the campus a food desert for those who work here, it’s soulless for the students who arrive each morning for class.

All of this impacts student achievement and none of it is under our control. How do we close the loop here?

In 1946 the United States Supreme Court ruled in Sweatt v Painter that the quality of a law school is “incapable of objective measurement” because it includes “the reputation of the faculty, experience of the administration, position and influence of the alumni, standing in the community, traditions and prestige.”1 The Court did not include the number of students who successfully passed out of the law school in their definition of a quality learning institution. Although Big Bend Community College is not a law school, its quality can still be measured by the same standards. As enthusiastic supporters of the college’s vision and mission, we believe that the priority must be centered on the criteria we’ve identified throughout this report: a robust offering of courses, a vibrant campus community, services intended to remove obstacles to student success, and a level of academic rigor on par with 100- and 200-level courses at statewide universities.

We see ourselves as a safe place for students to make mistakes, reflect on them, and do the heavy lifting that is required for transformative learning. We all want our students to earn high grades, but if the college intends to make this the main indicator of success, the unintended consequence is less rigor. Studies show that a lack of rigor leaves students unprepared for subsequent educational and career stagesThe History and Political Science faculty at Big Bend Community College are very concerned that “Program Quality,” as this section of the audit is entitled, appears to be determined by how many students finished their class(es) with a grade of 75% or higher. Supporting success – one of our college’s missions – requires that our courses are challenging. We do not want to evolve into a rubber-stamp institution where students develop unrealistic concepts of success. We want a Big Bend degree to mean something to both the student and the community at large. 

 

PROGRAM QUALITY – ASSESSMENT PLAN:

5. Please review your department’s 7-Year Plan and Course Crosswalk for accuracy and completion. Does the course crosswalk accurately reflect the courses offered by your department? Are all courses offered being assessed once within a seven-year span and are all program outcomes included within your department’s courses assessed at least once during the plan. Update your plan to include seven years moving forward from this year. Submit your updated plan along with the Winter Quarter Program Audit Report.

COURSE	TITLE	22-23	23-24	24-25	25-26	26-27	27-28	28-29
HIST110	American Experience	Po4			Po5			Po4
HIST121	History of Mexico	Po4				Po5
HIST&126	World Civilization 1			Io1		Po4		Io1
HIST&127	World Civilization 2	Po4		Io1		Po4		Io1
HIST&128	World Civilization 3	Po4		Io1		Po4		Io1
HIST&136	US History 1		Po4				Po5
HIST&137	US History 2	Po4				Po5
HIST&215	History of American Women			Po4		Po5		Po4
HIST&219	Native American History		Po4		Io4		Po4
HIST230	Ancient Near East
HIST250	Ancient Greece			Io1		Po5		Io1
HIST270	Rome		Po5		Io1		Po5
POLS&101	Intro to Politics				Po5
POLS&202	American Government	Po5		Io1		Po4		Io1
POLS&203	International Relations		Po4				Po5

 

TECHNOLOGY:
6. Does your department have the technology available that is needed within courses to prepare students for transfer? Discuss.

Available technology on the BBCC campus is limited and dependent upon which building and classroom one teaches in. Classrooms with Promethean boards lack computers, and some of the larger teaching spaces lack both computers and screens large enough for the occupants to clearly see the display. This especially impacts students with impairments. Furthermore, faculty are required to move their office computers to the classroom to make connection to the Promethean boards, only to find the two won’t connect. Fumbling with the constant connection issues serves to make faculty appear incompetent to students (and they’re not afraid to tell you so!), and support staff admit they’re as much in the dark as the faculty they serve when called upon to try and fix the problem. The other major concern is that by using our office computers in the classroom, violation of FERPA becomes very real as incoming emails and phone calls light up on the big screen for all to see. Instructors have often moved the class to a nearby room that is unoccupied and equipped with a computer and projector to avoid these problems. Students have likewise been quite vocal about all of this.

Generally, support for the technology available to faculty and students is severely lacking. With no tech support overnight or on the weekends, online classes are left at the mercy of the whims of the internet. Students facing issues regarding their textbooks don’t have clear lines of support as there is no bookstore or clearly advertised point of contact for them. Faculty don’t reliably receive relevant hands-on training for new technology implemented on campus. And neither does the support staff. In short, the technology department is understaffed, and the technology available to students and faculty is unreliable and nonuniform.

