Program & Schedule 

Breakfast on your own

  8:00 - 5:00Registration

  8:30 - 6:00Sponsor and Exhibitor Displays

  9:30 - 11:00Welcome and Opening Plenary

11:00 - 11:25Coffee Break, sponsored by Watermark

11:30 - 12:30Breakout Session 1

12:30 - 1:45Lunch and 30th Anniversary Celebration, sponsored by eLumen

  1:50 - 3:05Breakout Session 2

  3:05 - 3:30Coffee and Snack Break, sponsored by Educational Results Partnership

  3:35 - 4:35Breakout Session 3

  4:45 - 6:00Poster Session

  4:45 - 6:30Birds of a Feather Discussions

  4:45 - 6:30Reception, sponsored by EAB

  5:15 - 6:30IRPE Career Pathways, Promising Practices, and Opportunities Ahead

 Tuesday, April 12, 2022 | 9:30 am – 11:00 pm

The keynote panel discussion for RP Conference 2022 will focus on the evolving role of IRPE offices and professionals from neutral data stewards to fulcrums for student-centered and equity-minded institutional change. The magnitude of change needed to meet the ambitious goals identified in the Chancellor’s Office’s Vision for Success requires fresh perspectives toward learning and a commitment to developing data-informed campus communities. The RP Conference 2022 keynote panel will convene California Community College (CCC) professionals from different backgrounds and experiences to share how they have approached teaching their communities about using data and research. The panelists will share how their work connects to incremental and systemic changes at their institutions.

This important work requires IRPE professionals to examine their own praxis within the structures, policies, climate, and culture of their institutions to be effective change leaders and managers. The conference keynote panel will share their personal journeys working to impact institutional learning and equity-focused change and discuss options available to IRPE professionals engaged in the mission-critical work to achieve equitable outcomes for all CCC students.

 Tuesday, April 12, 2022 | 11:30 am – 12:30 pm

Building Competencies to Engage Cognitive Diversity with Data
Track: Institutional Effectiveness

“Meeting people where they are” does not mean just physically or virtually but also cognitively. This session will share insights on the nine intelligences of learning and visual, aural, read/write, and kinesthetic (VARK) learning styles and will provide a tool and an interactive activity to assess practices for engaging various audiences with data/information. To complement the session,  a competency sorting and ranking activity that will help participants highlight and organize the professional skills needed for current and future IRPE professionals.

Presenters: Aeron Zentner, Coastline College; Darnell Harris, Reedley College

What's in a Name? Reconsidering a College's Name, Student Equity, and the Role of the IRPE Office
Track: Leadership and Planning

Cabrillo College has undergone a 20-month examination of its namesake connection to Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo to address the fundamental question of whether the college should change its name. In the midst of national movements for social justice and reconciliation, the college leadership was asked to explore changing the name of the institution. This presentation will discuss the role of IRPE in this process, the college's strategy for hosting educational forums and community events, and highlight the impact of surveys on the name exploration process. The presentation will also feature the results of a question-wording experiment conducted during the process. The session is designed to showcase the roles college CEO and IRPE leadership played in a critical equity dilemma: what is to be done when a college’s name has origins associated with colonization and the oppression of indigenous people?

Presenters: Matthew Wetstein and Terrence Willett, Cabrillo College

Are We Complying with AB 620? Assessing Campus Climate for Queer, Transgender, and Non-Binary Students Both Before and During the Pandemic
Track: Research and Evaluation 1

Delta College Pride Coalition, in partnership with the Office of Institutional Research and Effectiveness, used the Diverse Learning Environment (DLE) survey to evaluate campus climate. The DLE was developed by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA and captures student perceptions regarding complex issues like institutional response to COVID-19 and intergroup relations. In this session we will discuss difficult topics such as bias, discrimination, sense of belonging, validation, and curriculum of inclusion. Delta implemented the DLE to move from a reactive stance to a proactive stance concerning equity and inclusion and to better understand students’ perceptions and experiences with the goal of improving services to meet students’ needs. Results indicated disproportionate impact for LGBTQ+ students. This session will highlight LGBTQ+ students’ perceptions and experiences at Delta with AB 620 in mind. The goal of this session is to get you asking: “Does my college comply with AB 620?”

