Greetings Faculty, Staff, Students, and Community Members:

Grounded in Richard J. Daley College’s mission, we wrapped up the third year of our strategic plan with an unwavering resolve to empower our diverse community to achieve their goals through innovative education and programming in a supportive, inclusive, and equitable environment for lifelong learning.

As we move through the endemic phase of COVID-19, Daley College’s core values of Diversity and Inclusion, Integrity, and Life-long Learning, coupled with our vision to be the first-choice community college through which students’ educational, professional, and cultural expectations are exceeded, undergird the college’s mission-based activities which are critically important to serving our students and community.

One step in living our mission, Daley College completed a comprehensive and collaborative strategic planning process in 2020 that involved our students, faculty, staff, and community members. This process resulted in a plan guided by our shared goals and values. The Daley College strategic plan is centered in the college’s mantra, Innovate, Educate, Collaborate, which is core towards our advancement of the City Colleges of Chicago’s Strategic Levers: Exceptional Student Experience; Equity; Economic Responsiveness; Excellence; Collaboration; and Institutional Health.

Reflecting on our progress during the third-year implementation phase of the strategic plan, there were important challenges as well as accelerators that influenced our work. We are pleased to share with you how Richard J. Daley College met and addressed the challenges that influenced the college’s strategic planning activities.

During the COVID-19 pandemic years, we experienced many issues that impacted the college’s strategic trajectory, including: significant decreases in year-over-year enrollment, and challenges with transitioning from the all-online learning and support environment back to an in-person, online, online live, and hybrid/blended academic community.

To overcome these concerns, several accelerators were key to Daley College making progress toward achieving the strategic initiatives specific to four Strategic Levers – Create an Exceptional Student Experience; Equity; Excellence; and Collaboration:

Seal of Excelencia

We intentionally implemented impactful initiatives and programs that support Latine students’ achievement, and were recognized for these efforts during the 2023-24 academic year with the Seal of Excelencia from Excelencia in Education. Daley College is one of 39 Seal-certified colleges and universities nationally, and one of three in the state of Illinois.

Earning the Seal of Excelencia was based on Daley College’s Equity 2032 centered work that was designed in the 2020-21 academic year. Through a collaboration with Partnership for College Completion’s (PCC) Illinois Equity in Attainment initiative, Daley College’s team investigated and developed strategies that will lead to the college significantly narrowing achievement gaps between White, Black, and Latine students by fiscal year 2032.

Daley 4.0

With its focus on significantly narrowing achievement gaps by 2032, Daley College’s team implements a continuous improvement process which equips its leadership with the data needed for monitoring, assessing, and adjusting strategies in its equity plan.

Given its continuous improvement findings, prior to the endemic phase of the COVID-19 outbreak, Daley College’s leadership team designed and launched Daley 4.0.  As a campus-wide initiative, Daley 4.0 engages college departments around a singular goal of implementing programming that focuses on increasing students’ sense of belonging, campus connection, and campus community. Framed through the Caring Campus philosophy, students participate in daily activities that: a) create and reinforce a culture of care, community and belonging; and b) empower students to use Daley College’s tools and resources more effectively.

The First Time In College Experience

In prior years, the college experienced challenges with retaining students attending college for the first time. To address this concern, the college strategically leveraged its resources to implement three summer bridge programs: the Student-Athlete College Success Bootcamp, the Young Executive Leaders Summer Program, and the Summer Start Program. Both the Student-Athlete College Success Bootcamp and  the Young Executive Summer Program were designed with the explicit purpose of augmenting students’ readiness for their future pursuits in academia and the workforce. This resulted from a rigorous three-week program of immersive study that emphasized both academic and professional development.

Prior to beginning their first semester of college, students were afforded the opportunity to accumulate college credits through the Summer Start 3.0 Program. Students who did not place in college-level English and Mathematics courses were granted the opportunity to retake their English and Math placement exams and received supplementary instruction and tutoring. Summer Start 3.0 provided students with the chance to engage with a comprehensive academic and professional support network before their first year of college.

Enrollment Management

During the 2022-23 academic year, Daley College experienced its last year of decreasing enrollment (12,746 students) and credit hour production (108,205 credit hours). This was due in part to the college updating and implementing a robust campus and community-wide strategic enrollment management plan. In the 2023-24 academic year, the execution of the enrollment management plan led to the campus experiencing a 22.27 percent increase in enrollment (15,585 students) and 23.47 percent increase in credit hour production (133,611 credit hours).

Measuring success is a critical piece of our strategic plan. As part of the City Colleges of Chicago, a shared set of Key Performance Indicators (KPI) help us measure not only success but also where we need to target resources and focus on continuous improvement. We are working to regain momentum on many metrics as the community is recovering from the effects of the pandemic. Implementation of strategies from the 2020-25 Strategic, Equity, and Strategic Enrollment Management Plans, have helped us advance in the categories of enrollment, credit hour production, fall-to-spring credit retention, and fall-spring credit retention of students attending college for the first time. We saw declines in other KPI measurements in 2023 and have strategies in place, including new programs and staffing added in 2023, to begin addressing those areas including in continuing education enrollment, adult education level gains, taking and passing college level math and English, and the outcome measure.

Entering the fourth year of plan implementation, our priorities are focused on continuing our work to build a vibrant campus community by offering access to high quality opportunities for learning within and outside the classroom. It is a priority for our campus to develop new workforce and academic programs designed to meet identified needs in the Chicago area and to increase our enrollment, completion, and transfer rates for students. We will work to add innovative programs while supporting the continued growth of After 22/OLAS, the Chicago Welcome Back Center, and implementation of projects and initiatives supporting the First Year Experience plan. Another priority that will continue is the development of inclusive campus practices designed to create a culture of care through further implementation of our equity plan initiatives that focus on reducing retention, persistence, and completion gaps.

In closing, I hope that 2024 will bring a time of renewal for us all. We enter this fourth year of strategic plan implementation with a renewed focus on diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. Thank you for your contributions and energy to this work, and I look forward to our shared focus on this year’s priorities.

Janine Janosky, Ph.D.

President

Richard J. Daley College