Dominican University of California Institutional Report ......voter education partner for the...

Dominican University of CaliforniaInstitutional Report for Reaffirmation

Submitted to the WASC Senior College and University CommissionSeptember 2017

50 Acacia Avenue San Rafael, CA 94901

dominican.edu

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Institutional Report for WSCUC Reaffirmation

Dominican University of California, September 2017

TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Introduction: Institutional Context; Response to Previous Commission Actions .................................. 2

2. Compliance with Standards ...................................................................................................................... 12

3. Degree Programs: Meaning, Quality, and Integrity of Degrees ............................................................. 15

DEFINING THE MEANING OF THE DOMINICAN DEGREE ....................................................................15

ENSURING THE QUALITY AND INTEGRITY OF THE DOMINICAN DEGREE ......................................... 17

AREAS FOR FURTHER DEVELOPMENT ............................................................................................... 26

4. Educational Quality: Student Learning, Core Competencies, and Standards of Performance at

Graduation ......................................................................................................................................................... 27

UNDERGRADUATE LEARNING: GENERAL EDUCATION STUDENT LEARNING OUTCOMES AND CORE COMPETENCIES .......................................................................................................................... 27

ADDITIONAL COMPETENCY SPECIFIC TO DOMINICAN ...................................................................... 31

GRADUATE LEARNING: INITIAL TO DEVELOPED PROGRAMS ........................................................... 33

FACULTY DEVELOPMENT IN SUPPORT OF STUDENT LEARNING ..................................................... 35


5. Student Success: Student Learning, Retention, & Graduation .............................................................. 37

RETENTION AND GRADUATION: WHAT WE KNOW ........................................................................... 37

GRADUATION RATE DASHBOARD ...................................................................................................... 38

STUDENT SUCCESS: ACADEMIC SUPPORT SERVICES ........................................................................ 39

STUDENT SUCCESS: PSYCHOSOCIAL DEVELOPMENT AND LEARNING ............................................ 42

AREA FOR FURTHER DEVELOPMENT ................................................................................................. 46

6. Quality Assurance & Improvement: Program Review; Assessment; Use of Data & Evidence ............ 47

QUALITY ASSURANCE AND IMPROVEMENT ...................................................................................... 47

PROGRAM REVIEW .............................................................................................................................. 49

ASSESSMENT OF STUDENT LEARNING ............................................................................................... 50

USE OF DATA AND EVIDENCE...............................................................................................................51

AREAS FOR FURTHER DEVELOPMENT ................................................................................................51

7. Sustainability: Planning for the Changing Higher Education Environment; Ensuring Financial

Viability .............................................................................................................................................................. 53

SUSTAINABILITY: PLANNING FOR A CHANGING ENVIRONMENT ..................................................... 53

SUSTAINABILITY: ALIGNMENT AND FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT ..................................................... 54

SUSTAINABILITY: FISCAL HEALTH ...................................................................................................... 58


8. Conclusion: Reflection and Plans for Improvement ............................................................................... 64

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1. Introduction: Institutional Context; Response to Previous Commission Actions (CFRs 1.1, 1.8)

This essay provides a snapshot, an overview, of Dominican University of California (Dominican) as it approached its WASC Senior College and University Commission (WSCUC) review. Brief descriptions detail Dominican’s background and history, its academic organization, and some points of distinction along with contributions to the public good and diversity efforts. Additionally, overviews of capacity and leadership and transitions therein are provided, as well as a précis on the response to previous WSCUC reviews and preparation for this review.

BACKGROUND AND HISTORY

Dominican College was founded in 1890 by the Dominican Sisters of San Rafael, and in 1917 became the first Catholic college in California to grant the BA degree to women. Since 1969, Dominican’s ownership and operation has belonged entirely to a lay Board of Trustees, and the institution has operated as an independent university. Originally established as a women’s college, Dominican became fully coeducational in 1971. In 2000, the College became Dominican University of California and its mission reflects this university status. Dominican has been accredited by WSCUC since 1949.

SCHOOLS AND PROGRAMS

As of fall 2016, Dominican had 110 full-time faculty and approximately 375 adjunct faculty members organized across four schools offering a broad range of undergraduate and graduate degree programs to 1,843 students. In 2017, this four-school structure was revised to a simpler three-school structure, both to conserve resources and to strengthen leadership and cross-disciplinary relationships. Dominican has a 10:1 student-to-faculty ratio, an average class size of 14, and provides both the

Mission Statement Dominican University of California educates and prepares students to be ethical leaders and socially responsible global citizens who incorporate the Dominican values of study, reflection, community, and service into their lives. Guided by its Catholic heritage, the University is committed to diversity, sustainability, and the integration of the liberal arts, the sciences, and professional programs.

[Cite your source here.]

SCHOOLS

Liberal Arts and Education Barowsky School of Business Health and Natural Sciences

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personal attention associated with smaller schools with the academic resources and global opportunities associated with larger universities. The current teaching load for full-time tenured/tenure-track faculty is 4/3 (12 and 9 units) with an additional 3 units (one course) release time for scholarly and/or creative publication (24 units in total). The exception is the Barowsky School of Business, where tenured/tenure-track faculty receive an additional 3 units per year of research release time as they build toward initial accreditation by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB). In 2015-16, a total of 316 bachelor degrees (BA: 131, BS: 177, BFA: 8), 164 master’s degrees (MA: 7, MS: 98, MBA: 59), and 47 MSED with Teacher Preparations were conferred to Dominican graduates.

STUDENT COMPOSITION

As of fall 2016, Dominican’s enrollment included 1,391 undergraduates and 452 graduate students for a total of 1,843 headcount with 1,326 and 445 full-time equivalent (FTE) respectively. For undergraduate students, 27% are male, 73% are female. For graduate students, 26% are male, 74% female. Additionally, within the undergraduate level, 107 students are in the Adult Degree Completion (ADC) program, contributing approximately 8% of the undergraduate student population. Among the three schools, the highest student population (unduplicated) rests in the School of Health and Natural Sciences (947 FTE), followed by the School of Liberal Arts and Education (581 FTE), with the Barowsky School of Business (211 FTE) rounding out the overall student enrollment. As of fall 2016, Dominican’s student ethnicity profile was White (39.9%), Asian American (20.8%), Hispanic (17.5%), African American (4.4%), Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander (1.4%), Native American (0.6%), two or more races (6.1%), international (1.5%), and the remaining unknown (7.8%). Also as of fall 2016, 24 international students from 17 countries were enrolled at Dominican accounting for 1.3% of its student population. Domestically, Dominican draws its undergraduate students from all of California’s counties, with the highest draw from Marin (15.0%), San Mateo (9.9%), Sonoma (8.9%), Contra Costa (8.5%) and Alameda (7.7%). For graduate students, the draw composition is similar with students attending from the counties of Marin (37.4%), Sonoma (16.2%), San Francisco (9.0%), and Alameda (7.2%). The average age for undergraduate students is 22 years; for graduate students, 34 years.

FACULTY AND STAFF COMPOSITION

Of the 110 full-time faculty as of fall 2016, 79 (72%) hold a terminal degree in their field with 19 (17%) holding a master’s degree. The proportion of male to female for full-time faculty is 53% to 42% (5% null), and for part-time faculty it is 27% and 60% respectively (13% null). Dominican’s full-time faculty ethnicity profile is White (73.6%), Asian American (0.07%), Hispanic (0.03%), African American (0.05%), and the remaining unknown (11.8%). Of the full-

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time faculty, 44 (40.0%) were tenured, 31 (28.1%) were tenure-track, 29 (26.4%) were term, and 6 (0.05%) were librarians. Of the tenured faculty, 14 held the rank of associate professor with 30 holding the rank of professor. Total staff at Dominican totals 324, with 166 (51.2%) employed as full-time employees and 158 (48.8%) as part-time. For full-time employees, the male to female ratio is approximately 1:2, and the highest ethnic representations include Caucasian and Hispanic.

POINTS OF DISTINCTION

Dominican is ranked 245 out of 1,061 institutions across the United States in The Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education College Rankings 2017. The ranking draws on 15 performance indicators to create an overall score that reflects the broad strength of the institution. These indicators explore, for example, whether the student body is diverse, challenged, and engaged; whether graduates find satisfying jobs and earn competitive salaries; and whether a college provides a supportive learning environment for all students. Data sources include the Times Higher Education (THE) U.S. Student Survey of 100,000 current U.S. students, and the annual THE Academic Reputation Survey of 10,000 scholars, along with public data on a range of areas, including the salaries graduates earn and completion rates. For six years in a row, U.S. News & World Report has ranked Dominican as one of the top universities in the West. Dominican ranked 38 out of 57 in the top tier, which also includes Santa Clara University, Gonzaga University, Sonoma State University, San Francisco State University, and California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. Most recently, a study published by The Equality of Opportunity Project indicated that Dominican is one of the top colleges among its peers showing success in helping transform lower-income students into higher-income wage earners. With regard to students who were from the bottom fifth of incomes as students and moved to the top fifth as adults, Dominican placed 11th out of 578 colleges in the peer category of selective private colleges. Dominican placed 14th out of 161 California colleges and 74th out of 2,137 public and private colleges nationwide in this measure. Fifty-three percent of Dominican students who come from families in the bottom fifth of incomes moved to the top fifth of incomes as adults, according to the study examining colleges as engines of upward mobility. The study provides comprehensive statistical analysis for students aged 18-22 enrolled in more than 2,000 American colleges, using anonymized tax records covering college students from 1999 to 2013. The study also showed that Dominican was in the top quarter of national universities for median student income at age 34.

http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/

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CONTRIBUTING TO THE PUBLIC GOOD

Community engagement is central to Dominican’s mission and is an essential component of the University’s broader focus on engaged learning, which incorporates active, collaborative learning in the classroom with enriching educational experiences beyond the classroom. In 2014, Dominican was among five colleges and universities chosen from nearly 100 nominations to receive 2015 Higher Education Civic Engagement Awards presented by The Washington Center and the New York Life Foundation. The Washington Center for Internships and Academic Seminars, in partnership with the New York Life Foundation, established this award to celebrate institutions in the higher education community that are reaching beyond their own campuses to achieve sustainable civic impact. The award aims to highlight, in particular, innovation and leadership in forging partnerships beyond the campus to define and address issues of public concern, whether at the local, regional, or international level. Recipients were chosen based upon their leadership and innovation in civic engagement. Dominican was selected to receive the 2015 Community Engagement Classification from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in recognition of the University’s exemplary institutional focus on community engagement. According to the Carnegie Foundation, Dominican was selected as a result of the University’s “excellent alignment among campus mission, culture, leadership, resources, and practices that support dynamic and noteworthy community engagement.” In January 2017, Dominican presented its work on College Debate 2016 (CD16) at the annual meeting of the American Association of Colleges & Universities (AAC&U). College Debate 16 was a national, non-partisan social media program designed to empower young voters to identify issues and help influence the national debate during the U.S. presidential election. As a voter education partner for the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD), Dominican developed and led CD16. One hundred forty-seven college students from colleges nationwide served as CD16 delegates and came to Dominican’s campus in June 2016 for a convening that focused on civil discourse and online/digital citizenship. The students returned to campus in early September 2016 for a Convention and Town Hall that resulted in six questions that were forwarded to the moderators of the official CPD presidential debates with hopes that the moderators might use one of the questions. Link: College Debate 2016

DIVERSITY EFFORTS

Dominican’s Diversity Declaration begins, “Dominican declares its commitment to diversity and the fulfillment of its educational mission is best achieved when every member of the University community upholds in thought, word, and deed E Pluribus Unum; Ut Unum Sint (Out of many, one; that all may be one).” The Office of Diversity and Equity advances the institution’s

http://collegedebate16.org/

http://www.debates.org/


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commitment to diversity through an annual series of professional development sessions open to all faculty and staff. In recent years, sessions have focused on developing comfort with difference in the classroom, integrating current global events into the syllabus, diversity hiring practices training, and LGBT “Safe Zone” training. The Office consults on hiring and search committees as well as confidential matters related to diversity and equity brought forward by members of the campus community. The Diversity Action Group, comprising student, faculty, and staff representatives, works collaboratively with the Office to organize the annual Unity in Diversity events series. Unity in Diversity includes a student-produced workshop, a keynote address, and the bestowal of the Melba Beals Awards for Excellence in Diversity, named for Dominican Chair Emerita of Communications and Media Studies Melba Beals, a member of the 1957 Little Rock Nine, Little Rock Central High School, Arkansas. Link: Office of Diversity and Equity