Presenters: Tish Jett-Dias, Melissa Neal, and Kirstyn Russell, San Joaquin Delta College

Inspect What We Expect: the Scholarship Analysis Journey
Track: Research and Evaluation 2

The ultimate goal of this session is to share a practical, equity-minded, evidence-based program improvement process across departments so that participants can apply them to their own practices at their institutions. This session will introduce participants to a Rapid Program Improvement Process model (Data-to-Action Framework developed by Zakocs et al., 2015). A case study will be drawn from an equity analysis of the 2019 Scholarship Awards at San Diego Mesa College and the recent three-year data results. Details on how the college initiated the query and moved from data to action within six months of the analysis will be discussed. The results highlighted the importance of data disaggregation by various variables, especially ethnicities. A discussion of how this model of a data-to-action framework could be applied to other program evaluations will be provided.

Presenter: Hai Hoang, San Diego Mesa College

 Tuesday, April 12, 2022 | 1:50 pm – 3:05 pm

Creating Student-Centered Comprehensive Course Scheduling and Increasing Enrollments with Guided Pathways Success Team
Track: Institutional Effectiveness

Los Medanos College will share how it created an effective and efficient course schedule and student support model based on student preferences and behaviors to help students achieve their educational goals. The college has developed a student-centered comprehensive course schedule using a blend of course modality preferences shared in its biannual student preferences survey, paired with students’ enrollment behaviors to maximize fill rates and ensure students can achieve their educational goals. Disaggregating student preferences and behaviors by race/ethnicity, age, gender, and academic programs helps to ensure that course scheduling is equity-focused. Los Medanos staff will share how instructional deans and the Vice President of Instruction are using these data to make course scheduling decisions.

The college has also implemented enrollment management strategies starting six weeks before each semester begins using a Guided Pathway framework to ensure the best possible outcomes for students. Presenters will share how the college has: (a) piloted the success team; (b) monitored course enrollments; (c) used student education plans to create targeted/personalized communication protocols; (d) increased enrollment; and (e) identified the opportune time for student outreach and in-reach using data from student education plans. These data help each department determine course loads and elements of demand. This data-informed decision-making process helps students get the courses they need when they need them and aid departments by providing them with critical contact information that ensure the college has healthy academic programs. This pilot program has helped Los Medanos schedule efficiently and avoid course cancellations.

Presenters: Natalie Hannum, Chialin Hsieh, and Sally Montemayor Lenz, Los Medanos College; and Virtual Presenters, Kenneth Alexander, Cesar Reyes, Eric Sanchez, and Lucy Snow, Los Medanos College

Bridging Research and Planning: Facilitating a Data-Rich, Equity-Focused Strategic Planning Process
Track: Leadership and Planning

Strategic planning processes vary from district to district and sometimes even from college to college within a district. IRPE offices are often tasked with creating or updating college and/or district strategic plans, but, while many in our field are well-versed in qualitative and/or quantitative research methods, only a small cadre of IRPE professionals enters this field with a background that is specifically focused on strategic planning. So, how do you get started with strategic planning, especially with an equity lens? And how do you align the process across a district while still honoring unique campus culture and, in some cases, overcoming adversarial histories between campuses? Our robust research backgrounds actually equip IRPE practitioners with many of the tools we need to carry out a thorough and collaborative strategic planning process focused on student success and equity. This session will provide an overview of how two colleges within a multi-college district, as well as the district office, worked together to co-create a meaningful, equity-minded, data-informed strategic planning process for each campus and the entire district. Templates, tools, and strategies for engaging various stakeholders throughout the research, inquiry, and strategic plan development process will be shared.

Presenters: Rafael Ayala, Katie Cabral, Madison Harding, and Bri Hays, Cuyamaca College; Joan Ahrens, Victoria Rodriguez, and Veronica Rosales, Grossmont College; Sam Ballard, Leif Christiansen, and James Lu, Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community College District

Equity Research in Action: Access and Outcomes in a Dual Enrollment Program
Track: Research and Evaluation 1

Districtwide reporting on a dual enrollment program implemented across diverse high school sites brings unique challenges. First, districtwide trends may not reflect the reality at each site because student populations vary greatly, so actionable policy arises from site-level data. Meanwhile, reporting must preserve overall trends to be useful for leadership at the community college and high school district levels. The San Diego Community College District Research Office addressed these challenges by using recent and persistent disproportionate impact in access and outcomes to identify sites where interventions might be needed. Reporting included summary worksheets to communicate the location and scope of issues, dashboards with both broad and fine levels of resolution, formatting techniques to translate findings for different audiences, and ongoing data coaching. Through regular engagement with practitioners, researchers adjusted data packaging to meet the needs of the diverse K–12 and community college roles engaged in dual enrollment efforts.