How about returning projectors to classrooms to ensure that all students can see presentations? And reinstall computers tied to the projection systems to ensure that we can teach seamlessly?

7. Review your current equipment/technology inventory. Are there equipment/technology purchases that you think that you may need within the next three years. Please discuss equipment/technology where replacement/update is needed or where technology/equipment is obsolete. Have you planned for these purchases within your lab fee account, if you have one? How do you plan to budget for these purchases?

It is not the responsibility of individual departments to budget for or provide the technology needed for classroom spaces (physical and virtual) at BBCC. This is a facilities issue that should be responsively and proactively handled by the college itself upon request and recommendations of faculty and staff. Classrooms and other instructional spaces should all contain the same basic technology, and all faculty and staff should be properly trained to use it.

INTERNAL PARTNERSHIPS:

8. Provide information about how your department is involved in building and/or maintaining specific internal partnerships/relationships. Briefly describe the partnerships you have been working to develop and what the outcome(s) of those partnerships has been. What are you considering or planning to do in the future?

At this time the department is relatively insulated from others on campus. There has been discussion between the different departments in the Social Sciences Division about creating a cross-departmental course as an introduction to the various fields, but as yet no work on the course has begun. The department has also been interested in the possibility of cross-divisional learning communities and course pairings which enhance student learning, but hasn’t pursued it due to the changes to student demographics (the rapid increase of Running Start students) and the focus by the college upon serving the immediate needs of that population to the detriment of other possibilities.

 

2022-2023 Transfer Program Audit Report SPRING

PROGRAM QUALITY – ASSESSMENT:

We are required by our accrediting body, the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities (NWCCU), to document our assessment of student learning activities. Specifically, we are expected to assess student learning in our programs, to design and implement changes in our teaching intended to improve student learning, and to use further assessment of student learning to measure the impact of those changes on student learning.

Please review the assessment work you did over each of the past three years and then respond to these questions.

1. Based on your prior assessments, what were the issues (problems) that you were trying to address in an effort to improve student learning?

First off, we didn’t have issues (problems); we had students. Secondly, we’ve already answered this question in the Winter audit: see question # 2c and 3.

The way assessment is designed at BBCC, we assess a single course on one outcome for a single quarter. When finished, we’re expected to find a new outcome in a different course to assess without any followup from one quarter to another or year after year. There is no way to determine or track trends. The 7-yr plan actually prevents this.

For example: Below are samples of assessment results for the past three years. Note the time scales between assessments and that the assessments from one cycle to the next are not the same. Additionally, take note that none of the changes are tied to demographics or achievement gaps. These assessments were completed using the 7-year plan and the requisite institutional and program outcomes.

 

Year	Course	quarter	outcome	Results	Next Assessment Date	Notes
2022	POLS&101	SP	PO4	Project instructions to be rewritten for greater clarity	23-24
2021	POLS&202	SP	PO5	Rewrite assignment with greater supports for online students	24-25	PO5 will not be assessed again
2021	HIST&137	F	IO1	no changes made	26-27	PO5 will be assessed
2020	POLS&203	F	Gen Ed 1	Course was rewritten to take into account changes required to instructions due to the pandemic	23-24	PO4 will be assessed
2020	HIST&136	W	Gen Ed 1	no changes made	23-24	PO4 will be assessed

 

2. What changes did you make in your instruction and/or program to address the problems identified in the question above?

The changes made to courses were much more the result of teacher self-reflection than any assessment plan formulated by the college. This self-reflection is ongoing throughout the year and often entails minor changes which aren’t captured in the assessment documentation.

3. After implementing your changes, what impact did the changes have on student learning? How do you know/What did the data tell you?

The impact on student learning is more often than not, not collated within the assessment reports submitted to the college due to the nature of the assessments being performed. Changes were the result of long-term assessments in a single course which allowed for follow-through and follow-up by the instructor. Because the current assessment program at BBCC doesn’t include follow-through or follow-up, the changes in student learning remain largely unreported.

In the past year Jody Quitadamo has implemented more formative assessments to track student progress prior to a major assessment, however at this point she does not yet have data to demonstrate that it’s working.