OVERVIEW OF CAPACITY AND INFRASTRUCTURE

The campus facilities specific to teaching and learning include 219,743 gross square feet, with the academic core comprising 13 acres. In recent years, two significant renovations occurred that meaningfully improved student learning space: the Archbishop Alemany Library (lobby enhancement) and Meadowlands Hall. Other major capital projects include Albertus Magnus Hall, Guzman Student Lounge, off-campus student townhome housing, Edgehill Mansion, Kennelly Field, and the softball field – the latter three funded through philanthropic gifts, as were Meadowlands and the Library. In November 2012, President Mary B. Marcy announced an $8 million-plus gift from the Rolf Lewis Family—at that point, the largest gift in Dominican’s history. The renovation of the 30,000-square-foot Meadowlands Hall enabled Dominican to establish a health sciences building that houses the Department of Nursing and the Department of Occupational Therapy—tripling the amount of square footage dedicated to the two programs. Prior to the renovation, the two programs occupied five different buildings across campus. Meadowlands now provides classroom, research, and laboratory space for the departments’ activities, which combine education and research with the provision of services to the community. The renovation also expanded the space dedicated to medical simulation laboratories so that students gain clinical experience in a risk-free virtual reality environment. The Department of Nursing is Dominican’s single largest academic program, with enrollment of almost 500 undergraduate students. Founded in 1996, the Department of Occupational Therapy is one of Dominican’s fastest growing departments, with an enrollment of 190 undergraduate and graduate students.

http://www.dominican.edu/about/leadership/office-of-academic-affairs-1/diversity

http://www.dominican.edu/academics/hns/nursing

http://www.dominican.edu/academics/hns/ot

http://www.dominican.edu/academics/hns/ot

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Information and Technology Services The main Student Information System (SIS) is PowerCampus, an Ellucian product. In order to improve system functionality, it has been determined through various meetings internally and with vendors that Dominican will eventually move to a new SIS; however, the University is not positioned currently to make the large-scale migration. Currently, additional software systems are being explored and potential benefits are being weighed against costs of additional systems and integrations. Over summer 2016, Dominican migrated its Learning Management System (LMS), Moodle, to a cloud-based platform and this is being managed by eThink. The move provides several benefits to include up-to-date software, improved gradebook, in-depth reporting features, expanded faculty access to support services, and better coordination of data between the University’s internal systems and Moodle. All Dominican courses are provided a Moodle shell, with approximately 11 courses (1.35%) delivered hybrid and 3 courses (0.37%) delivered fully online as of spring 2017.

LEADERSHIP AND TRANSITIONS

As of fall 2017, the president is in her seventh year at Dominican, and the vice president for academic affairs is in her fourth year in this capacity, previously serving three years as an academic dean for the former School of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (now the School of Liberal Arts and Education). The associate vice president for academic planning is in her sixth year, adding to the leadership stability within the academic affairs unit. Between the 2014 interim report and the 2017 reaffirmation review, senior leadership vacancies occurred and were filled for the vice presidents of advancement, finance and administration, and enrollment management. Additionally, with the departure of two school deans (one to retirement and one to a provost position) and the restructuring of the four to three schools, the three academic school deans share leadership responsibilities with deans from the library, general studies, diversity and equity, and student life. The former senior advisor to the president accepted the role of vice president for public affairs and university relations—a reorganization that allows for a more direct oversight of the marketing division and a close working relationship with the admissions office. Finally, the dean of the Dominican Experience also serves as an associate vice president for academic affairs, and is in her third year leading the Dominican Experience—an educational model designed to provide all students with an education that purposefully integrates high-impact practices with academics and student support services.

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RESPONSE TO PREVIOUS WSCUC REVIEWS

As a follow-up to the Educational Effectiveness Review visit in 2010, Dominican was asked by the Commission to address four issues over the course of two interim reports (2013 and 2014). The issues were: 1) implementation of the strategic plan, 2) increase of tenure-track faculty and support staff, 3) improved financial management, and 4) diversification of revenue streams. In response to the last interim report (2014), the March 27, 2015, Commission letter noted that the “quality and directness of the responses with a provision for all requested materials was greatly appreciated by the panel” and that “the panel, again, reaffirms the diligent work and important steps Dominican University of California has taken to address these issues.” Updates are summarized below and extended narratives in Component 7 are mapped to the previous Educational Effectiveness Review (EER) Commission Action Letter (2010) and two Interim Report Panel Letters (2013, 2014). Implementation of the Strategic Plan (2008 CFRs 4.1, 4.2, 4.3; 2013 CFRs 4.6, 4.7) The current campus planning work, Dominican at 130 (as the University will be 130 years old in academic year 2020-21), grew out of the 2011-15 Strategic Plan, approved in 2010. The 2011-15 Strategic Plan successfully established goals for the University, and—as with all strategic plans—required adjustment based on evolving analysis and market conditions. In hindsight, however, the plan also highlighted the challenge of overly prescriptive (and sometimes contradictory) goals, and the need for more focused and nuanced planning. From the nine central categories of the 2011-15 Strategic Plan and the multiple initiatives under each, the University has in recent years narrowed its focus to those initiatives that were truly strategic, academic in nature, and university-wide. Dominican at 130 focuses on three strategic initiatives that emerged from the 2011-15 Strategic Plan and from years of cross-campus collaboration and planning efforts: the Dominican Experience, curriculum alignment, and targeted enrollment management and program innovation. See Table 1.1 for the 2011-15 Strategic Plan initiatives by their current status. Increase of Tenure-Track Faculty and Support Staff (2008 CFRs 2.1, 3.2; 2013 CFRs 2.1, 3.1) As adjustments to enrollment are focused on emphasizing sustainability and quality as primary goals, rather than net growth, Dominican continues to build on the strength and diversity of its faculty and support staff through the intentional campus planning process for curricular redesign that will result in changes to faculty and student—and in some cases, staff—workload, producing more manageable teaching loads for full-time faculty and continued stability in the numbers of tenure-track faculty lines. This redesign will result in raising the University’s student-to-faculty ratio, which has slipped over recent years to approach a financially and pedagogically unsustainable 9:1, back to the median ratio for institutions in Dominican’s Carnegie group, 14:1. One effect of this revision will be to reduce overreliance on part-time faculty. Additionally, the University is in year three of implementing its Term Faculty Policy—which outlines the university’s commitment to full external/national searches when a line is converted from full-time term to tenure-track, not only when a new tenure-track line is added. Finally, over summer 2017, parameters, tools, and an ambitious one-year timeline for faculty to

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undertake systemic curriculum alignment work were developed. These build on inclusive and systematic previous work to generate campus-wide learning outcomes, a signature educational model, and a full program review of the General Education curriculum. Data modeling and peer institution research resulted in the additional recommendation of moving from a 3-unit based to a 4-unit based undergraduate curriculum—thus minimizing the impact of increased class sizes on faculty workload, maintaining the number of full-time faculty as constant, as well as fostering more reflective student learning. Table 1.1 Dominican University of California: 2011-15 Strategic Plan Outcomes

ACHIEVED BEYOND SCOPE OF

2011-15 PLAN EXCEEDED GOALS ACCOMPLISHED

ONGOING/IN DEVELOPMENT

REVISED AFTER FURTHER ANALYSIS

*Community Engagement Theme *University Scholarly and Creative Conference ● Meadowlands

Renovation ● Student

retention and persistence improvement

● Budget management

● Guzman student lounge and classroom upgrades

● Allen Athletics Complex

● Institutional Learning Outcomes

● National Visibility

*Student life enhancement (e.g., Rec Sports, ASDU governance) ● Broaden donor

cultivation ● Capital projects

fundraising ● Enhance library ● Assess market

and implement new programs

● Implement assessment practices

*First-Year Experience *General Education program ● Expand

international students

● Full-time faculty growth

● NCAA Division II athletics

● Website enhancement

● Reward professional development and professional contributions

*Student career and life planning *Engaged learning experiences for all students *Alumni Mentorship ● AACSB

accreditation ● Current

technology and instructional facilities

● Campus Master Plan

● Campus-wide greening project

*Enrollment growth and retention plan ● Academic

quality improvement (i.e. accreditation by program)

● Expand off-campus academic offerings

● Implement data and performance measurement systems

● Develop new online academic programs

● Responsibility Center Management (RCM)

*Element of the Dominican Experience

Improved Financial Management (2008 CFRs 3.5, 3.8, 4.2; 2013 CFRs 3.4, 3.7, 4.7) Since our last comprehensive review, Dominican reported five consecutive annual operating surpluses from FY11 through FY15; in recent years, only the FY16 budget has closed with a modest deficit, and the University again began FY17 with a Board-approved plan for a balanced budget. The fact that Dominican has achieved multiple consecutive years of balanced budgets, with most resulting in strong surpluses at year’s end, can be attributed to sound budget management and fiscal responsibility at all levels of the University. Dominican was able to maintain a surplus even with a slight 3% overall enrollment decline in FY14, due to the

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development of a conservative budget with built-in contingencies, and a strong budget management process with both centralized and decentralized budget monitoring.

In alignment with the series of strong operating surpluses over the last several years, cash reserves grew from $8.9 million in FY13 to $11.5 million in FY14 during a major fundraising campaign to $8.8 million in FY17, and no new borrowing has been needed. Adding this strength to the balance sheet has improved Dominican’s financial ratios and stability. Financial ratios provide useful indicators of overall financial strength and health of an institution. The liquidity ratio attempts to measure an institution’s ability to pay off its short-term debt obligations. In general, the greater the coverage of liquid assets to short term liabilities, the better it is as a clear signal that a company can pay its debts that are coming due in the near future and still fund its ongoing operations. Currently, Dominican has a liquidity ratio of 1.43. Debt service coverage ratio is a benchmark used in the measurement of an institution’s ability to produce enough cash to cover its debt payments. With our direct placement refinanced loans, Dominican is required to have a debt-service coverage ration not less than 1.20x (on an annual basis). Currently, the debt service coverage ratio is 3.09x. In addition, the Department of Education Financial Responsibility Composite Score measures the financial stability of institution participating in the Title IV federal student assistance programs based on three financial ratios (primary reserve ratio, equity ratio, and net income ratio) that are converted to a composite score with 1 being the lowest score possible and 3 being highest achievable score. As part of A-133 Compliance Ratio, the composite score of at least 1.5 must be maintained by the institution in order to participate in any Title IV or Higher Education Act programs. Currently, Dominican has a 2.55 composite score. Finally, Dominican has received clean audits for three successive years with no significant deficiencies or material weaknesses. Diversification of Revenue Streams (2008 CFR 3.5; 2013 CFR 3.4) In the past five years, Dominican has more than doubled its annual revenue from sources other than non-enrollment driven revenue. The University has seen particular growth in income from non-credit bearing educational programs. In Advancement, as in enrollment and academic programs, the focus has been on building sustainable depth and quality, and on not overreaching in the quest for short-term gains but rather, proceeding planfully. Some of the most significant accomplishments in fundraising and donor-base development in Dominican’s history have occurred since our most recent WSCUC review. Two successive gifts each broke by some distance the University’s previous record for single donations. Further seven-figure gifts from individual donors and foundations have since followed. Dominican is also addressing the nationwide downward trend in annual giving by bringing back phone solicitation after a nine-year break; creating a video appeal by email (May 2017); and conducting the campus’s first-ever Day of Giving in March 2017. As the University looks forward to 2017-18, Dominican will be building on those strategies.