Presenters: Natalia Alarcon, Stephen Bass, and Amertah Perman, San Diego Community College District

 – Conceptualizing Diversity: Meaning-Making with CCCApply’s Expanded Ancestry Data
Track: Research and Evaluation 2

Applicants are presented with 194 different ethnicity/ancestry options in CCCApply, from which they may select as many or as few as they want, or skip the question entirely. Respecting the spirit of these expanded options while also providing concise and actionable descriptions to support Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) work becomes a major challenge to IRPE professionals. At Pasadena City College (PCC), students embodying the top 20 ancestry combinations are a fraction of the 1,000+ ancestry combinations that PCC students choose. Progressing beyond basic lists, a series of traditional statistical and unsupervised machine learning techniques were used to identify major ancestry patterns within PCC’s dataset, which were then combined with traditional equity information and shared with the college’s Board and various presidential advisory groups. This presentation chronicles PCC’s journey and introduces student co-investigators to provide candid, critical feedback that, along with audience input, will help guide the college’s next steps.

Presenters: Dan Huynh, Dustin Tamashiro, with student presenters Ani Ghazaryan, Tony Ordoukhanian, and Jillian Rousseau, Pasadena City College

 Tuesday, April 12, 2022 | 3:35 pm – 4:35 pm

Developing a Framework for Assessing the Effectiveness of Guided Pathways Meta Major Initiatives
Track: Institutional Effectiveness

Many colleges are using the Guided Pathways framework to promote changes aimed at improving completion rates for disproportionately impacted groups. Some colleges have started with changes meant to assist students with staying on an academic path by engaging students around meta majors or interest areas. These groups of majors may be centered around similar career paths with the idea that the groupings will make it easier for students to find program information and services. This presentation will share results from one program aimed at providing first-generation business students with career information during their first semester. The presentation will use the results to articulate a framework that might be used by other researchers as they support the development and assessment of similar Guided Pathways initiatives.

Presenter: Andrew LaManque, Ohlone College

Budget Dashboards to Improve Outcomes for Community Colleges
Track: Leadership and Planning

Budget data can be overwhelming even for those with prior financial experience. Usually, general ledger reports are not intuitive or easily accessible. This session will provide information about how the Institutional Research department at Fresno City College worked with the Administrative Services department to create budget dashboards (general fund and grants) to help internal stakeholders better understand the finance process and its outcomes. Making the college's budget data more easily consumable empowers administrators and college stakeholders to better understand the finance process, increase transparency, and make more informed decisions, which improves the college planning processes. This session will present budget dashboards and will focus on how they provide timely and accurate information that facilitates analysis regarding budgeting, forecasting, and fiscal policy related to the college. Providing information that can easily answer the following questions is important to all colleges: “How much money does the college spend on x program?” or “Where does x department get its funding?”

Presenters: Alex Adams, Omar Gutierrez, Robert Pimentel, and Maribel Viveros, Fresno City College

AB 705: Spillover Effects into Downstream Courses Within and Outside Disciplines
Track: Research and Evaluation 1

Research in the past few years has cemented the effectiveness AB 705 has on the completion of transfer-level English and Math courses. But what are the downstream effects of the policy on students placed directly into transfer-level courses? What is the impact on enrollment for courses with transfer-level courses as prerequisites? How are students faring in subsequent courses in the sequence or in courses outside the disciplines? Furthermore, what happens to unsuccessful students in transfer-level courses? This presentation will provide evidence that direct entry into transfer-level courses does not inadvertently lead to decreased success rates in downstream courses within and outside of English and Math, as well as insight into behavioral patterns among those who are unsuccessful in their first attempt.