Webb Waites and Christopher Riley are experimenting with course modality forms by moving POLS&202: American Government out of a hybrid format and into a fully face-to-face class to see whether there is any impact generally upon student learning. Again, it is too soon for data as the instructors have only completed the hybrid stage of the assessment, teaching a hybrid section in the fall and spring of the 2022-2023 academic year. The face-to-face course will be offered in the fall and winter quarters of the 2023- 2024 academic year. (The current system of assessment employed by BBCC does not allow for results such as these to be reported.)

4. What are the implications for your academic program or department? (What are your next steps now?/What will you do to close the loop?)

If the college expects assessment to focus on “issues,” such as underprivileged student success rates, then it needs to begin directing the assessment efforts in that direction. However, this needs to be more than simply looking to see how many white students were successful compared to how many BIPOC students or whether male students performed better than female students. It needs to consider classroom culture, the foundational knowledge held by students taking a particular course upon entry into said course, the use by individual students of support structures available through the college while students were enrolled in a particular course, any accommodations provided to said students, the cultural community expectations of students enrolled in a course, and whether or not the faculty were able to adequately address them. Further, all of this data has to be available to faculty in a meaningful format.

PROGRAM QUALITY – OUTCOMES:

5. Did your department invest in technology or equipment used to improve content delivery or student performance? If so, please describe the purchase and the impact it has had on content and/or student performance.

This question was previously answered in the Fall Quarter report. See question #8.

6. Please provide examples of any innovative projects, initiatives, or state-of-the-art equipment undertaken in the last year. Please describe and include links to any social media posts and/or press/media coverage, if applicable.

This question was previously answered in the Fall Quarter report. See question #8. It was also answered in the Winter Quarter report. See question #1.

7. What was the most successful or noteworthy development with respect to program quality and/or program improvement this year?

Due to the pandemic recovery and low enrollment, the department has been focused on consolidating and transforming our courses from an online to the hybrid and block modality. It is still too early to discuss successes or noteworthy developments.

8. What were the most significant challenges (e.g. funding, enrollment, performance, staff retention or turnover, equity, etc.) encountered in the last year? How could BBCC assist in addressing these challenges?

Enrollment. With the pandemic, BBCC was forced to shift the way courses were offered from a fully faceto-face format to online and then to hybrid modalities in the space of two years. Although the department already offered online versions of most of its courses prior to the pandemic lockdown and remote learning order, shifting our advising, student hours, and governance work posed challenges to most at the college. As the college has settled into a split-day hybrid schedule, enrollment has started to return. But even as the numbers are reported to be going up, those increases don’t include the history or political science department. The question being asked is where are the students going and how can we attract them back in our direction?

To make matters worse, there has been constant pressure from the Moses Lake High School for the department to offer its courses on a schedule which satisfies their demand that graduating seniors complete all Running Start requirements by the end of winter quarter. This has led to front-loading the annual schedule with Running Start sections that leave the faculty unable to fulfill contractual requirements for instructional loads in the spring quarter.

The college needs to support its faculty and remind the Moses Lake School District that theirs are not the only students the college serves and that a teaching schedule which they believe best serves their Running Start population is not one which is conducive to our internal contractual requirements. Department faculty have always been cognizant of the needs of the local schools and have worked hard every year to balance the annual schedule to provide courses that the students need, alongside of courses which provide diversity of thought, experience, and exposure, while also satisfying the Negotiated Agreement.

The college also needs to explore ways to encourage or require students to begin taking a more diverse courseload that includes culturally relevant classes such as history and political science. The diversity requirement is a starting point but should not be viewed as the finish line. We live in an anti-history politically hyper-partisan age. People actively seek out the easiest route that exposes them to as few critically-constructive challenges as possible. They’re told by politicians and pop-culture pundits to be leery of academics who seek to expose them to diverse cultures because “woke” is the enemy. “Woke” simply means to be enlightened and to critically question preconceived notions and stereotypes. It’s the job description of an historian. Further, if learning to think critically is one of the outcomes of a college education, then it’s also in the job description for our students. Advisors should be steering them towards those classes which will offer alternatives and diverse cultures. The college should be actively advertising those courses which employ unique and innovative teaching, and those which open and expand the students’ world. In this way, the college should be supporting efforts made by the History and Political Science department (and frankly every other department) to expand its offerings, and respond to its pleas for training that will allow it to excel.

