Dear Harold Washington College Community,

I am delighted to share the Harold Washington College’ Strategic Plan Progress for FY 2023. As we celebrate the third anniversary of the plan, I want to thank our students, faculty and staff for their participation in the creation of the plan and for their commitment to its implementation. I also want to thank Chancellor Juan Salgado, Provost Mark Potter, Executive Vice Chancellor Veronica Herrero, and other district leaders for their support.

Our mission at Harold Washington College is to be a student-centered institution that empowers all members of its community through accessible and affordable academic advancement, career development, and personal enrichment. Our vision is to be a leading institution of choice for students and to provide them with the skills required to be agents of change for themselves and the communities they choose to serve. To fulfill this mission and vision, Harold Washington College focuses on the following core values: embrace human diversity; care about the whole student; offer responsive and relevant education; pursue academic excellence; assess to improve learning, build community; and foster global citizenship for social justice. Through these core values, we strive to embody and honor the vision of Harold Washington, former Mayor of Chicago.

I am pleased of the progress we made this academic year to advance our strategic priorities.  I am particularly proud of our progress in increasing access, momentum, completion, and we are on our way to improving equity outcomes for our students. Allow me to our progress and areas of opportunity in these areas:

Access

Due to the pandemic, between FY2020-2022, Harold Washington College saw a significant decrease in college credit headcount. In addition, the expanded offering of online courses across the City Colleges, no longer solely at Harold Washington, has negatively impacted our enrollment. However, in FY23 we saw that enrollment stabilize at 8161, and we are on track for FY24 to be our first year of enrollment growth since 2015. Our credit-hour production has similarly stabilized at 128,572 – a 1.8% decrease, but an order of magnitude smaller than the one seen between FY21 and FY22 (31.4%). Meanwhile our Continuing Education headcount is at 477, up 46.8% from FY22.

Some of this is due to stabilization in transit and the downtown economy, to which Harold Washington College, among the City Colleges, is particularly sensitive. It also reflects changes we’ve implemented to ensure an exceptional student experience in our post-pandemic context. In response to observations that in-person courses were fastest to fill up, we have increased our in-person course offerings at the most in-demand times (+33% capacity in M-W and T-Th in-person morning courses in the most recent completed term).

We have also invested in the people and processes that allow students to hear about and matriculate to Harold Washington College. We hired two new college recruiters, which allowed us to increase our number of recruitment events by over 75%. And by streamlining our hiring process, we halved the time to hire adjuncts so we can let students know early and clearly who is going to be teaching each term’s courses. In the case of Continuing Education, we offered additional courses for the first time in Spring 2023, which have increased our continuing education enrollment in FY23.

Momentum

Harold Washington College showed strong growth in student retention in FY23. We saw growth in every retention metric we track, with the exception of First-Year Fall-to-Spring credit retention, which was already at 77%. We do not believe this merely reflects a trend of higher retention among students who chose to enroll despite the challenging conditions of the pandemic. Indeed, we observed our highest retention rates among first-year students. These improvements reflect substantial changes we’ve made to the exceptional student experience at HWC.

We’ve added two new staff members in student wellness, which, combined with a new referral policy, has eliminated the wellness center waitlist. Two new tutor coordinators have helped increase the availability of academic support, and new Center of Excellence in Business hires, including a new dean, have better supported apprentices and expanded employer partnerships.

Through the Caring Campus Initiative faculty members have built deliberate acts of caring and connectedness into their teaching practices. We hope to encourage broader participation among our faculty, with the goal of improving students’ sense of belonging, and, ultimately, persistence and completion.

In conjunction with efforts to develop a schedule responsive to student demand, with fewer instructors To Be Announced, we’ve begun implementing a year-round schedule that includes guaranteed-to-run courses in areas of greatest demand. This will allow students to better plan their path toward credential completion, and, we expect, boost term-to-term retention.

The proportion of students taking and passing college-level English and math in their first year continued to slip in FY23 from its peak during the pandemic. This is an area of opportunity where we could focus future First Year Experience resources and leverage mandatory first-term advising to encourage students to attempt this crucial gateway courses as early as possible.

Completion and Mobility

Harold Washington College’s Completion and Mobility KPIs all increased between FY22 and FY23. The IPEDS 150 graduation rate saw a particularly large jump, from 23% in FY22 to 29% in FY23.

Completion metrics reflect the cumulative efforts of students and staff over the years since the cohorts matriculated. The efforts are a part of our exceptional student experience, and in the most recent term included a Social Justice Job Fair and our TransferMation conference. Our transfer services, a particular point of emphasis at Harold Washington College, served over 630 students just in the Fall of 2023.

We also recognize that improved outcome measures are the fruit of improvements in retention and taking/passing college level English and math that we’ve observed in the past two fiscal years. Part of our participation in the Achieving the Dream (ATD) Equitable Outcomes cohort will allow us to look more closely at leading indicators that best predict distal outcomes like transfer and graduation, with the goal of setting students up for success as early as possible.

Equity

Achieving equity in outcomes among students from every racial group has become a renewed focus at Harold Washington College with our participation in Achieving the Dream (ATD). In FY23 we reduced the gap between the average and our lowest group in Fall-to-Fall retention. Fall-to-Fall retention of Black first-year students was a particular strong point, jumping from 41.3% in FY22 to 44.9% in FY23. This is thanks in part to efforts we made to reach out to this cohort over the Summer of 2023, and high retention among TRIO participants in this group.

Participation in student events at Harold Washington College closely mirrored the racial makeup of the college. For the events we tracked through Navigate, over 75% of student participants were Black or Latine. Equity will be further addressed in our new Equity Plan, to be completed in the first half of 2024.

FY2024 Priorities

While we have lots of reasons to celebrate, we also have lots of work to do to continue to ensure that we live up to our mission of being a student-centered institution and accomplish our goals identified in our Strategic Plan. My vision for the college is to be an institution of choice for Chicago residents interested in earning associate degrees to transfer to a four-year university, and/or earn credentials and experience to enter and compete for high-demand, high-earning careers. HWC will be known for its signature academic programs in liberal arts, sciences, business and performing arts. In addition, HWC will be known as an employer of choice for community and equity-minded, student-centered, academic and student affairs professionals in the City of Chicago and beyond.

Therefore, here are the FY2024 Priorities:

• Utilize our Harold Promise/Achieving the Dream framework to increase student retention, transfer, and career completion rates with the focus on closing the achievement gaps for Latine and Black students.
• Expand the One Million Degrees partnership to provide additional academic student support.
• Increase traditional, nontraditional, and international student enrollments by 3%.
• Maximize our liberal arts and sciences offerings, expand performing/visual arts programs, and strategically increase the number of online programs on our campus, in the Loop and beyond.
• Strengthen our Center of Excellence.
• Re-envision student services operations to better serve students and continue to strengthen student leadership and engagement opportunities.
• Expand our Career Services and Transfer Center.
• Expand faculty and staff engagement opportunities and prioritize professional development and recognition programs.
• Continue to prioritize faculty and staff recruitment, retention, and promotion.
• Continue to renovate and upgrade campus facilities.

Building on the work of the last three years, I am confident we will continue to meet our challenges and find solutions to serve and prepare students in their educational and career journeys.

With gratitude,

Daniel López, Ph.D.

President

Harold Washington College