Presenters: Thomas Cullen, Kevin Hsu, Lauren Ilano, and Vinh Nguyen, Irvine Valley College

What Works in Student Success? Making Omelets Out of Goose Eggs
Track: Research and Evaluation 2

In reviewing the literature on student success, many interventions appear to rise to the top in supporting degree completions. However, there is no comprehensive evaluation of the relation of multiple interventions when controlling for other interventions directed at increasing degree completion. In short, we don't know what works best to promote student success. To better inform practice, four community colleges (College of the Canyons, Coastline College, Santa Barbara City College, and Sierra College) examined predictors of three-year associate’s degree completion. This session will explore the methodology used and share the results.

Presenters: Catherine Parker, College of the Canyons; Aeron Zentner, Coastline Community College; Z Reisz, Santa Barbara City College; Erik Cooper, Sierra College

 Tuesday, April 12, 2022 | 4:45 pm – 6:00 pm

Developing Capacity for Institutional Change: How the Cañada College Research Team is Helping to Transform the Institution

Community colleges around California are in the midst of institutional restructuring under large-scale initiatives such as Guided Pathways, AB 705, and the push for increasing anti-racism and equity on campuses. While institutional leaders and educators from all levels of the postsecondary community are scrambling to design and implement new effective processes and structures, institutional capacity-building grants present in many institutions hold valuable answers about best educational innovation and restructuring practices. IRPE offices could play a leading role in helping institutions capitalize on the best practices learned from institutional capacity-building grants and bridge the gap between small and large-scale innovation. By building a collaborative network and integrating planning between grants and stakeholders across campus, the Cañada IRPE office helped bring effective grant practices and structures — such as student case management, summer bridge program, and embedded tutoring — to aid the implementation of large-scale initiatives such as Guided Pathways and AB 705.

Presenter: Milena Angelova and Georganne Morin, Cañada College

Following Through with AB 705: Our Journey with Elementary Algebra

Since implementation of AB 705, colleges have had tough conversations around pre-transfer level math courses. This presentation will focus on Grossmont College’s conversations around (Elementary Algebra and the data used to inform the college’s decision to eliminate this course. While students were not being placed in Elementary Algebra, with the option to take it, students were still enrolling in the course. When the college examined its usual student outcome data, students in Elementary Algebra tended to perform better than students in other math courses. However, when the college examined how many and which students were repeating the course, it identified disproportionate impacts. The conversations around this data led to the elimination of Elementary Algebra with the understanding that students that might have chosen the course would need support. Participants in this session will walk away with new ideas on how to examine pre-transfer level course data and strategies for having these difficult conversations.

Presenters: Joan Ahrens and Victoria Rodriguez, Grossmont College

How Accurate Are Common Homelessness Survey Questions for College Students?

Attention to the basic needs of college students has been galvanized by data from the popular #RealCollege survey. In Spring 2020 nearly 18% of California community college students were categorized as homeless by the #RealCollege survey. To better understand the prevalence and nature of homelessness among college students, Bakersfield College conducted a series of structured phone interviews with 42 students who had been categorized as homeless via the #RealCollege survey methodology. Our findings indicate that the survey methodology likely overestimates the true incidence of homelessness among college students. During this poster session we will compare the survey methodology to interview-based assessments and contrast both to typical results from the US Census point-in-time methodology.

Presenters: Craig Hayward and Sooyeon Kim, Bakersfield College

How Well Do You Know Your Outreach Work? Comprehensive Outreach and its Effectiveness

Los Medanos College has implemented comprehensive outreach efforts using a variety of communication modes. In this session, staff will share how they have tracked the effectiveness of each strategy in terms of opening rate, clicking rate, and — most important — the enrollment rate. During this process over three academic semesters, they have learned that there are differences in these rates among (1) student groups: new students, continuing students, stopped out students, etc. (2) demographics: ethnicity, age group, and gender, and (3) time of communication. The presenters will also share how they evaluated the effectiveness of different strategies and made data-informed decisions to support their students' needs — especially disproportionately impacted groups.

Presenters: Dave Belman, Robert Delgado, and Chialin Hsieh, Los Medanos College

 Tuesday, April 12, 2022 | 4:45 pm – 6:30 pm

Birds of a Feather discussions are designed to provide an opportunity for conference attendees to engage with each other about issues or topics of specific interest on their campuses. This year, Birds of a Feather discussions will be offered in an informal setting during the conference reception (Tuesday, 4/12, 4:45–6:30 pm). We will take a crowdsourcing approach to gathering topics for the session by inviting all conference participants to provide topic suggestions on a designated poster near the RP Group table throughout the day on Tuesday (8:00 am–3:30 pm). If someone has already suggested your topic(s) of interest, simply add a check mark next to that concept to provide a vote in favor of it. We will tally all the votes for each topic and designate a few tables near the reception area for conversations about the topics that received the most interest.