FACULTY/STAFF PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT:

9. Please provide brief descriptions and dates of professional development in which you and members of your department have participated in the last year.

Due to the recovery from the pandemic lockdowns, faculty engaged in limited professional development off campus.

Christopher Riley completed an ethics training certificate offered by Washington State through Lake Washington Institute of Technology in March 2023, and attended an online Appreciative Advising course in July of 2022. He is also attending the 2023 Washington DEI Empowerment Conference being held in June.

Jody Quitadamo participated in a book club series through OSPI on inclusive teaching practices in 2021, and was invited as a CWU alumna to lead a panel on the transferability of skills in the workplace for current undergraduate and graduate history majors in April 2023.

10. What was the most successful or noteworthy development with respect to faculty/staff retention and professional development this year?

See last response.

11. Select the methods employed to provide professional development opportunities for faculty/staff. Provide a brief description of each selection.
☐New Instructor Conference/Boot Camp
☐Deans Academy
☐Return-to-Industry
☐Faculty Peer Mentoring
☐Professional Development Days
☒Distance Learning Training
☐Technology and E-Learning Tools
☐Data and Assessment Workshops
☐Subject Matter Conferences
☒Other

See question #9 above for descriptions. It should be noted that there are several items listed here which, to our knowledge, are not available to faculty at this college.

K-12 COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIPS:

12. Does your department provide opportunity for College in the High School or CTE Dual Credit with area high schools?

1. If yes, list the classes and the schools.
2. If yes, could these offerings be expanded? How?
3. If no, is this an area that can be developed? How? 

The History and Political Science Department is a part of the College in the High School program in Ephrata. It should be noted that faculty at the high school do not interact with the department in a substantive way despite multiple attempts by the department over the years to engage with them. This has led to concerns about class rigor, a lack of assessment data, and faculty qualifications. Repeated requests from the college to the high school administration for their instructor(s) to communicate proactively with the department have yielded only minimal results. The high school faculty do not share syllabi with the department until the end of the academic year, and do not join any departmental meetings during the years they’ve worked for us. Were this the private sector, the department would have either replaced the contracted instructor with one of our own or closed down our involvement with the program a long time ago.

Throughout the time the department has been a part of the CiHS program department faculty have questioned our involvement in a variety of ways.

• What qualifications does the high school instructor have that satisfy the minimal requirements to teach a college-level class?
• Given the college-level class being taught in the high school is taught according to a semester schedule, how much more time are students able to interact with the course materials and instructor compared to the same class taught to the shorter quarterly schedule at the college? And how does that affect student achievement levels?
• When the department was initially brought into the CiHS program the high school instructors requested the teaching materials being used by college faculty at that time. Since then, has the instructor continued the development of the course or is he/she continuing to rely solely on the original materials?
• Is the instructor utilizing college-level assessments to gauge student success? Are those assessments being reported to the college? Are they in line with the assessment program currently employed by the college?
• Are assignments and examinations being used rigorous enough to qualify as a college-level assessment?
• When last we had access to a syllabus from the high school instructor there were numerous “review days” prior to examinations. Is this practice continuing and how does that affect student performance in the class? Does it lead to grade inflation compared to the same class offered at the college itself?
• The department faculty believe that part of the college experience involves holding students accountable for their work. This includes adhering to quality standards and a system of reasonable deadlines which include consequences when missed. Is the high school instructor doing the same? This is important given the anecdotal evidence heard by department faculty regarding student accountability and the lack of real-world standards employed by many high schools today.

13. Provide information about how your department is involved in building and/or maintaining specific external partnerships/relationships with K-12 schools and the communities in our service district. What K12 partners are you working with and what communities are you working in? What was the most successful or noteworthy development with respect to high school partnerships? What are you considering or planning to do in the future?

See above response to question #12.

14. Please describe any outreach events you have participated in as a department. What plans do you have in the future to participate in outreach events with our service district communities?

See above response to question #10 from Fall. 

 

PROGRAM AUDIT SUMMARY/REFLECTION:

15. What are some key things you have learned about your program/department as you completed the program audit?

There is very little in this audit report regarding the History and Political Science Department that departmental faculty did not already know. What hit home, however, is how poorly prepared faculty are for the challenges that await them with issues involving DEI and student achievement gaps, and how achingly little the college has done to prepare its faculty for those challenges. “CEID reads,” optional professional development advertised through the Human Resources Department, and the occasional podcast advertised in the President’s weekly email are insufficient to prepare the college faculty for what it means to be an accessible Hispanic Serving Institution in an age of increasing awareness of diversity and social justice issues among our students.