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PREPARATION FOR THE REVIEW

The preparation for the reaffirmation review began following the March 2015 Commission Action Letter in response to the second interim report since the 2010 Educational Effectiveness Review. For the remainder of 2014-15 and into 2015-16, Dominican engaged in ongoing strategic planning, managed the growth of full-time faculty lines while entering into first-time collective bargaining with adjunct faculty, continued the University’s financial management work, and continued to address its diversification of revenue streams. In spring 2016, the vice president for academic affairs, in consultation with faculty leadership, identified members for a steering committee to direct the campus’s reaffirmation process. The Steering Committee’s members, a cross-section of faculty, staff, and administrators, met regularly to review the timeline, create five working groups to align with the report’s five core sections, identify working group members and co-chairs, and agree to ways of work. In fall 2016, the Working Groups began their study by developing lines of inquiry in order to explore and develop their sections. A shared internal Google site, serving as a centralized location for information related to the reaffirmation process, was created and made available not only to the Steering Committee and Working Group members, but to the entire campus community as well. Inquiry lines were explored in fall 2016, with section narratives drafted by winter 2017. In February 2017, the Board reflected on Dominican’s accreditation history and its current elements as part of the strategic direction of the University. Also during spring 2017, and based on the Working Groups’ narratives, the faculty lead writer developed a synthesized draft of the self-study report. Over the course of several weeks, the draft self-study report was made available to the campus community for review and comment. In April 2017, the Steering Committee met to discuss the campus comments, and the faculty lead writer incorporated and revised as appropriate the self-study report based on campus input. In May 2017, the final self-study report was presented to the president for review and to the Board of Trustees for review and approval. Link: Dominican University 2017-18 WSCUC Reaffirmation

https://sites.google.com/a/dominican.edu/2017-18-wscuc-reaffirmation/

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2. Compliance with Standards: Review under the WSCUC Standards and Compliance with Federal Requirements; Inventory of Educational

Effectiveness Indicators When the WSCUC site visit team visited Dominican in 2010 as part of the Educational Effectiveness Review, the campus community was on the verge of leadership changes that would bring a new vision and direction for the University. As a result, the Dominican community has been able to assess its work and recalibrate its direction based on data-driven decision-making and cross-collaboration efforts. As the University prepared to engage the campus community in the larger self-study process for its fall 2017 Offsite Review and its spring 2018 Accreditation Visit, Dominican’s first step in the process, after assembling the Steering Committee, was to complete the Review under the WSCUC Standards worksheet by a broad cross section of faculty and staff. Groups that completed the worksheet included each of the five Working Groups (Standards 2 and 4; additional Standards by applicable Criteria for Review), the Council of Academic Deans (Standards 1 and 3), and the Faculty Forum leadership (Standards 1 and 3). The mode for each numeric and letter designation was calculated, along with a synthesis of the comments. Evidence was included in the appropriate table cells, and the Steering Committee reviewed the representative and compiled worksheet before it was presented to the Board for their review. The Office of Assessment, along with academic program chairs and directors, completed the Inventory of Educational Effectiveness Indicators; and the Office of Academic Affairs audited and then completed the Compliance with Federal Requirements forms.

AREAS OF STRENGTH

Standard 1. Strengths in defining institutional purposes and ensuring educational objectives include clearly defined statements of purpose and are now captured and demonstrated through the newly approved institutional learning outcomes (ILOs). Dominican remains consistent with its character in demonstrating a commitment to diversity through its data collection, polices, and procedures for all campus members. Additionally, Dominican is committed to open and honest communication with WSCUC, as evidenced by its last comprehensive reports, the two interim reports, and this current report. (CFRs 1.1, 1.2, 1.4, 1.7, 1.8) Standard 2. In achieving educational objectives through core functions, Dominican recognizes that the added rigor of its educational programs comes not only from internal initiatives for improvement, but from external reviewers and accreditation expectations also. Since the last review, Dominican has put in place new ILOs, developed by faculty and staff, that have been aligned to the program learning outcomes and subsequently the course learning outcomes. Dominican also clearly defines expectations for research, scholarship, and creative activity for its students and faculty, and for faculty, their work in linking research, scholarship, and creative

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activity with the assessment for and of student learning is supported through faculty development opportunities and the institutional research, assessment, and academic affairs offices. (CFRs 2.2, 2.2a, 2.2b, 2.3, 2.4, 2.8, 2.9) Standard 3. Dominican is efficiently and effectively able to develop and apply its resources and organizational structures in order to ensure quality and sustainability through a committed and dedicated faculty and staff who are diverse in their professional qualifications and sufficient in number. Numerous opportunities are available and open to faculty and staff. Significant improvements to data integrity and data use to drive decision-making have been made since the last visit, and these efforts are supported in the budget decision-making process by academic leadership and the Board of Trustees. (CFRs 3.1, 3.3, 3.4, 3.5, 3.9, 3.10) Standard 4. Finally, Dominican is actively creating an organization committed to quality assurance, institutional learning, and improvement as it continues to grow and support its culture of evidence-based decision-making by administrators, faculty, and staff. Dominican has financially demonstrated its capacity to support these efforts through a well-trained institutional research office and the assessment office. The faculty take ownership in the ongoing exploration of teaching and learning and use those findings to inform changes to their courses, programs, and/or pedagogy. Perhaps one of its most relevant current strengths is that Dominican is proactively addressing the changes occurring in higher education and the impact those changes are having and will have on the institution moving forward, through distinctive programs such as the Dominican Experience. (CFRs 4.2, 4.3, 4.5, 4.7)

AREAS TO BE ADDRESSED OR IMPROVED

Standard 1. While there are strengths in defining institutional purposes and ensuring educational objectives, there remains room for improvement in the areas of diversity and in allowing time for the full implementation of the new ILOs across not only the undergraduate degree level, but the graduate degree level also. Within the context of the students Dominican serves and the geographic region it is located in, one of the most highly diverse in the country, updating the current Diversity Declaration remains an area to be addressed in the future. While transparency has greatly improved since the last review, communication of new policies, implementation of procedures, and a process to allow for broader support of the operational functions of the University is an ongoing work in progress. (CFRs 1.2, 1.4, 1.7) Standard 2. As Dominican continues to move in the direction of achieving its educational objectives through core functions, the inquiry and focus on the breadth of the GE curriculum across all programs is underway through a robust program and external review. Using the findings of the program review to elevate and integrate GE through both the lower and upper division (major) will be ongoing over the next few years. While the ILOs have been developed, integrating them seamlessly at the program and course levels also remains a work in progress because of their relative newness. Lastly, while capacity has been put in place for systematic program review and annual assessment reporting, time will be needed for a full cycle of

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academic and co-curricular program reviews to occur using direct assessment methods and student achievement data that serves as evidence of student success. (CFRs 2.2a, 2.3, 2.7, 2.10)

Standard 3. Dominican’s faculty and staff are some of the most dedicated professionals who strive to ensure that the University is efficiently and effectively able to develop and apply its resources and organization structures in order to ensure quality and sustainability. The alignment of available resources, specific to recruitment, hiring, and workload—challenges faced by institutions similar in size, location, and mission—remains an area for ongoing discussion through shared governance. And although roles and responsibility lines are visible in day-to-day operations, communicating changes and lines of authority could be improved going forward. (CFRs 3.2, 3.4, 3.7)

Standard 4. Finally, in its forward-thinking and proactive efforts to actively create an organization committed to quality assurance, institutional learning, and improvement, Dominican is in the initial and emerging phases of systematic quality assurance processes for its support units and reviews of its non-academic areas. Linked to the larger strategic planning process, evaluation will be needed of the support units that contribute to the teaching and learning occurring within the academic programs. Engaging appropriate stakeholders, alumni, employers, and practitioners into the strategic position and planning process of the institution will contribute to the long-term effectiveness and sustainability of Dominican. (CFRs 4.1, 4.5, 4.6)

ISSUES THAT EMERGED FROM THE SELF-REVIEW

When Dominican began to plan for its current WSCUC reaffirmation review over two years ago, the campus community, while committed and willing, did not include many members who had directly participated in the last comprehensive review (formerly the Capacity and Preparatory Review followed by the Educational Effectiveness Review) or had exposure to the new review model of the Offsite Review followed by the Accreditation Visit. Through a systematic “divide and conquer” approach, the completion of the worksheets allowed not only for a reflective and introspective look into strengths, areas of attention, or items that need significant development, but it also allowed the campus community to then order the items by importance—levels defined as high, medium, or low. The Steering Committee and the five Working Groups, comprising faculty and staff, facilitated substantive, sometimes difficult discussions of important issues facing Dominican. As it has during the two-year self-study process, Dominican will continue to rely on widely consultative planning and consensus-building techniques to maintain its direction as it moves forward remaining true to its mission, values, and goals.

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3. Degree Programs: Meaning, Quality, and Integrity of Degrees (CFRs 1.2, 2.2-2.4, 2.6, 2.7, 4.3)

Dominican University of California has worked to define what its degrees mean to the students who earn them and to ensure the experiences that make up those degrees maintain quality and rigor. This inquiry and conversation is guided by both committed new staff and faculty with fresh ideas and equally committed veterans with the long view of the institution. For the past two years this community—faculty and staff—has engaged in sincere study, vigorous conversation and debate, reflection, and writing about the meaning of its degree programs. Integral to ensuring the quality and integrity of the degrees is the Dominican Experience, which comprises integrative coaching, digital portfolio, community engagement and signature work.

DEFINING THE MEANING OF THE DOMINICAN DEGREE

Institutional Learning Outcomes The meaning, quality, and integrity of the degree, both undergraduate and graduate, at Dominican are defined through Dominican’s Institutional Learning Outcomes (ILOs). These outcomes closely model the Essential Learning Outcomes defined by the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) and include WSCUC’s five core competencies. Though the outcomes are informed by national consensus on what matters for student learning, Dominican’s ILOs also reflect the University’s commitment to whole student development. This commitment is demonstrated by the inclusion of a set of outcomes related to “cultivation of well-being.” Guided by the Degree Qualifications Profile that suggests the utility of aligning outcomes across degree levels, particularly baccalaureate and master’s levels, Dominican explicitly indicates in the opening statement of the ILO document that these outcomes are intended to be met at appropriate levels of proficiency by “every Dominican graduate.” Link: ILOs on University Public Website Link: ILOs Internal Campus Google Site

The development of the ILOs took place over the course of approximately one year, from April 2015 to March 2016. In March 2016, the ILOs were successfully passed by a majority vote of both faculty and staff. The process of development was intentionally iterative and inclusive. Initial brainstorming and framing for the ILOs occurred through a series of workshops with faculty and staff, and with a small focus group of students in April 2015. The broad categories from AAC&U Essential Learning Outcomes were used as guides for the conversations. Feedback from sessions illustrated an expanse of outcomes under each category, and included outcomes

http://www.dominican.edu/about/institutional-learning-outcomes

https://sites.google.com/a/dominican.edu/campus-planning-2015-2016/institutional-slos?pli=1

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related to well-being. A working group comprising faculty from each of Dominican’s schools and a staff member was organized to work over summer 2015 to form an initial draft of ILOs. Starting in September 2015, separate feedback sessions were held for faculty and staff to comment on the initial draft. Comments were also gathered from students. Additionally, an internal website was created where faculty and staff could submit comments anonymously. A representative ILO committee of faculty and the dean of students (to represent staff) was organized to synthesize information from all feedback provided and to create a second draft of the ILO statement. To increase inclusiveness in the process, the ILO committee did not include anyone from the original working group that created the first draft. A second draft ILO statement was released in October 2015, followed by another round of feedback sessions with faculty, staff, and students. Once again, feedback was discussed and synthesized by the ILO committee and a third draft was released in November 2015. Following the release of the third draft, smaller conversations were held with academic departments and staff to get a sense of whether this draft reflected the qualities of a final draft and therefore could be put to a vote. A spreadsheet was also created and posted to the internal website, showing the alignment of the draft ILOs with every professionally accredited program at Dominican, in addition to the WSCUC core competencies, and also outcomes for a number of pre-professional programs (e.g., pharmaceutical programs, pre-law, and pre-med). Presentations were also made to members of Dominican’s Faculty Forum to ensure all faculty were aware of the progress of the ILOs, the website for comments, and the outcomes alignment spreadsheet. Because no significant or widely held reservations emerged, the third draft of the ILO statement was put to an anonymous electronic vote by all eligible voting faculty and staff. The outcomes were approved by over 80% of those who voted, across both groups.