 Tuesday, April 12, 2022 | 5:15 pm – 6:30 pm

Grab some food and a beverage during the reception and join us for a screening of our videography project highlighting IRPE career pathways, promising practices, and future directions for the field. The video includes research analysts, managers, and executives sharing some of their experiences and thoughts about job essentials, opportunities for career advancement, and how to take IRPE operations to the next level.

The video will be played on a loop to provide multiple opportunities for participants to experience the content throughout the hour. Feel free to pop in before or after visiting the Poster Session or participating in the Birds of a Feather Group Discussions.

  7:30 - 8:30Breakfast sponsored by National Student Clearinghouse

  8:00 - 1:00Registration

  8:30 - 4:00Sponsor and Exhibitor Displays

  8:30 - 9:25Opening Plenary and Keynote Address by Dr. Gary Hsin

  9:30 - 10:30Dashboard Showcase

10:30 - 10:55Coffee Break

11:00 - 12:00Breakout Session 4

12:00 - 1:15Lunch and Awards Ceremony

  1:20 - 2:20Breakout Session 5

  2:20 - 2:45Coffee and Snack Break

  2:50 - 3:50Breakout Session 6

  4:00 - 5:00CCCCO Briefing and Closing Plenary

 Wednesday, April 13, 2022 | 8:30 am – 9:25 am

Compassion at Work: Supporting the Supporters

Stress and burnout are increasingly recognized as problems across diverse sectors and professions, including higher education. While systems change is needed and necessary, each of us can tap into our capacity for mindfulness and compassion to navigate daily stressors with greater clarity and to reconnect with our sense of joy and purpose at work. As you respond to shifts in expectations, processes, and culture on your campuses, these opportunities for positive change may be accompanied by great struggle and stress.

Through an interactive session, we will define burnout and identify the seeds of burnout encountered in our work. We will explore how mindfulness and compassion can help us be better colleagues and communicators. The session will introduce specific strategies, including mindfulness exercises and techniques, that can help us focus better and create the space to pause and make better choices in stressful situations. The cultivation of our ability to be more mindful and the building of our capacity to be more compassionate for ourselves and others will allow us to reconnect with meaning and purpose so we can be more engaged in our work.

 Wednesday, April 13, 2022 | 9:30 am – 10:30 am

Deconstructing the Student Success Metrics Cohort View

Join the WestEd LaunchBoard team for a deep-dive into the Student Success Metrics (SSM) Cohort View Dashboard, which serves as the source of your Student Equity Plan data. Meet with the architects of the SSM Cohort View to get into the details of how the first-time student cohort is constructed, how metrics are defined, and how students are tracked over various time frames to measure outcomes. The team will also discuss strategies for using the SSM Cohort View as a starting point for colleges’ own research.

Presenters: Karen Beltramo and Kyle Davis, WestEd

Does Outreach Increase Program Enrollment and Persistence?

Researchers and counselors intentionally asked how the institution can change to improve retention rates instead of asking how we can change the student. Every fall, about 15% of first-time freshmen do not re-enroll in the spring. Furthermore, students who did not persist were also less likely to belong in programs intended to provide academic and non-academic support. African American, first-generation college students, and students with low high school GPAs were less likely to persist and join programs despite the college’s offerings (e.g., EOPS). In fall 2020, we randomly selected 350 first-time students and counselors, provided information about our programs, and encouraged them to re-enroll in the spring. Still, students were not more likely to re-enroll or to join programs. Therefore, Irvine Valley College created a tool for counselors to be able to provide more individualized guidance instead of leaving it on the student to figure out the college’s complex system.

Presenters: Fatima Elali, Kevin Hsu, and Marcela Reyes, Irvine Valley College

Instructor-Specific Equity Data

The Ram Racial Equity Lab (REL) Dashboard was created to provide instructor-specific equity data, where instructors can see only their students’ data in their courses compared to the data of the same courses taught by the other instructors in their department. Demonstration of the dashboard will provide an example design to IRPE practitioners as to how they can structure and deliver instructor-specific equity data. As a result, IRPE practitioners may consider creating something similar tailored to their colleges’ needs while they continue with creating an equity-minded culture at their colleges.

