As we celebrate the one year anniversary of Harold Washington College’s “A Path Forward” 2021-2025 Strategic Plan implementation, I can’t help but to reflect on how we got here. I want to begin by thanking the entire college community: students, faculty and staff for all their work in the development of this plan. The process of developing our plan began under the leadership of Chancellor Juan Salgado, Chief of Staff and StrategyVeronica Herrero, and Provost Mark Potter, and followed a five-phase process that included (1) Research, (2) Synthesis, (3) Alignment, (4) Wet Cement, and (5) Socialization and Publication.At Harold Washington College, our process began in FY19 but intensified in FY20 with the creation of college-wide planning committee who organized many opportunities for campus engagement and drafted the initial plan. The team conducted focus groups, brainstorming sessions, met with key college stakeholders to solicit feedback throughout the process.

Our mission at Harold Washington Collegeis 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.

Overview of Opportunities and Challenges

The college continues to feel the impact of COVID-19 pandemic. Our enrollment is down and faculty and staff fatigue is exacerbated by simultaneously supporting students in two modalities and staff shortages. Since the start of our Strategic Plan, we have had several key administrators take positions elsewhere. Although we are focused on filling these vacancies, this will impact our progress throughYear 2 of the Strategic Plan.To address this challenge, we have developed transition plans for key areas and created cross-training opportunities for staff so that we can continue to move forward with our work while we conduct staff searches.

At HWC, we’ve embraced in-person limitations by offering many of our services and courses in virtual format. Still, the absence or limitations of in-person activities has impeded some objectives and tactics, including: 1.4 enhance and expand student engagement opportunities; and 3.1.1. create an engaged and supportive alumni network.

However, we’ve continued to work through these barriers and move forward with implementing our Strategic Plan promise, in all areas but to varying degrees. This new virtual world has presented the opportunity for us to leverage existing technology and recognize technology gaps. This has helped us to make headway in tactic 6.1.4 Optimize and improve technology. Although not part of our initial path, our continuous improvement of virtual services has allowed us to make some unintentional forward movement in the following objectives and tactics: 1.2.1. Expand outreach to high school students, 1.2.3. Expand Early College student experiences through custom orientation and fellowships, and 4.1.2. Grow the quality of Center of Excellence in Business online courses and programs through added resources and evaluation of online degree offerings.

We’ve also taken advantage of initiatives that allow us to serve the purpose of multiple tactics at a time. This fall semester, we held a series of undocumented student training sessions that featured presentations and speakers from the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR) and Illinois Student Assistance Commission (ISAC). Allowing us to make progress in tactic 1.3.4 Create and expand resources for undocumented students, 2.2.2. Provide ongoing comprehensive training and educational resources to help college faculty and staff work effectively in a diverse college community; and 3.1.2 Create new learning opportunities with community-based organizations.

We continueto respond to the economic needs of the city. For example, we developed a new transfer initiative with Chicago State University and renewed our commitment to our DePaul Harold Washington Academy(3.1Strengthen and expand strategic partnerships). We also participated in theCCC FutureReady program for students at no cost, and developedcybersecurity internships (3.2 Bolster talent pipeline and career opportunities).

Highlights of Strategic Accomplishments

Many of our objectives and tactics remain in-progress, while others are still in the implementation and planning phases, and others are in the infancy of initiation and subsequently without any formal measurement of success.

With bandwidth limitations in mind, we prioritized some objectives over others. Fostering a culture of care remained at the top of our non-academic efforts, as we saw how the emotional and mental strain of COVID affected our students, the access to education, and their performance. In Fall 2021 we launched our Phoenix 4U program, an initiative focused on self-care. The launch proved successful with considerable attendance, even while many faculty and students were still studying and working remotely.

Before highlighting our accomplishments for which we have a formal measurement of success. I think it’s important to mention other significant accomplishments, including hiring a new Associate Dean of Academic Affairs, Dean of Enrollment Management, Director of Research and Planning, Director of Special Projects, Director of Strategic Initiatives, and Human Resources Business Partner.