At a recent college in-service meeting a member of the college administration quoted the title of an Inside Higher-ed article, “Access Without Support is Not Opportunity.” The History and Political Science faculty are familiar with this article, and we agree. In the article, the author is focused upon the university response to questions of diversity and low-income students. But the arguments and conclusions apply to the community college too. He states:

“For too many low-income students the ‘open door’ to American higher education has become a revolving door…. [C]losing the achievement gap will not be achieved by practice as usual, by add-ons that do little to change the experience of low-income students in college. What is required is a more serious and substantial restructuring of student experience especially for the many students who enter college academically under-prepared.”2

This is exactly what we’ve been saying throughout this audit. In order to provide the educational experiences our students need in order to achieve in their academic careers and beyond, the college needs to reexamine its approach to assessment, provide meaningful and up-to-date trainings that bring faculty in line with their peers across the state, provide flexible learning spaces for innovative and inclusive teaching, and support a more diverse course-catalog for a growing and diverse service district. The college also needs to reinstate those campus features which promote community to attract and better connect to the greater community we serve. A member of faculty not from the Social Sciences Division was overheard to say at the Spring In-service that it’s time for the college to meet the faculty where they are. The History and Political Science Department agrees. Faculty are desperate for the means by which to provide a modern, inclusive, and engaging education for our students. But as another member of faculty from a different division put it, “the college feels like it’s falling apart.”3

Simply bringing students back to campus isn’t enough. Holding more classes on campus isn’t enough. There has to be the support evident to the students for them to want to return. The History and Political Science department believes it has an important role to play in the future of the college when it comes to providing that support to students through our diversity courses and innovative teaching methodology. But without the active support from the college, we won’t get there. And it’s evident that other
departments on campus feel the same way.

16. What are the primary actions you have taken over the past three years to improve student outcomes in your program/department? Why were you focusing on these things? How do you know you are making progress?

During the past three years we’ve been focused on trying to get ourselves and our students through the pandemic. To that end, we’ve retooled our classes for online, hybrid, and block instruction, incorporated new course materials and online tools to try and engage students beyond the “post and reply” Canvas discussion board, and discovered that the college classrooms haven’t kept up with our needs. As a department we didn’t “focus” on any one thing to try and improve student outcomes. Rather, we completed the assessments required of us to the best of our abilities given the situation we found ourselves in and tried to reassure our students (and ourselves) that where we’ve been wouldn’t become the new norm.

Generally speaking, our students are achieving better marks now than they were prior to the pandemic. Whether this is due to the hybrid and online modality of instruction, or study skills honed during the lockdown, we don’t know. 

17. What goals do you want to accomplish over the next three years to improve your program/department?

1. Diversity Courses

1. The department hopes / intends to continue working to create relevant diversity courses to enrich our students’ educational experiences and to better represent the community we serve.

2. Diversity of Courses Offered Each Quarter

1. The department seeks to broaden the type of courses offered each quarter—not just US History survey courses and American Government. By pandering to the Running Start program, the department risks becoming an extension of the area high schools—not our first choice. But we cannot do this alone; we need the college’s active support.

3. Block schedules

1. By continuing to offer block classes alongside the hybrid and online offerings, the department believes it can provide students with a diversity of modalities while also maintaining the flexibility seen in schedules today.

4. Flexible learning spaces

1. Faculty hope to work closely with the college to create flexible learning spaces in which a variety of courses might be offered—not just the lecture-discussion model so often employed. Additionally, we hope to have support in offering our most active-learning courses – such as POLS&202 – in the best active-learning environments available to students, including spaces in the WEC building.

5. Up-to-date trainings in topics of diversity and inclusion

1. Departmental faculty will continue to seek relevant training to be able to better engage with our students and the world they’re creating. But it would be beneficial to all if the college provided such training to its faculty as requirements of their jobs rather than as optional experiences. The current haphazard approach creates silos of understanding and engagement which are faculty-specific, and which are unhealthy for the institution and its students.