Presenters: Alex Adams, Dee Cetin-Berber, Raymond Ramirez, and Mary Ann Valentino, Fresno City College

Student Learning Outcomes Dashboard

Every course has a set of desired learning outcomes, which are assessed by faculty who can then use that information to identify students who need additional support. Researchers can support this effort by creating dashboards that link multiple data sources to show data in more robust ways that can help uncover potential inequities. This session will discuss the technical challenges and data sources and will include a demonstration of a dashboard created using outcomes from Canvas that allows faculty to see outcome results aggregated at the course and department level, longitudinally, and disaggregated by demographics. Faculty have the ability to see not only their results but also to compare their sections with others.

Presenter: Jenni Allen, Sierra College

 Wednesday, April 13, 2022 | 11:00 am – 12:00 pm

Equitable Learning Starts with SLOs: Streamlining Data Collection and Analysis that Leads to Meaningful Changes
Track: Institutional Effectiveness

While many colleges have already disaggregated success rates at the course/instructor level, this analysis has rarely led to meaningful change in curriculum or pedagogy because the specific areas/topics where opportunity gaps exist are not clearly defined. For many departments, this has led to non-specific changes that are usually logistical or environmental in nature (e.g., presenting a more welcoming syllabus, having more flexibility around due dates to accommodate complex schedules, or contract grading). To ensure equitable learning, careful analysis of student learning outcomes is needed to identify targeted opportunities for innovation. This can be achieved by ensuring that student-level assessment data is collected for all course sections and across terms. Join staff from Irvine Valley College to learn about the college's existing assessment process that includes assessments in Canvas and specific reports that lead to action at different steps. The college believes this process is critically important in narrowing equity gaps.

Presenters: Thomas Cullen, Lauren Ilano, and Vinh Nguyen, Irvine Valley College

Developing a Data-Driven, Equity-Centered Culture at Cerritos College Utilizing Program Review and Annual Planning Data Dashboard to Support Equitable Learning
Track: Leadership and Planning

Cerritos College has transformed its planning process from merely requesting resources to utilizing data to inform decision-making and resource allocation. The Institutional Effectiveness, Research, and Planning Division has developed a Unit Planning and Program Review Tableau dashboard utilizing a disproportionate impact calculation to use in the planning process. Moreover, Cerritos College shifted from using a homegrown planning system to using the Strategic Initiative module in eLumen, as well as revamping the annual planning and program review questions to develop a meaningful data-driven, equity-centered process for short-term and long-term planning and resource allocation.

Presenters: Eden Ellis and Amber Hroch, Cerritos College

Integrating Data Coaching to Support Equity and Guided Pathways
Track: Research and Evaluation 1

Riverside City College (RCC) has developed a two-year Guided Pathways Plan acknowledging practices that are working well and fixing practices that keep the college stagnant. RCC uses this plan to break down barriers, build a sense of belonging, and engage in crucial conversations promoting the goal of being an anti-racist, anti-sexist, multi-cultural institution that eliminates deficit thinking and encourages restorative practices. Data Coaching supports these efforts. Through targeted Data Coaching efforts, practitioners’ work is integrated into the college’s strategic work. Data Coaching informs student success and equity discussions, and supports the college’s Guided Pathways efforts for faculty, classified professionals, and administrators. This presentation provides an overview of how the college is implementing Data Coaching including successes and pitfalls to avoid. RCC’s Data Coaching program is a collaborative effort involving faculty, administrators, and classified professionals. Each group plays a critical role in supporting students and providing valuable insight to improve student experiences.