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The ILOs are visible and relevant in a number of different areas; they are highlighted on Dominican’s public website under the University’s “About” section alongside the Dominican Experience. Additionally, the assessment section of the program review manual and the guidelines for annual assessment reporting have been updated to require that programs address how program outcomes and associated evidence of student learning align with the ILOs. Dominican’s course syllabus template has also been revised to include prescriptive guidelines for the indication of which institutional learning outcomes are being met at the course level. Finally, course evaluations have been revised to include questions regarding outcomes at the course, program, and institutional levels. The new course evaluations were formally approved by faculty in spring 2017.

ENSURING THE QUALITY AND INTEGRITY OF THE DOMINICAN DEGREE

The Dominican Experience

What is the Dominican Experience? Ensuring consistent integrity and quality of the degree is fundamental to Dominican’s commitment to providing all students with the Dominican Experience. The Dominican Experience comprises four core elements: integrative coaching, digital portfolio, community engagement, and signature work. All students at Dominican will experience all four components of the Dominican Experience, providing all students, regardless of proclivity or major areas of study, similar support, tools, and experiences by which to succeed. It is important to note that although it is expected that all students will participate in all components of the Dominican Experience, the specific manner in which these components are carried out and implemented within academic departments and accompanying curricula will be determined through existing shared governance processes and procedures. Link: Dominican Experience Website

Integrative coaching complements the existing advising structure within academic departments and expands the scope of

commitment under Dominican’s Academic Advising and Achievement Center. Our integrative coaching model provides every student with an integrative coach – an individual who serves as a resource and guide for students across their time at Dominican. Although integrative coaches do initial placement of students into academic courses in their first year of college, their primary role is to serve as a consistent touchstone for students to consider their aspirations and to encourage reflection on where they have been throughout their college journey. Coaches help students create their education and career plans, guide their use of digital portfolios, facilitate peer and career mentor relationships, and reinforce the threads of the institutional learning outcomes across general education into a student’s chosen major. Integrative coaches also teach two courses that make up the coaching curriculum: “Mastering College” and “Life

http://www.dominican.edu/about/the-dominican-experience

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Skills 101”. Even as a students’ faculty advisors take a greater role in course advising and career guidance, integrative coaches continue to act as another layer of support for students as someone who can answer questions, address concerns, and identify helpful University resources and opportunities. Following the 2017-18 pilot year and formal approval by the faculty, the coaching curriculum is designed to be taken by all students. The curriculum begins in the first semester of college with a 1-unit Mastering College course focused on helping students understand who they are as learners, reflect on their educational goals, and gain skills for success in college (e.g., time management, study skills, awareness of resources and procedures). The curriculum is book-ended by a second 1-unit course, Life Skills 101, in the fourth semester (junior year), focused on helping students to connect and articulate the skills they have acquired in college with their career aspirations and to build the tools necessary for telling their story to prospective employers or graduate school programs (e.g., résumé building, interview preparation, relationship and network development). Within these courses students also receive guidance on the development of their education and career plans. The education plan, finalized as a student enters the sophomore year, is a statement about the student’s intended curricular and co-curricular experiences and how these experiences are connected to the student’s passions for learning and future development. The career plan, finalized in the senior year, is an articulation of a student’s vision for how their learning translates into a career path and the skills (i.e., ILOs) that will help them pursue meaning in their lives and work beyond college. The final component of Dominican’s integrative coaching model is a graduated mentoring program that provides all students with mentors throughout their undergraduate experience. Mentoring begins with a peer mentor (i.e., a trained sophomore, junior, or senior student) in the first and sophomore years, followed by a professional mentor (i.e., a local professional or alumna/us) in the junior and senior years. The structure of the mentor program is intended to match students with someone who can consistently support and guide them as their needs and aspirations change over time, moving from anxieties about getting acquainted to college life (the peer mentor) to developing skills and insights to translate their learning to career skills (the professional mentor). Each student’s development of a digital portfolio begins within the integrative coaching model. Incoming students are trained by their peer mentors on how to design their digital portfolios and share them with their faculty advisors. Digital portfolios at Dominican are intended to be integrated into general education and throughout the major in order to capture students’ learning and reflections over time. Along with other products of learning, students’ education plans, career plans, and signature work (see below) are all housed in a unique digital portfolio. Dominican’s digital portfolio template contains a tab for ILOs, under which students can organize work products aligned with particular learning outcomes to make the value and demonstration of these skills more transparent for graduate school applications, prospective employers, and to students themselves.

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The element of community engagement within the Dominican Experience reflects the University’s long-standing commitment to community and to service as part of its Catholic heritage. This commitment is demonstrated in five key ways across programs and departments at Dominican—service-learning; global learning; internships, clinical placements and fieldwork; project-based learning and teamwork; and community-based research. Under the umbrella of the newly created Center for University Partnerships and Community Engagement, these practices are being aligned to create a more inclusive and coherent narrative of community engagement at Dominican. Finally, the Dominican Experience culminates in the creation of each student’s signature work. Signature work is intended to reflect a work of substance, created over a period of time, and driven by a student’s own inquiry. Signature work begins with a question of a student’s own choosing, guided by faculty and perhaps their professional mentor, and explored through an appropriate medium (e.g., a research paper, policy brief, choreographed dance, painting, business plan).

The Dominican Experience: Where are we now? The implementation of the Dominican Experience has been successful thus far because it builds on existing strengths and practices at the University. The primary challenge for the Dominican Experience in fully reaching its commitment to equity by providing similar pathways for success to all students is in the scaling of practices across all areas of the University. This scaling must also be combined with attention to quality, resources, and communication with faculty and staff. Initial development of the Dominican Experience began in 2013 with university taskforces dedicated to exploring, researching, and articulating particular elements of the Dominican

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Experience. Early components included integrative coaching, digital portfolio, and engaged learning experiences. Component parts of the Dominican Experience were finalized in spring 2015 with articulation of the four elements listed above, where what had previously been defined as “engaged learning” was specified as community engagement and the concept of “signature work” was added. The implementation of the Dominican Experience began with peer mentors in fall 2015. Below are descriptions of the current state of development for each component of the Dominican Experience.

1. Integrative Coaching As of fall 2015, all incoming students work with a peer mentor. Additionally, a pilot of the professional mentors program was launched in 2016-17. For this pilot, junior and senior students in two courses in two academic programs (Business and Communications and Media Studies) were paired with a professional alumna/us mentor. Approximately 60 students are engaged in the pilot. Academic advising is working closely with alumni relations to identify and pair interested alumni with upper-class students. To date, nearly 100 alumni have expressed interest in joining the professional mentor program. Dominican’s first full-time integrative coach was hired in summer 2016 and worked with first-year students in the occupational therapy program through 2016-17 to understand what integrative coaching means at Dominican, help connect students with mentors, and integrate digital portfolio into the occupational therapy major. Three additional part-time integrative advisors have been hired for 2017-2018 to work with the dance (LINES Ballet) BFA program, liberal studies program (Education department), and the global public health program.

2. Digital Portfolio As of fall 2016, all incoming first-year students are instructed to create a digital portfolio through the integrative coaching program. To support first-year students in the development of their portfolio, students receive guidance from peer mentors. In advance of working with incoming students, all peer mentors create a sample digital portfolio utilizing the “Chilly Penguin” (Dominican’s mascot) digital portfolio template. The peer mentors then share their digital portfolios with their mentees. Students use their Dominican Google accounts to create digital portfolios in Google Sites. Through the use of this platform and settings set to “private,” all digital portfolio student work satisfies the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). Developed with collective campus feedback, the digital portfolio Google Site Policy Number 1003 was approved by the University Executive Committee to protect students and the institution. The digital portfolio Google Site Policy was also presented to the Associated Students of Dominican University of California (ASDU). In 2016-17, 149 first-year students (approximately 65% of the first-year class) created digital portfolios. All first-year students who share their digital portfolios receive feedback the Digital Portfolio Specialist in the form of one positive comment on the student’s portfolio content so far and also one suggestion on how to further the development of their digital portfolio.

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To improve upon the 2016-17 baseline implementation, academic departments and programs have been invited to be part of a digital portfolio pilot for 2017-18. To incentivize participation, departments and programs have been offered small stipends to consider the role of digital portfolios within the major, how portfolios can be used to aid advising, and to encourage collaboration among faculty within academic units. Faculty representing fifteen different departments and academic programs have identified at least one course to be part of the pilot program. The following programs and majors will be piloting digital portfolios in 2017-18: Art, Art History, and Design; Business; Communications and Media Studies; Counseling Psychology; First Year Experience “Big History”; Global Public Health; Honors Program; Humanities and Cultural Studies; International Studies and Political Science; Literature and Languages; Mathematics; Nursing; Occupational Therapy; Psychology; and Service-Learning. Though not formally part of the pilot, the Education department has been using digital portfolios as part of their curriculum for the past six years and will serve as a resource for faculty in other departments. Library faculty are also supporting the digital portfolio pilot. Following assessment and discussion of lessons learned from the digital portfolio pilot, the goal is for nearly all departments and programs to engage in some way with digital portfolios—through advising, integration with courses, and course or program assessment—by spring 2019. Link: Digital Portfolio Site with Tutorials

3. Community Engagement A critical resource for community engagement is occurring through the development of the Center for University Partnerships and Community Engagement. An advisory council, formed in fall 2016, comprises faculty from all three schools at Dominican (with two faculty representing the School of Health and Natural Sciences and two faculty representing the School of Liberal Arts and Education). The director of service-learning, the director of the global education office, and the dean of the Dominican Experience also serve on the council. Council members serve three-year terms and will eventually be joined by community partners and students. The council has developed mission and vision statements for the Center. During 2016-17, the council provided input on the development and finalization of the Center’s website; established shared goals for working with community partners; and began to develop a plan for faculty and staff development around best practices for community engagement and resource alignment. Link: Center for University Partnerships and Community Engagement

A grant from the Mellon Foundation has provided additional support for community engagement by funding the efforts of approximately 50 faculty to revise course syllabi around practices and outcomes related to community engagement. To date, 25 revised syllabi have been collected. All revised syllabi, created as part of the “Community

http://www.dominican.edu/academics/advising/digitalportfolio/digitalportfolio

https://community.dominican.edu/

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Engagement Initiative” between fall 2015 and spring 2017, are housed on an internal website to enable all Dominican faculty to use the syllabi as resources for future course development or revision. Both faculty and staff have also benefitted from a “Democracy and Equity” events calendar that provides information on activities related to community, civic, and political engagement happening throughout the year.

