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Quality Enhancement Plan

Prospectus - May 2003
Plan - August 2004
Plan Update - February 2005
Timeline - February 2005

QEP Prospectus

Submitted to the Commission on Colleges
Southern Association of Colleges and Schools
May 8, 2003

Drafted by Betty J. Powell,
Assistant VP for Academic Affairs
SACS Accreditation Liaison

Core Requirement # 2.12:
An institution seeking initial or continued accreditation conducts and integrates an acceptable Quality Enhancement Plan.

"The First-Year Experience as a Foundation for College Success"

The Leadership Team for the SACS Institutional Analysis has adopted the First-Year Experience as the focus for the Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) component of the review. The Leadership Team has made this determination through a process that has engaged the entire campus and has invited input from all its members with the aim of initiating conversations and opening civil debate. The search for a QEP focus that would lead the campus toward enhanced student learning included the members of the Leadership Team raising the question at Staff Forum (a deliberative body that represents the staff and faculty components of the campus); addressing the issue with Academic Council (the deliberative body that oversees academic matters); meeting and discussing the QEP focus with Student Caucus; participating in the May 2003 Community Meeting (a regular community gathering called and orchestrated by Student Caucus around some topical issue); speaking with individual faculty, staff, and students; and issuing a campus-wide email solicitation of ideas and response.

Several possible topics for the Quality Enhancement Plan surfaced from this broad-based endeavor: the first-year experience, integrating the Triad diversity, technology, and the impact of the library on student learning. All these matters are important and integral to the College?s mission and to the success of student engagement at Warren Wilson. After discussion, the Leadership Team determined that the First-Year Experience would serve as an umbrella topic that would encompass the others. The College will, therefore, focus on the first year of our students? college experience (first-time, first-year students and transfer students), and will be intentional about addressing and facilitating moments within the first year to:

Each of the areas for analysis will cut across academic and non-academic areas of the college experience. To understand and meet the needs of first year students, a First-Year Experience program must examine every aspect of that experience to determine its efficacy and to gauge everything that happens to a student, whether by design or not. A comprehensive analysis must begin with students? acceptance to college, move through registration and orientation, focus on academic advising and life mentoring, address academic content and pedagogy, and examine and address all aspects of student life that impact the first year.

The Institutional Analysis comes at a pivotal time for the College. Expansion over the last decade of the student population has resulted in a growth from approximately 460 undergraduate students to nearly 800. This rapid growth has brought the College both expected and unexpected opportunities and challenges. A solid strategic planning process has allowed our academic offerings to grow in proportion to the student population. Since 1991 the College has been successful in creating 17 new full-time faculty positions and several part-time positions, has added eight new majors, a B.S. degree in Environmental Studies, a B.S. degree in psychology, nine new concentrations within existing majors, and five new minors. At the same time, we have undergone an era of building to ensure that the physical plant needs of the campus remain abreast of the growth. As a result, the opportunities here at Warren Wilson College abound. So do the challenges. It has become clear to the College in the face of this growth that our desire to maintain our rich heritage, coupled with the need and wish to move to the future, poses challenges that impact student success.

The First-Year Experience most recently surfaced as a matter of particular concern in August 2002, during the annual retreat for Administrative Council. Retention numbers from the previous two semesters posed an area of concern, and that concern has been reinforced by retention numbers of the 2002-2003 academic year. As a result of the 2002 Administrative Council retreat, President Doug Orr named a First-Year Experience Review Committee and charged it with examining all aspects of our students? first year. That committee has met from September 2002 to the present and will act as the oversight committee for the Quality Enhancement Plan, reporting to the SACS Leadership Team. During that time, the College joined other Council of Independent Colleges in the "Hallmarks of Excellence in the First Year of College" initiative, an effort coming out of the Policy Center for the First-Year Experience. We expect this work to help guide the First-Year Experience Committee as it proceeds. The Institutional Analysis challenges the College to carry forward with this review and affords it an opportunity to look to its own best practices, as well as those of other institutions, in creating a first-year experience that speaks intentionally to the needs of all its incoming students.

The Quality Enhancement Plan will allow the College to address the following questions in an efficient and effective process:

The Leadership Team recognizes the First-Year Experience as a matter of highest priority in its ongoing efforts to assist student persistence toward gaining a college degree. It joins the Council of Independent Colleges (CIC), the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), and the Policy Center for the First-Year Experience in understanding the critical impact of the first year of college on student success, all the while also recognizing the individual needs of institutions of higher learning in their unique approaches to learning. As one of the six work colleges in the nation, Warren Wilson College celebrates its non-traditional approach to learning and commits itself to fulfilling its promise to students.