Presenters: Wendy McEwen, Brandon Owashi, Jo Scott-Coe, and Ajené Wilcoxson, Riverside Community College

Understanding the Unique Experiences of Student Veterans in the California Community College System
Track: Research and Evaluation 2

The California Community College (CCC) system serves approximately 80,000 student veterans per year. However, academic outcomes for this group traditionally lag significantly behind their non-veteran peers. The 2017–18 State Budget Act allocated $10 million in ongoing funding to support a Veterans Resource Center (VRC) grant program designed to establish or enhance on-campus VRCs. In 2018, The RP Group conducted a research study on the state of VRCs in the CCC system and the unique academic experiences and needs of student veterans. In the wake of enhanced government funding to support this traditionally underserved population, The RP Group conducted a follow-up study to examine changes in the student veteran experience, identify unmet needs, and spotlight promising programs and practices. The RP Group will share the results from its 2021 statewide survey of student veterans to determine where positive changes have occurred and where there are still opportunities for improvement.

Presenters: Katie Brohawn and Michelle White, The RP Group

 Wednesday, April 13, 2022 | 1:20 pm – 2:20 pm

The Barriers Project
Track: Institutional Effectiveness

The Barriers Project follows student cohorts over several years to identify systemic barriers to completing their goals. This project measures differences in earning an award or transferring based on first-year course-taking, major coursework, and General Education coursework trends using R-based summary and visualization tools, decision trees, and generalized linear models. The unique issues and roadblocks discovered within Sierra College’s incoming 2017–18 Business, Psychology, Biology, and IT majors will be shared along with an R Toolbox that was used to help complete this project. This is an ongoing project that can be adapted to track various majors and interest areas.

Presenters: Erik Cooper and Jessica LaCourse, Sierra College

 – Institutional Effectiveness and Marketing Collaboration: Using Data-Driven Decision-Making to Measure and Improve College Marketing Strategies
Track: Leadership and Planning

In light of declining enrollments, colleges are increasing marketing efforts. How can Institutional Effectiveness support these marketing initiatives to improve their chances of increasing enrollment? In this presentation, Moorpark College will share how they used data-driven marketing to grow a program designed for adult students from 0 to 500 students, or about 4% of the college’s full-time equivalent students, in just two years.

Presenter: Oleg Bespalov, Moorpark College

Tough Conversations in Stressful Times: Building Relationships with Faculty through Equity-Focused Data Inquiry
Track: Research and Evaluation 1

The Strong Workforce Faculty Institute, hosted by the San Diego & Imperial Counties Regional Consortium, launched in spring of 2020 just before the pandemic shut-down. While it navigated through tumultuous times, Grossmont’s participation in the institute led to deep conversations around data and equity in the classroom. Using a faculty-centered approach, the institutional research office built data relationships with faculty across the campus and facilitated discussions around equitable practices to address observed equity gaps in individual faculty section data. After the institute’s conclusion in September 2020, the institutional research office maintained those relationships with faculty to continue to provide section-level data, support the implementation and evaluation of classroom interventions, and build up a small but mighty team of data coaches. This session will discuss strategies and examples for having conversations with faculty around data and being an agent of change to eliminate barriers for students at your college.

Presenters: Victoria Rodriguez, Veronica Rosales, and Sharon Sampson, Grossmont College

The Outcomes of Repeaters in Math and English: An Equity-Minded Approach to Supporting Student Success
Track: Research and Evaluation 2

Among many faculty, there is a perception that repeating a course after failing it leads to a successful outcome (passing the class). To investigate the outcomes of repeaters, a dashboard called the Persistence and Cohort Tracker, developed by the Mt. San Jacinto College Research Department, was utilized to report the success rates of repeaters in select math and English courses. The dashboard has a number of filters, including ethnicity, allowing for the analysis of repeaters in different ethnic and racial groups separately. The results shed light on the outcomes of repeaters and provide a basis for discussions about strategies for targeting students at risk of failing a class they are retaking.

Presenter: Carlos Tovares, Mt. San Jacinto College

 Wednesday, April 13, 2022 | 2:50 pm – 3:50 pm

Leveraging Degrees When Due Strategies to Increase Student Completion: One Community College District’s Experience
Track: Institutional Effectiveness

Join faculty and staff from Yuba Community College District (YCCD), a Colleague school, as they share their experience participating in Degrees When Due (DWD), a national initiative from the Institute for Higher Education Policy. YCCD has spent the last ten months learning best practices and applying an equity mindset in degree reclamation and targeted adult re-engagement outreach to support students who have stopped out of their studies. The presenters will discuss the positive impact DWD has had on YCCD’s ability to annually award 30% more students the credentials they have earned, as well as insights they have learned about this student population. DWD has given YCCD an effective, meaningful way to re-engage adult learners that have stopped out before completing their credentials. This session will share the strategies YCCD has implemented and challenges it has had to address in order to more effectively identify and award completers and re-enroll adult learners.