Link: The Community Engagement Initiative

Link: Democracy and Equity

Finally, Dominican led a major national community engagement effort during 2015-16 and into fall 2016 as part of the 2016 Presidential Election. As a voter education partner of the Commission on Presidential Debates, Dominican created and led the College Debate 2016 (CD16) initiative. CD16 included over 150 college student delegates from over 100 colleges and universities across all 50 states, and the District of Columbia, to be leaders in civil discourse around the issues that matter most to college students. In order to recognize the changing forms and patterns of communication among college students, civility in the use of social media was a central element of the initiative. Below is a review of two of Dominican’s most established community-based programs: the service-learning and global learning programs. Link: College Debate 2016

Service-Learning Over the past 11 years, Service-Learning (SL) at Dominican has been recognized as a distinctive and quality program by national, state, and local institutions, including the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, the President’s Higher

Education Community Service Honor Roll, California Campus Compact, and the Marin County Office of Education. Led by the director of service-learning, the SL program contributes greatly to the institution’s mission and the Dominican ideals of Study, Reflection, Community, and Service. In alignment with the new ILOs, Service-Learning provides vital and intentionally structured educational opportunities for students to build their capacities. Most particularly, the focus on civic learning and civic identity contributes to student learning in the categories of a) practice of civic skills and social responsibility and b)

the cultivation of well-being. While connection of SL programming with specific ILOs is still in the early stages of formal evaluation, SL has a strong record of assessment of student learning as documented in annual reports and the Service-Learning Program

https://sites.google.com/a/dominican.edu/community-engagement-theme/overview

http://www.dominican.edu/academics/lae/democracy-and-equity-initiative


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Self-Study (October 2015). The foundation of quality programming in SL is a cycle of continuous improvement based on SL staff and faculty’s periodic review of direct and indirect evidence of student learning. Criteria and best practices developed in national discussions are used to guide faculty development and the assessment of student learning outcomes. The results of ongoing assessment are used to “close the loop” where possible, to inform the allocation of resources and to build infrastructure to better support all stakeholders. Assessment data indicate that students who opted into SL courses from 2010-14 were slightly overrepresented among first-generation and Pell-eligible students, relative to the average number of students with these demographic characteristics at the University during that time period. Approximately one-third of all first-year students complete an SL course in their first year at Dominican. In terms of outcomes data, enrollment in SL classes is strongly correlated with higher retention and graduation rates. Students who complete at least one SL course in their first year are retained to the sophomore year at a rate that is 12% higher than students who do not take an SL course in the first year. Additionally, students who took at least one SL course while at Dominican have a 4-year graduation rate that is 11% higher than students who have not taken an SL course; the average 6-year graduation rate is 25% higher. Findings from student surveys, focus groups, and assessment of student learning evidence the ways in which students in SL courses gain self-awareness, practical skills, career-related experience, insight into the relevance of academic knowledge, a deeper understanding of their own personal impact, and an enriched capacity to become effective and creative community-builders. Data from the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) indicate that students who took an SL course while at Dominican reported a 7.5% gain in deep learning. Similarly, first-year students who took an SL course reported a 5% gain in reflecting and integrating diverse viewpoints. Moreover, local surveys have been administered to more than 400 students in SL courses to understand their experiences and the connections they are making between course material and community issues. The SL program also uses GivePulse to record students’ reflections on their community engagement, as well as track number of hours working with a community partner. Findings from these assessment tools have demonstrated that students in SL courses routinely make important connections between their learning, civic mindedness, and personal development. They report that SL courses are often the place where their academic studies finally make sense or a path of study is clarified. Additionally, a new SL-based minor in “Community Action and Social Change” provides a structured pathway to better connect, support, and deepen students’ learning and civic development.

Global Learning Over the past six years, the Global Education Office (GEO), led by the director of global learning, has worked to create learning programs domestically and abroad that meet

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Dominican’s mission to educate “socially responsible global citizens.” GEO’s guiding vision is to develop academically relevant and financially feasible Global Learning experiences for every major on campus. This vision is fulfilled through five program options:

1. Dominican Semester Abroad (DSA): DSA includes exchange-based, semester-length programs with overseas partner universities, including St. Catherine’s College at Oxford University. Participating students pay Dominican tuition; earn 12 units of resident credit towards major, minor, or GE degree requirements; and retain all Dominican financial aid. All DSA students are eligible for a travel stipend that covers the full cost of their airfare.

2. Global Learning Courses (GLC): GLC are short-term summer courses taught by Dominican faculty in overseas locations. Students pay a discounted $350 per unit rate and take degree-required courses in their discipline. Many courses include a fieldwork, internship, or service-learning component that enhances the academic content and promotes professional development. Examples include a nursing course in Uganda, an occupational therapy course in Mexico, a business consulting course in China, and an education course in Bali.

3. Reverse Mission/Community: Non-credit programs facilitated by Dominican’s Campus Ministry

4. Research: Credit-based, overseas, summer individual research opportunities 5. Internships: Credit-based, overseas, summer individual internship opportunities 6. Faculty/Staff Global Engagement Program: Weeklong trips designed to increase

faculty and staff global learning and intercultural development. Open only to Dominican faculty and staff. Trips thus far have been to Thailand, Bali, and Cuba.

Table 3.1.

Students Participation in Global Learning Programming AY Semester

Abroad Global Learning

Course Reverse Mission/

Community Research Internships Total

16-17 25 88 20 4 5 141

15-16 24 83 26 2 2 137

14-15 10 62 26 2 2 104

13-14 13 87 46 1 0 147

12-13 7 72 35 2 5 121

11-12 2 99 9 0 0 110

TOTALS 81 491 162 11 14 740

4. Signature Work Many of Dominican’s academic programs already require students to carry out some demonstration of signature work, which is broadly defined as a work of significance that necessitates the integration of multiple learning skills and is driven by a student’s own inquiry. A recent mapping of practices within academic programs to the Dominican Experience carried out by department chairs showed that over 90% of programs currently require students to complete a signature work product before graduation,

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most commonly identified as a senior research or capstone paper. Dominican also has well-developed outlets for enabling students to showcase their signature work. The first is the annual Scholarly and Creative Works Conference—a two-day event that began in spring 2015, showcasing student research papers and posters, creative writing, artwork, dance, and musical performances through presentation to a live audience. All students working on undergraduate or master’s theses are invited to present. In its first year, the conference included students representing 15 disciplines who gave 124 individual student presentations and showcased 150 research posters. In its second year, the conference included students representing 16 disciplines who gave 123 presentations and showcased 140 research posters. In its third year, the conference students came from 16 disciplines and gave a record 162 individual presentations and showcased 197 student research posters. Each year the conference has hosted performances by the Dominican jazz band and LINES Ballet BFA program.

Link: Scholarly and Creative Works Conference

To increase students’ role in promoting the conference, in 2016 students from the digital arts program designed the conference logo and posters. This same year Communications and Media Studies students also designed a public relations plan to assist event organizers in reaching more students. Additionally, students from the Communications and Media Studies program created audio advertisements that aired on Dominican’s campus radio station and video advertisements that were featured on the University website.

The second outlet for showcasing students’ signature work is through Dominican Scholar—a publicly accessible and searchable digital repository for the scholarly and creative signature works of Dominican students, faculty, and staff. The goals of Dominican Scholar are to 1) affirm our commitment as educators and scholars by sharing our scholarly and creative works with the global community; 2) demonstrate the intellectual, professional, and artistic skills of our students, faculty, and staff and their depth of knowledge in a field of study; 3) teach our students the value of creating and effectively communicating knowledge; 4) promote a habit of mind for lifelong learning by allowing free access to information; and, 5) preserve our history and demonstrate our growth as an institution of higher learning.

Examples of work in Dominican Scholar are undergraduate senior and master’s theses, student and faculty artwork, faculty publications, and the University’s Scholarly and Creative Works Conference products. Since its inception in 2014, there have been more than 225,000 downloads (at the time of writing) of student and faculty work in more than 200 countries. Link: Dominican Scholar Dashboard

http://scholar.dominican.edu/scw/

https://dashboard.bepress.com/?dashboardToken=5796576e6325f2f305b4342eAq1LgCjukMPCnpgv3wNl9DfX9uDENNsf4fGa6D2h#/

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AREAS FOR FURTHER DEVELOPMENT

Connecting the Dominican Experience with Graduate Programs (CFRs 2.2b, 2.3) Thus far, the focus of implementation efforts for the Dominican Experience has primarily been at the undergraduate level because this population represents the bulk of Dominican’s student body. Nevertheless, taking the Dominican Experience to scale necessarily involves collaboration with graduate programs to understand how the established elements of the Dominican Experience can be applied to and articulated for graduate-level study and success. Faculty who oversee graduate programs in counseling psychology, education, business, and occupational therapy have completed the same mapping exercise undertaken by the undergraduate chairs. The implementation of the Dominican Experience in graduate programs is projected to begin in 2017-18. This implementation may require some adaptation of the four components—integrative coaching, digital portfolio, community engagement, and signature work—in order to make them compatible with the accreditation requirements of graduate programs and meet the goal of not adding any new requirements for students. Several graduate programs already include a strong community engagement component as well as some type of signature work; thus it is likely that these two components will require only minor adaptation. Additionally, graduate level courses in both Counseling Psychology and Occupational Therapy are part of the digital portfolio pilot. Regular meetings are planned for 2017-18 with the Graduate Council, an advisory board composed of faculty teaching in graduate programs, and also with department chairs who oversee graduate programs. These two groups will provide crucial insights on plans for development and implementation of the Dominican Experience at the graduate level. Ongoing Implementation of the Dominican Experience within Undergraduate Programs (CFRs 2.2a, 2.3) In fall 2016, department chairs mapped current practices within their programs to the four components of the Dominican Experience in order to understand current levels of capacity and opportunities for scaling implementation. Moving forward, this mapping will inform targeted steps for integrating the Dominican Experience across departments and designing on-going faculty development. Specifically, greater capacity needs to be developed around the use of digital portfolios within departments, consistent additions of integrative coaches, and expansion of staffing to support community engagement, particularly service-learning. Concurrent with mapping to the Dominican Experience, department chairs also mapped program-level outcomes to Dominican’s ILOs to create greater transparency between program level goals and broader commitments to students’ learning and development. A more systematic approach to data collection, analysis, and communication will aid follow-up efforts to identify gaps revealed in the maps; address gaps through re-alignment of the curriculum and co-curriculum; assess the results of attempts to improve; and report the results transparently to stakeholders.

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4. Educational Quality: Student Learning, Core Competencies, and Standards of Performance at Graduation (CFRs 2.2, 2.4, 2.6, 2.7, 4.3)

Learning, Core Competencies, and Dominican endeavors to educate and prepare students to be ethical and socially responsible global citizens who incorporate the Dominican values of study, reflection, community, and service into their lives. Key to preparing students in this way is teaching (through courses and activities such as community engagement and signature work) enumerated core competencies and additional institutional competencies that include the appreciation for diversity, civic engagement, and ethical responsibility. Learning outcomes for these competencies have been defined and they are being assessed at varied points in the curriculum.

UNDERGRADUATE LEARNING: GENERAL EDUCATION STUDENT LEARNING OUTCOMES AND CORE COMPETENCIES

The General Education (GE) curriculum at Dominican fosters the development of the skills, knowledge, and moral character essential to lifelong learning and a rich, satisfying life by: 1) providing students with essential foundations in the main areas of human knowledge, i.e., sciences, arts, and humanities; 2) engaging them in the persistent practice of logical thinking, persuasive writing, and effective speaking; 3) enhancing their self-understanding as citizens of diverse communities in an ecologically imperiled world; and 4) in light of Dominican's Catholic heritage, offering them the guidance—and freedom—needed for developing their own awareness of the moral and spiritual dimensions of existence. How the GE curriculum thematic areas are mapped to the WSCUC Core Competencies is displayed in Table 4.1. Table 4.1 General Education Curriculum Thematic Areas Mapped to the WSCUC Core Competencies

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Written Communications Written communication skills are embedded across the GE program and majors beginning with First-Year Experience (FYE) “Big History” and expository writing at the 1000-level followed by the advanced writing and research and Colloquium offerings at the 3000-level. Writing of university-level expository essays across rhetorical modes and emphasis on critical reading and thinking, summary, analysis, synthesis, and research are the expected outcomes for all students. The written communication competency is again addressed at the culminating level across all majors in senior theses and capstones.

Continuous Improvement Since the inception of the FYE “Big History” courses in fall 2010, integrated support for the development of writing skills has been an important part of the curriculum. All incoming first-year students take the FYE “Big History” course in their first two semesters, and are guided through topic research, drafting, revision, targeted writing skills practice, and library and information literacy sessions, culminating in a university-level content-based research essay.

Since 2010, FYE faculty have met at the end of various semesters to perform group norming and assessment on a convenient random sample of first and second-semester FYE essays. In addition to formal scoring of essays each year, faculty engage in meaningful discussion and reflection on student work, produce a new list of suggestions for improving instruction and modifying the essay assignment, and implement changes in the following academic year. In fall 2015, FYE faculty pursued a more specific inquiry of the role that a student’s mastery of factual course content played in writing a successful final essay. A statistical study was designed that allowed for a comparison of the final essay grades with scores from the final exam. These data were examined at FYE faculty meetings in spring 2016, stimulating energetic and productive discussions of the statistics and their significance, and resulting in further modifications to both the essay assignment and the final exam. Fall 2016 marked the second year for the data collection, now allowing for year-to-year comparisons.

