Tuesday, March 19, 2024
The RP Group

Institutional Effectiveness

 Institutional Effectiveness

To assist colleges in improving programs and services and increasing student success and overall institutional quality, we study factors contributing to institutional effectiveness such as strategic planning, evaluation of programs and services, assessment of student outcomes at multiple levels, and using data and research findings to inform decision making.

 Related Projects

Many California Community Colleges (CCC) administer student surveys to understand their students’ experiences and gather feedback to support local continuous improvement efforts. To support the CCCs’ with these efforts, The RP Group has implemented several statewide survey efforts to provide individual colleges, and the state with information about CCC students’ experiences, needs, and challenges related to, but not limited to, transfer, enrollment, and basic needs.



The RP Group provided planning and facilitation support for the college’s strategic and equity planning and visioning efforts. The areas of focus for this work included support to enact the following recommendation that resulted from a college-wide focus group effort between 2016-2017 where RP Group researchers facilitated 18 focus group sessions with students, faculty, and staff from specific groups who were involved with equity-related issues and efforts:

Cultivate an LAVC culture where students, staff, and faculty are more engaged, they all need to feel a connection to the campus. Further, establishing a clear college identity would define the LAVC community to which LAVC personnel and students can identify.


Virtual community of practice focused on strategic enrollment management.


This project involves a statewide survey that collects point-in-time enrollment comparisons from colleges for summer and fall terms. The purpose of this survey is to assess the impact of COVID-19 on systemwide enrollments by comparing last year’s enrollments to this year’s.




Third party evaluations to help improve outcomes and increase the effectiveness of student success initiatives, programs, and various efforts by community colleges and other higher education-based organizations. 


Evaluation of MIS student success data for a set of California Community Colleges.


Framework outlining an approach for annually evaluating  community college performance, which became the basis of Accountability Reporting for the Community Colleges (ARCC).