Presenters: Aracely Ruiz, Woodland Community College; Cassie Leal and Adam Moua, Yuba College; Sonja Lolland, Yuba Community College District

Examples of Meeting Students Where They Are: Removing Barriers Around Policies Designed to Help Students
Track: Leadership and Planning

Every district is required to have policies on course repetition and academic renewal per Title 5 regulations. The former allows students with substandard grades to repeat a course for a better grade, and the latter allows students to remove substandard grades from their GPA calculation if the previous coursework is no longer representative of their current academic performance. Students that have leveraged these policies have seen dramatic increases in their GPAs, leading to admission to their university/major of choice. The application of these policies usually stems from highly dedicated counselors willing to analyze student transcripts. As a result, the realization of the benefit is inequitable, as not all students leverage counseling services. In this session, the presenters will quantify the opportunity size for these policies (eligible students), illustrate how researchers navigated the governance structure for change, and outline immediate and long-term solutions. This should be replicated at all colleges.

Presenters: Loris Fagioli and Vinh Nguyen, Irvine Valley College

Students Speak: Understanding the Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Students’ Transfer Journeys: Lessons from a Systemwide Study of California Community College Students
Track: Research and Evaluation 1

Since the onset of the pandemic, educational institutions have had to make changes in both policy and practice to support students’ continuation of their education. A solid understanding of the community college experience specifically for transfer-motivated students can help colleges take the steps needed to support student success in the coming years as the nation emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic. This presentation will share findings from a survey and focus groups with nearly 8,000 community college students who were close to transfer during the pandemic. Attendees will leave with an understanding of: (1) transfer-motivated students’ existing transfer plans at the onset of the pandemic and how their plans changed as a result of the pandemic (2) students’ experiences with access to transfer supports and information during the pandemic (3) ideas for how IRPE practitioners can leverage data to support their colleges’ efforts to support transfer students’ pathways during and post-pandemic.

Presenters: Katie Brohawn and Darla Cooper, The RP Group

Binational Adult Education on the USA-Mexico border
Track: Research and Evaluation 2

The San Diego College of Continuing Education (SDCCE) presents the preliminary findings from a student-centered research project developed to understand the factors impacting the student journey for binational students on the USA-Mexico border enrolled in adult noncredit education. Session participants will become familiar with the definition of binational students and the research techniques utilized by SDCCE for this project, including qualitative interviews, facilitated discussions, and quantitative surveys. Session participants will also be presented with a variety of research-supported interventions to assist binational populations in their student journey while highlighting the importance of developing tailored interventions.

Presenters: Jessica Luedtke and Jesus Rivas, San Diego College of Continuing Education

 Wednesday, April 13, 2022 | 4:00 pm – 5:00 pm

The Chancellor’s Office update will cover an introduction to the Chancellor's Office reorganization, including the new Innovation, Data, Evidence, and Analytics office; the CCCCO Research and Data unit within that office; updates on MIS data elements and dashboard releases; and Chancellor’s Office data and research priorities and projects.

Breakfast on your own

  8:00 - 9:00Post-Conference Workshop check in

  9:00 - 12:00Post-Conference Workshop

 Thursday, April 14, 2022 | 9:00 am – 12:00 pm

From Compliance to Advocacy: Equitable Placement to Advance Equitable Outcomes

Now that the two-year window for innovation under AB 705 has closed, all colleges must transition to full implementation for English and math. Data already clearly shows that all students are succeeding in transfer level courses at higher rates than seen previously, but historical institutional equity gaps persist. This post-conference workshop challenges participants to not settle on simply placing students into transfer level courses, but to build the skills within IRPE offices to change systems and cultures necessary to close institutional equity gaps. This workshop will discuss ongoing challenges to full implementation of the law and engage participants in dialogue and discussion about methods their IRPE offices can take to play an active role in changing systems and cultures to advance equitable outcomes.

Presenters: Craig Hayward, Bakersfield College; Terrence Willett, Cabrillo College; Mallory Newell, De Anza College; Loris Fagioli, Irvine Valley College; and Daisy Segovia, Orange Coast College