Oral Communication The development of oral communication skills is embedded in the GE program at the 1000- and 2000- level through CMS 1200 and BUS 2030. Theory, practice, and evaluation of oral communication, with a primary emphasis on public speaking, are expected outcomes for all students. Practice in selection, development, organization, and presentation of ideas through informative and persuasive discourse with attention to ethical responsibility is taught at all levels. Oral Communications competency is again addressed at the culminating level through presentations at the National Conferences on Undergraduate Research (NCUR), the WPA, and Dominican’s annual Scholarly and Creative Works Conference.

Continuous Improvement The GE Board restructured its membership in fall 2013 to ensure consistent representation from the speech thematic area. Since then, faculty who teach speech in various

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departments have collaborated to update their thematic area learning outcomes, develop a shared rubric, and coordinate their assessment processes. The group submits joint assessment reports to the GE Board, ensuring consistency in outcomes for all students. Additionally, the chair of communications and media studies held a cross-campus faculty development session in August 2015 to share how to embed oral communications outcomes in syllabi across programs.

Quantitative Reasoning The development of quantitative reasoning skills is embedded in the GE program at the 1000- and 3000-levels through various modes dependent on the major and degree program. The primary goals of the quantitative reasoning requirement are to develop students’ general intellectual mathematical abilities and to assist students to view mathematics as an enriching and empowering discipline. Students practice independent exploration in mathematics and develop tenacity and confidence in their ability to use it. The quantitative reasoning competency is again addressed at the culminating level in research methods courses, senior projects, and capstones when appropriate.

Continuous Improvement Concerns regarding the completion rate of the GE quantitative reasoning requirement led to a pilot and subsequent university-wide adoption of the ALEKS placement examination with learning modules. Persistence and retention data indicated that the GE quantitative reasoning requirement presented an obstacle to completion; however, anecdotal information from a number of mathematics faculty indicated that one explanation to the barrier was student recall and skills retention. An ALEKS pilot was implemented with 74 students taking the placement examination. All students also had access to the multiple learning modules, and if they scored high enough, could place out of required courses. Of the 74 students who participated in the pilot, 41 scored at the first level of placement (with 13 students placing high enough to not need the additional support from the learning modules); 27 scored at the second level of placement (with 5 students scoring high enough to indicate they would not necessarily benefit from continuing with the learning modules); 5 scored at the third level placement; and 1 scored at the fourth level of placement. Further analysis indicated that students in the pilot successfully completed the courses they were placed in as a result of the examination and learning modules. In May 2016, ALEKS was adopted for all students across the University.

Another area of improvement was found with the 6-unit MATH 2000 requirement for the Adult Degree Completion (ADC) students. In spring 2016, the mathematics department and the GE Board collaborated to design the new MATH 1350 course and to utilize the ALEKS examination with learning modules for ADC students. Students who scored 0-46 on the ALEKS examination are now offered supplemental instruction and tutoring concurrent with MATH 1350 in order to better support course completion.

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Information Literacy The development of information literacy is embedded in the curriculum at the 1000-, 2000-, and 3000-level in a scaffolded manner through FYE, the GE writing requirement, and the Colloquium. As a successful program-level example, in 2015-16, an assessment rubric was created to evaluate political science senior thesis projects on the following eight criteria: methodology, literature awareness, appropriate use of sources, command of theoretical/institutional concepts in social science, analysis/evidence/line of reasoning, writing style, citation style, and oral communication. The rubric also assessed the political science program learning outcomes: 1) ability to identify, analyze, and evaluate critically basic moral and political concepts; 2) ability to identify, analyze, and evaluate critically significant political institutions and practices; and 3) writing, analysis, and oral presentation skills that conform to the scholarly expectations of the discipline. The senior thesis assignment was chosen with the expectation that the political science curriculum fosters learning in each of the identified areas by the time students begin working on their projects in the final year of study. In spring 2016, political science faculty reviewed both written and oral components of the thesis project for the senior class, and each senior thesis project was assessed on all eight criteria with a score of 4-highly developed, 3-developed, 2-emerging, and 1-basic.

Continuous Improvement Information literacy has been embedded in FYE courses since the program’s inception in 2010. Librarians conduct two information literacy sessions incorporated into the fall FYE syllabi, including use of library databases, evaluation of sources, and correct methods and formats for citation and documentation of sources. Spring FYE syllabi likewise incorporate two information literacy sessions, reinforcing skills from the previous semester and adding skills for writing an annotated bibliography. Student surveys of FYE students consistently show students rating themselves as having improved confidence in their own research skills as a result of the FYE library sessions. The librarians are provided with final essays from all FYE courses, which they use to conduct their own annual assessment of information literacy in FYE.

Link: Library Instruction Program Assessment

Critical Thinking The development of critical thinking skills has always been embedded across various courses through ENGL 3200, CMS 1200, CLQ 3190/3191, HIST 1776, PHIL 1108/3108. With the approval of the ILOs in spring 2016, a critical thinking assessment pilot was planned for spring 2017. The assessment pilot focused on a sample of student work that was inclusive of both GE and the majors. A convenience sample of student work was drawn from GE courses that typically enroll first-year and sophomore students. A sample was also drawn from capstone assignments across a range of majors.

http://libguides.dominican.edu/c.php?g=450200&p=3073344

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Continuous Improvement The GE self-study included several guiding questions, one of which was "What is the relationship of the articulated GE learning outcomes to the newly approved ILOs?" Among the exhibits faculty developed for the GE program review was a map displaying how the thematic area course learning outcomes of the current distribution model align with the ILOs. The map has informed the GE Board's and external reviewers' deliberations, specifically how the program could be restructured to optimize opportunities for the foundational learning expected of all Dominican graduates, now embodied in the ILOs.

Link: General Education Program Review 2016-17 site Link: General Education Redesign 2017-18 site

ADDITIONAL COMPETENCY SPECIFIC TO DOMINICAN

An Appreciation for Diversity, Civic Engagement, and Ethical Responsibility Educating students to be ethical leaders and socially responsible global citizens is core to Dominican’s mission and values. Dominican measures and expresses its commitment to cultivating an appreciation for diversity, civic engagement, and ethical responsibility both in the curriculum and at the programmatic level. Measures of student engagement include BCSSE and NSSE survey results, course-embedded assessment, and the campus diversity climate survey, and various measures and expressions of diversity beyond race and ethnicity. As a requirement for program review, all programs must review disaggregated data for evidence of differential patterns of retention, graduation, and achievement based on ethnicity and gender. With assistance from the dean for diversity and equity and the director of assessment, program faculty review the data and identify follow-up actions, such as curricular audits to ensure diversity in content and culturally responsive pedagogy. Appreciation for Diversity and Civic Engagement is captured through Dominican’s Diversity Declaration and guides the campus commitment to the principle of pluralism and the goal of a reconciled community. Campus climate surveys are used to assess campus attitudes toward diversity in the curriculum, faculty and staff hires, and campus diversity program offerings. The Office of Diversity and Equity is responsible for diversity policies, practices, and actualizing the Diversity Declaration campus-wide. The office is also responsible for providing educational and professional development opportunities campus-wide. Additionally, the Diversity Action Group (DAG) is a representative standing committee that collaborates with the Office of Diversity and Equity in an advisory and advocacy capacity. Link: Office of Diversity

Dominican’s Global Education Office (GEO) supports semester and shorter-term study abroad programs to develop students’ appreciation for diversity and cultural difference. GEO Global Learning Outcomes were assessed using the campus iteration of the AAC&U VALUE Rubric for Global Learning. This rubric was developed through a shared governance process using the

https://sites.google.com/a/dominican.edu/ge-program-review/

https://sites.google.com/a/dominican.edu/ge-program-review-2017-2018/

https://www.dominican.edu/about/leadership/office-of-academic-affairs-1/diversity

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campus-wide Global Learning and Education Committee. The global learning rubric evaluates the level of learning for semester abroad students enrolled in an online, 1-unit course while studying abroad. The Service-Learning (SL) program at Dominican also fosters an appreciation for diversity and civic engagement by providing students, faculty, and community partners with training and resources that support local diverse communities through shared learning and collaborative action. The Service-Learning program recently completed an extensive program review that evidenced how the program had been "institutionalized" into Dominican's curriculum and culture. The program review was anchored in a nationally vetted rubric designed by a recognized leader in this area, and included extensive review of direct and indirect evidence of student learning and program impact. Over 400 students' responses to their SL courses were coded and summarized, yielding a rich portrait of the value they claimed from the experience. The systematic review of student culminating papers by faculty showed how they often emerged with a new sense of their accountability as citizens. Also in evidence was growth in the ability to think critically about the structural nature of inequity. (See Component 6 for SL Program Review attachment). Link: Service-Learning

Additionally, and most recently, Dominican launched College Debate 2016 (CD16) as a voter education partner with the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD). Dominican created and developed CD16, a non-partisan, social media initiative designed to engage college students in the 2016 election and the Presidential and Vice Presidential Debates. The underlying assumptions of this innovative program were that 1) millennials care about issues, not party politics, and 2) the best way to reach them is through social media. Approximately 150 college students from 50 states and Washington, D.C., served as CD16 delegates and came to the Dominican campus in June 2016 for an in-depth convening that focused on civil discourse and digital citizenship. Using a toolkit developed by Dominican, the delegates committed to engaging their peers, classmates, and friends through social media on the issues that mattered the most to them. The students returned to campus in early September 2016 for a spirited convention and town hall resulting in six insightful, reasoned questions that were forwarded to the moderators of the debates. The delegates, a diverse group coming from large public institutions, small private colleges, and community colleges, were predominantly women (63%) and 45% of the students were from underrepresented groups. Rather than characterizing their political affiliation as Democrat, Republican, or Independent, delegates self-reported their political typology based on Pew Research categories: Solid Liberal, Next Generation Left, Young Outsider, Business Conservative, Steadfast Conservative, Faith & Family Left, or Hard-Pressed Skeptic. With CD16, Dominican developed a model to involve students from a wide range of backgrounds in the political process by encouraging thoughtful and civil discussion focused on the issues.

http://www.dominican.edu/academics/service


http://collegedebate16.org/the_delegates/

http://collegedebate16.org/the_delegates/

https://youtu.be/-8wGaYt08pQ

http://collegedebate16.org/college-debate-16-final-questions/

http://www.people-press.org/quiz/political-typology/

http://www.people-press.org/quiz/political-typology/

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Link: College Debate 2016

Through Dominican’s “Community Engagement Initiative,” a grant funded by the Mellon Foundation, Dominican faculty revised 25 course syllabi to explicitly highlight community-based learning experiences and civic outcomes for students. Faculty in this initiative also participated in two professional development workshops, engaged in learning communities over the summer, and contributed to curricular and co-curricular event programming under the “Democracy and Equity” community engagement theme. These events provided opportunities for additional student engagement in discussions centered on topics and issues pertinent to local, national, and global communities. A grant extension is being sought to provide resources to support the revision of additional course syllabi, support assessment of student work from community-engaged courses revised under the initiative, and professional development around assignment design for civic-skill building. Link: The Community Engagement Initiative Link: Democracy and Equity

In addition to the above, Ethical Responsibility competency is delivered specifically through the ethics and moral philosophy GE course requirement. Additionally, SL courses have a long history of assessing learning outcomes that revolve around this competency.