We’ve also improved data transparency with the development of data visualizations, via Tableau, for department chairs and college leadership. Placing the power to make actionable insights in the hands of our decision makers. Another immeasurable accomplishment is the completion of our Capital Budget proposal, which could result in significant improvements to the student experience and overall health of the institution (Lever 6).

Our highest priority and the area of greatest accomplishment, thus far, is our equity improvements. There were two key initiatives that contributed to moving the equity needle in the right direction. We restructured the Satisfactory Academic Progress process to evaluate student progression more frequentlyand launched a Satisfactory Academic Progress workshop, which aims to support students through the SAP appeal process.A SAP hold deems a student ineligible to receive Financial Aid. This disproportionately affects low-income students who cannot proceed down their academic journey without the assistance of Financial Aid. This early notification gives students an opportunity to take corrective action to maintain satisfactory progress ahead of receiving a SAP hold on their record.In Spring 2020, prior to the process restructuring and workshop launch, the SAP appeal acceptance rate was 24%. In Spring 2021, the acceptance rate increased 10 percentage points.

Wealso improved math retention rates among African-American and Latino students, and improved English retention rates among African-American students. Compared to the previous year, our 2020-2021 math retention rates improved by two percentage points among African-American students and four percentage points among Latino students. Compared to the previous year, our 2020-2021 English retention rates improved by one percentage point for African American students.Exceeding targets in these two areas is due to Faculty Coordinator support, dedicated staff, and our Early College efforts. Increasing English and math completion rates will directly impact the speed and rate in which students meet their academic goals.

Other highlights include our exceptional turnout to our first Super Saturday, one of our initiatives supporting objective 1.2 Enhance and Diversify student outreach efforts. This virtual event lead to registering more students on Super Saturday than we had any other date since Spring 2022 registration opened.

KPIs

I’d like to also spotlight a few KPIs in which we exceeded, met, or nearly met our target. We attribute our success in transferring within twoyears of graduation to our strong transfer center and partnerships with 4-year institutions. Moving forward, we’ll dissect our data further to determine any subgroups that could use additional attention and develop a Career Center to support our transfer efforts. Our graduation rates and 4-year outcomes fell slightly below our target. We believe our retention efforts, quality academic advising, and summer completion scholarships contributed to our students’ success.

Earlier in this letter, I briefly touched on student improvement in English and Math. Our two retention KPIs were extremely close to target, with one exceeding target by a half percentage point. These are attributed to successfully offering courses and students services in multiple modalities, our strong Retention & Completion Team outreach, and scholarships. We’ll continue to support Pell-ineligible students through scholarships and promoting work-study opportunities.

We also saw the performance gap close between Pell-eligible and Pell-ineligible Latinx students. And the performance difference, between genders, for our First Year Fall-to-Spring Retention KPIs is insignificant. These are indications that the efforts that we’re making are effective for the groups requiring the most support, while remaining beneficial to all.

Priorities for FY22

For FY22, our highest priority is to stabilize enrollment using a number of strategies that will engage non-traditional and international students, and expand our Early College Program and supporting services. Early in this letter I spoke to how turnover has had a drastic effect on implementing various portions of the Strategic Plan and on our faculty and staff. My focus this year is to slow turnover and subsequently the negative effect that it has on our Strategic Plan progress. We’ll also support Faculty and Staff by continuing with our Phoenix4U wellness programs, and support employee professional development through college-wide training opportunities.

For students, we’ll evaluate our student services to identify areas of improvement. This evaluation may bring to light some important improvements that we plan to make for students including expanding undocumented student resources, enhancing student support services (including online and in-person offices), improving classroom and lab technology, increasing wellness and trauma-informed activities, and increasing co-curricular activities.

Daniel López, Ph.D.

President

Harold Washington College