GRADUATE LEARNING: INITIAL TO DEVELOPED PROGRAMS

Dominican’s graduate student learning outcomes and standards of performance are more advanced than its undergraduate programs. Dominican’s graduate programs foster students’ active engagement with the literature of the field and create a culture that promotes the importance of scholarship and/or professional practice. This section includes two of Dominican’s graduate programs that demonstrate students’ active engagement in their learning. Dominican’s ILOs were developed with input from the Graduate Council and faculty representing graduate programs. The framing of the outcomes statement intentionally identifies that all students of Dominican – both undergraduate and graduate – will be able to demonstrate the specified institutional competencies. All program level outcomes for Dominican’s graduate programs have been mapped to the ILOs. Initial: Low-Residency Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Recently approved by WSCUC through a substantive change application (August 2016), the Low-residency Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (low-residency MFA) was able to build its graduate learning goals and assessment practices from the ground up—following best practices for a program that is delivered through distance education (fall and spring terms) and residencies (summer and winter sessions) beginning summer 2017. Dominican’s low-residency MFA program aims to meet both the residency and the mentoring goals established by the Association of Writers and Writing Programs in addition to its program student learning


https://sites.google.com/a/dominican.edu/community-engagement-theme/overview

http://www.dominican.edu/academics/lae/democracy-and-equity-initiative

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outcomes. At the end of the two years, students finish the program by returning to campus for a fifth graduating residency. The MA Program Committee (MAP) and the MFA core and adjunct faculty serve as the “program committee” for the low-residency MFA program, and soon after each residency, the MFA program committee reviews all syllabi currently in use. The review of syllabi includes a) how well the courses are aligning in practice with the program learning outcomes for the low-residency MFA and b) how well students are progressing through the courses as projected. The assessment plan includes two major points of assessment of learning outcomes in its cycle: 1) at the end of program year 1 (a formative assessment) and 2) upon completion of the major capstone project (residency #5). The year 1 assessment encompasses all four PLOs and uses as data sources the final packet of the year (packet #3) and the mentor’s response. The capstone assessment occurs around the time of residency #5 and uses as a data source the completed final project. With both processes, faculty create and norm an appropriate rubric and then apply it to the entire cohort’s work. The results are aggregated and interpreted for indices of program quality and for follow-up inquiry and adjustments to curriculum and pedagogy. Developed: Master of Science in Occupational Therapy The Master of Science in Occupational Therapy (MSOT) program has gone through three cycles of accreditation approval from the Accreditation Council for Occupational Therapy Education (ACOTE®) since its initial accreditation in 1996. In 2010, the occupational therapy program at Dominican received a 10-year reaccreditation, the highest commendation for fulfilling the 190 accreditation standards. The program design is based on three curricular themes: 1) effective occupational therapy practice is occupation-based and client-centered, 2) excellent occupational therapy practice is research-driven and evidence-based, and 3) psychosocial dimensions of human performance are fundamental to all aspects of occupation and occupational therapy practice. Students are expected to explore in year 1, achieve competency in year 2, and exhibit achievement in year 3. Apart from academic learning outcomes, all students are required to complete three 40-hour level I fieldwork internships and a minimum of two 12-week level II fieldwork internships prior to graduation. The 5-year average first-time passing rate in fieldwork level II is 98.5%. Upon graduation, students take the National Board Certification of Occupational Therapy (NBCOT®) examination, and the average passing rate is 95%.

Students complete a rigorous three-semester, faculty-led capstone project process that includes formulating a proposal based on current level of evidence in the field, implementing the capstone project, and in their third and final semester presenting their capstone project in the form of a final capstone paper submitted and published on Dominican Scholar repository, and as a poster and podium presentation in the Dominican Scholarly and Creative Work conference. Since 2012, 55 capstone papers in the form of qualitative, quantitative, and evidence-based projects were published in Dominican Scholar and downloaded via the internet over 22,000 times around the globe. To cultivate scholarly habits, all capstone teams submit to

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present in professional state and national conferences. In addition, students are given the opportunity to publish jointly with their faculty advisors in peer-reviewed journals. Over the past five years, four papers were published in occupational therapy-related journals.

The program has a curriculum committee, chaired by the program director, to discuss and propose ongoing curriculum changes, keeping pace with the newest developments and emerging practices in the field of occupational therapy. In 2014, the committee conducted focus groups with various stakeholders: graduating students, alumni, and clinical educators. The summary report guided curriculum revision with the addition of two new courses – Assistive Technology and Occupations in Adults and Seniors III – which were implemented in 2016. Link: Dominican Scholar

FACULTY DEVELOPMENT IN SUPPORT OF STUDENT LEARNING

University-wide faculty development opportunities exist to continuously improve the curriculum and faculty pedagogy in support of student learning. Faculty development at Dominican includes regular opportunities for information exchange, intentional training, and dialogue on relevant topics that enhance faculty teaching, scholarship, and service to better serve the diverse student body and build a strong academic community. The restructured Faculty Development Committee includes cross-campus representation and its goals are anchored in the Faculty Handbook. Each term, there are approximately eight faculty development-themed lunch sessions and three half-day workshops available—the number of the latter has been reduced in 2017-18 due to the curricular redesign efforts. Funded summer institutes will take their place. The Office of Diversity and Equity routinely collaborates with the Faculty Development Committee to offer 1-2 diversity-relevant lunch sessions or workshops each term. During the summer, full-day sessions on curriculum development are offered in August, and presenters include those from internal and external summer learning communities such as Big History, Colloquium, and the Honors Program in order to share best practices from high-impact programs. Additionally, with the growing dependence on technology, workshops include expanding pedagogy by using an iPad or the digital portfolio. The review of teaching effectiveness for all faculty is applied via faculty policies and procedures. Full-time tenured and tenure-track faculty are reviewed both at formative and summative points in their careers as part of the tenure, promotion, and review process. Continuing term faculty have formal pathways for the formative and summative assessment of their teaching through the initial and subsequent annual evaluation processes and the multi-year appointment review. For tenure-track, tenured, and term faculty, student evaluations, peer observations, course syllabi, examinations, and other supporting materials are included in the review process to evidence and support a faculty member’s approach to teaching and teaching effectiveness. Finally, adjunct faculty are also included in the process to improve and support teaching at Dominican through a faculty development fund specific to adjunct faculty, performance evaluations, and peer feedback and support opportunities.

http://scholar.dominican.edu/

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General Education Program Review (CFRs 2.2, 2.2a, 2.3) The GE self-study undertaken in 2016-17 included two main components: a) a set of inquiry questions and discoverable answers and b) the assessment of the GE thematic areas. Inquiry questions were:

1. What is the relationship of the articulated GE learning outcomes to the ILOs? 2. What is the relationship of the GE program to the various aspects of the Dominican

Experience? 3. Does the ongoing assessment of our thematic area outcomes provide insights, including

answers to these questions, or should the assessment protocol be rethought? If yes, how can it be optimized?

4. How does our GE curriculum compare to that of other institutions? What is the best approach doing an external scan? And what do we find significant about the results of this scan?

5. What are our student demographics? How are the needs of our students, First Year or Transfer, being met through our GE curriculum? Should Writing and Mathematics a focus in answering this question?

6. What is the student experience of our GE curriculum? What are ways of capturing the student experience and voice and integrating those in our examination of the GE?

7. What is the faculty experience of our GE curriculum? What are ways of capturing the faculty experience and voice and integrating those in our examination of the GE? Are faculty of all ranks and types equally committed to the teaching or assessment of GE or do we need to consider methods/incentives for increasing commitment?

8. How is diversity embedded in our curriculum?

The task of the GE Board and the entire campus community will be to have a shared in-depth examination of these findings and what they mean in the context of the recently approved ILOs, the strategic initiatives, and the WSCUC Core Competencies. Additionally, the newly-approved Institutional Learning Outcomes (ILOs) provide the perfect tool for cross-campus curricular mapping and developing a thorough alignment throughout students' four years. Following the GE program review in spring 2017, it seems a worthwhile to question whether the alignment of GE with the ILOs and a rejuvenation of GE might be a welcome opportunity to reinforce the Core Competencies at key milestone places at the upper-division level. Link: General Education Program Review 2016-17 site Link: General Education Redesign 2017-18 site



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5. Student Success: Student Learning, Retention, and Graduation (CFRs 1.2, 2.7, 2.13)

Student success is supported, tracked and assessed in multiple ways at Dominican University of California. Student success is scaffolded by systems including tutoring and disability services. Campus Ministry, Torch, Library programming, Career and Internship office and Residence Life are also part of the support. The dean of students and more recently the dean of the Dominican Experience track and assess student success in learning, retention, and graduation.

RETENTION AND GRADUATION: WHAT WE KNOW

Dominican tracks the retention and graduation rates of its undergraduate and graduate students to inform university leadership and board, the federal government, regional and specialized accreditation agencies, students, parents, applicants, and other external groups and individuals. Reports are maintained on the internal and external institutional research website within Factbook and the Common Data Set. First-time freshmen remain relatively constant with respect to retention, but have improved significantly with respect to graduation rates, beginning with the fall 2008 cohort. Changes in program requirements, increased advising efforts to assist students’ progress toward their degree, and increasing student engagement have resulted in a dramatic increase in 4-year graduation rates. Transfer students are retained at a lower rate but graduate at a higher rate than their first-time freshmen peers. They are retained about 10% less in the second semester compared to first-time freshmen. Areas for ongoing development include examining the number of students participating in student orientations and whether additional advising and coaching resources may be needed. While differences by major for undergraduates are difficult to analyze (small n for some majors), in general, majors within the health sciences have better retention and graduation rates. Undergraduate applied programs, compared to arts and humanities programs, retain about 10% higher and have 15% higher 6-year graduation rates, with 4-year graduation rates indicating no difference. At the graduate level, the MBA and counseling psychology programs indicate strong retention rates but weak 3-year graduation rates. Students of color, NCAA participating athletes, and students with high financial need retain and graduate at a similar rate to their peers who are non-athletes and lower-financial need students. First generation students retain well but show weaker graduation rates. To address these variations among student population groups, specific academic enrichment programs indicate improved retention and graduation for all student populations who

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participate. Students participating in Service-Learning (SL) in their first year show approximately a 12% higher retention rate to their second year than those who did not participate. Additionally, SL students graduate in 4 years at about a 12% higher rate than non-participants and that difference increases to 25% for 6-year graduation rates. Honors Program students also retain at about 11% higher from first to second year and graduate at about a 20% higher rate than non-Honors Program students.

GRADUATION RATE DASHBOARD

While Dominican has submitted data for the Graduation Rate Dashboard (GDR) in its 2016 and 2017 annual reports to WSCUC, it is in the initial stage of incorporating the results and findings into its regular review of graduation and retention data. For an institution such as Dominican,

whose first-time freshmen are at 4:1 ratio to transfer students, the IPEDS and GRD rates are dissimilar.

Overall Unit Redemption Rate 69%

Overall Absolute Graduation Rate 57%

Overall IPEDS 6-year Graduation Rate 72%

Using the GRD data, undergraduate student enrollment headcount peaked at 1,742 (2011-12) and declined to 1,467 (2014-15). Comparing the most recent reported year (2015-16) to the years leading up to the 2011-12 peak, headcount enrollment has remained relatively consistent. The average institutional units completed per student are 25, with a high of 27 units completed during the lowest headcount enrollment year (2014-15) and the lowest at 23 units occurring during the first year reported (2008-09). The unit redemption rate was at its highest in 2014-15 at 89%, before leveling at 75% for 2015-16. For undergraduate degree recipients, the number peaked in 2014-15 at 385, with an 8-year average of 317 that was consistent with 316 in 2015-16. Over the reporting period, each graduate completed an average of 89 institutional units, and over the last 8 years, the average unit completion has increased by 14 units, with a high of 94 units for both the 2013-14 and 2015-16 reporting years. The 8-year cumulative average Unit Redemption Rate (URR) is 69%, meaning that during this period, 31% of the units granted were not redeemed for a degree at Dominican. However, when broken into two 4-year periods, this average indicates that for years 2008-09 through 2011-12 the URR average was 58%, and for years 2012-13 through 2015-16 the URR average was almost 80%. This appears to indicate that over the past 4 years, a majority of the units completed are redeemed for a degree and that rate has remained stable. During the last 8 years, the number of non-continuing students each year has averaged at 53, with a high of 65 in 2010-11 and a low of 36 in 2015-16. The number of non-continuing students has decreased from year-to-year (with a peak in 2014-15), and is at its lowest of 137 in

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2015-16. The data suggest that the average number of instructional units accumulated by non-continuing students has continued to decrease before their break in enrollment, suggesting students that do not complete their degree at Dominican are leaving earlier in their academic experience (after 35 units) than in years prior (between 52-62 units). The Graduation and Retention group, composed of the vice president for academic affairs, the dean of the Dominican Experience, and the dean of student life, will continue to review the GRD data compared to the IPEDS data to observe trends and, where present, breaks in trends. Exploring the difference between Dominican’s IPEDS 6-year graduation rate (higher) and the GRD rate (lower) will be a task for the group to undertake during 2017-18.

STUDENT SUCCESS: ACADEMIC SUPPORT SERVICES

Institutional Learning Outcomes Dominican developed and implemented ILOs that clearly and explicitly reflect the values of the institution. The ILOs closely model the “Essential Learning Outcomes” defined by AAC&U, and include WSCUC’s five Core Competencies. Although the outcomes are informed by national consensus on what matters for student learning, Dominican’s ILOs also reflect the University’s commitment to holistic student learning and development. This commitment is demonstrated by the inclusion of a set of outcomes related to “cultivation of wellbeing.” The ILOs are:

1. Acquisition and Exploration of Knowledge 2. Practice of Civic Skills and Social Responsibility 3. Development of Intellectual, Professional, and Artistic Skills 4. Cultivation of Wellbeing

Guided by the Degree Qualifications Profile that shows the utility of aligning outcomes across degree levels, particularly baccalaureate and master’s levels, Dominican explicitly indicates in the opening statement of our ILO document that these outcomes are intended to be met at appropriate levels of proficiency by “all graduates” of Dominican. As addressed in the section, Degree Programs: Meaning, Quality, and Integrity of Degrees, all Dominican academic programs have mapped their program level learning outcomes to the ILOs. Because student learning and success must be shaped in both the curriculum and the co-curriculum, all programs in the co-curriculum are also mapping program level outcomes to the ILOs. Additionally, more detail surrounding the integrative coaching and mentoring programs’ development and plans going forward can be found under Degree Programs: Meaning, Quality, and Integrity of Degrees. Academic Advising and Achievement Center The Academic Advising and Achievement Center's (AAAC) mission is to support the student community to explore, identify, and achieve academic goals. The AAAC is the first point of contact once the new student has deposited, since advisors place students in their first semester classes. The office also prepares, administers, and monitors placement testing (English, mathematics, and chemistry). Once first-year students arrive on campus, they are

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connected with peer mentors. Peer mentors are trained and supervised by AAAC and student life staff throughout the entire first year. As Dominican has a decentralized advising model, meaning that mostly faculty members advise continuing students, in order to aid in cross-campus communication, the AAAC hosts workshops and produces a monthly newsletter for faculty advisors. However, the AAAC is currently piloting the use of integrative coaches (formerly advisors) in two majors: pre-occupational therapy and dance. Integrative coaches are “master mentors” who assist students in navigating their entire college experience. Additionally, the AAAC is the home of the rollout of the use of ePortfolios as tools for growth, reflection, and assessment. The following are programs and services within AAAC focused specifically on supporting student academic success.

Academic Support and Tutoring Services The Teaching and Learning Center (TLC), within the Office of Academic Advising and Achievement, serves as an academic and student learning resource for all Dominican students. In addition to being a physical space where students can access resources and information, the programmatic elements of the TLC include the following:

Tutoring Services Academic placement testing Student study group coordination

Accessibility and Disability Services

The Accessibility and Disability Services Office (ADSO) provides access to academic and co-curricular programs through reasonable accommodations and student-centered assistance. Every term, students are required to meet with the ADSO manager to discuss accommodation needs or changes and to complete any necessary forms for faculty. Throughout the semester, ADSO provides academic support to students through one-on-one comprehensive meetings; additionally, ADSO reaches out to students who receive insufficient mid-term grades to develop and establish academic goals and assist students with monitoring goals and progress. ADSO works with the campus community to facilitate implementation of approved academic accommodations for students. During finals week, ADSO provides proctoring assistance to best support faculty and meet the needs of individual students. Over the last year, ADSO has improved student service by augmenting the student information database with documented disabilities that may require various accommodations. This information allows the University to better anticipate accommodation requests from students with physical, learning, psychological, and chronic disabilities. As of fall 2016, ADSO has 94 individual certified registered students and 3 individual temporary registered students. Accommodation needs totaled 457. Table 5.1 provides more specific data on accommodation requests.

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Table 5.1 Student Accommodation Requests for 2016-17

Accommodation Request Area Total #

Additional Absences 41 Breaks 3 CART Services 1 Distraction Reduced Environment 100 Exam Breaks 3 Extensions on Papers 94 Housing Accommodation 1 Note Taking 23 Other Accommodations 11 Priority Registration 50 Record Lectures 5 Service Dog 3 Specific Seating 4 Computer for Exams 3 Extended Exam Time 2 Extended Exam Time 1.5x 101 Extended Exam Time 2.0x 12

Total 457

TORCH Leadership Program The TORCH Leadership Program is envisioned as a leadership development community. The focus of the program is assisting at risk students in the areas of academic success, retention, and persistence. The program provides opportunities for developing connections with peers, faculty, and staff at Dominican and for developing coping and reflection skills. TORCH provides three essential services that enhance student success:

1. Summer TORCH leadership intensive program, 2. Fall and spring semester weekly sessions and individual and small group support, and 3. Mentoring and counseling services.

The Summer TORCH Leadership Intensive program is in its fifth year and serves between 50 and 65 new Dominican freshmen as well as new upper-division participants and returning TORCH mentors and hosts. The program consists of 8-10 days of leadership training, faculty-led sessions, and sessions led by TORCH students on college and acculturation. The program is a blend of freshman pre-orientation, college prep and planning, and strengthened skills in language, mathematics, sciences, and social/community building. TORCH students report and demonstrate a deep commitment to the program. The fall 2017 first-year cohort consisting of 27 summer TORCH students had a 92% participation rate in weekly sessions. Among the upper division students in TORCH there is a 60% rate of participation.

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The TORCH program currently tracks 120 students. Of these students who are selected and referred to the program, 45 have distinguished themselves by taking on leadership roles, participating in athletics, or holding an on-campus job. Over 60% of TORCH students continue to keep their connections with TORCH and their TORCH community through to graduation. Of the first two graduating TORCH groups of 30 students, approximately 80% graduated, held leadership positions, and remained supportive of the TORCH community. Overall, the program has an attrition rate of approximately 20% among those students who do not complete the summer program and/or do not participate in semester weekly meetings. Library Programming, Resources, and Support Services The Archbishop Alemany Library services and support programs help to enrich the student academic and learning experience. In addition to supporting all students across all disciplines, the Library research and support services are integrated into the FYE program, thereby immediately exposing first-year students to two of the ILOs: 1) exploration and acquisition of knowledge; and 2) development of intellectual, professional, and artistic skills. Librarians are introduced to students as a supplement to their professors; the work they accomplish through the two semesters is put through an assessment that will dictate further changes to the library portion of the program. Librarians also offer an array of one-on-one support for students from the reference desk and also by appointment. These interactions along with class instruction are all recorded by statistics that librarians input after each interaction. In addition, the Dominican community is provided with programs that enrich the entire campus. Therapy dogs are brought in each term to assist students through the arduous finals week, along with displays to help spark further extracurricular learning endeavors. Career and Internship Services Career and Internship Services recognizes that providing students with opportunities to explore interests and gain insight into career options is a valuable learning experience. The department works with faculty and academic programs in supporting student internships, and students receive assistance and support in developing effective career planning skills to achieve their career goals and promote lifelong career development. Additionally, the department collaborates with the Office of Alumni Relations in coordinating the First Destination Survey and in collecting data regarding alumni in the workforce. Career Services is now undergoing an internal program review under the direction of the associate dean of students. A primary role of the associate dean of students is to coordinate and lead assessment for the Division of Student life, including Career Services.

STUDENT SUCCESS: PSYCHOSOCIAL DEVELOPMENT AND LEARNING

In fall 2015, a co-curricular assessment committee was formed and is in the beginning stages of articulating assessment processes across co-curricular programs. The dean of students is responsible for the coordination of the assessment and program reviews for the co-curricular areas for the Division of Student Life; the dean of the Dominican Experience is responsible for

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the assessment and program reviews of the academic support areas described in the above section. Together, the deans are able to view the global impact and effectiveness of both the academic and student support services on the whole student’s success. In 2016-17, all programs under the dean of students started the process of reviewing mission statements while also exploring what data would need to be gathered to develop a baseline year for a more comprehensive assessment plan. Annual assessments will begin with a pilot year (2017-18) and plans are to build towards a 5-year program review cycle. Below are the student support services that will take part in the pilot and, with the academic support services, contribute to student learning and success at Dominican. Student Health and Counseling Services This unit currently exits as a student service entity, with its primary focus being on attending to physical, emotional, and psychological well-being. At present these services are more clinical in their approach to proving care for students rather than offering an array of wellness education programs. CARE Team In fall 2015, Dominican created the CARE Team, a group that fulfills the role of behavior intervention teams found on most campuses. Comprising the group are representatives from the Dean of Students Office, Student Health, Counseling Services, Athletics, Academic Advising, Disability Services, Academic Affairs, Campus Security, Campus Ministry, and Residence Life. The CARE Team meets biweekly to review reports filed through on online system sent directly to the Office of the Dean of Students. Once a report is received, a staff member in the dean’s office reviews the report and determines if immediate follow-up is necessary. If so, staff in the dean’s office, or a member of CARE best suited to provide support to the student, will reach out to the student. In cases where immediate follow-up is not necessary, the CARE Team will review the report and collaboratively develop a plan providing the student with appropriate resources and follow-up. With the below data made available, CARE is better able to position its services and anticipate ongoing student need.

62 total CARE reports involving 47 students (33% recidivism rate) Most referred majors: Biology (9), Communications (7), Business (6), Nursing (5) 49% of cases related to severe depression or suicidal ideation 15% of cases related to suicide attempt 13% of cases related to inappropriate outbursts/aggressive behavior

Campus Ministry Campus Ministry works with the Dominican community to assist individuals to develop and strengthen their spiritual lives. Using the Dominican ideals (study, community, reflection, and service) as a foundation, Campus Ministry provides services to the community in an ecumenical spirit. Using data gathered through the UCLA Student Spiritual Survey (Survey in Higher Education), Campus Ministry develops programs that speak to:

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Spiritual Quest (Equanimity, Ethic of Caring, Charitable Involvement, Ecumenical Worldview)

Religious Qualities (Commitment, Engagement, Social Conservatism, Skepticism, Struggle)

Siena Leadership Team

The Siena Leadership Team is a unified, diverse, welcoming group of student leaders who are inspired to explore their beliefs and live out the Dominican ideals of study, reflection, community, and service. Committees include: team development, liturgical ministry, spirituality and interfaith, service and social justice, and communications.

Campus Ministry Club The purpose of the Campus Ministry Club is to provide its members with an environment that will help them promote their spirituality and faith consciousness, and to help them become active in serving the needs of their community; and to reflect on the opportunities provided, empower others through mentorship and community service, and shape the next generation of spiritual and faith leaders. Intercollegiate Athletics Within Dominican’s intercollegiate athletics program, the Penguin Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (PSAAC) is composed of two student-athlete (SA) representatives for each sport (24). PSAAC's mission is to enhance the total student-athlete experience, promote academic success, and encourage athlete involvement in community service projects. Additionally, each year student-athletes (SAs) raise funds for the Make-A-Wish Foundation; their fall 2016 efforts raised over $8,000. Since 2014, student-athletes have been active in PacWest student athlete leadership and governance by serving as

president (twice) of the PacWest SAAC (2015-16 and 2016-17), PacWest SAAC social media director, and PacWest representative at the NCAA SAAC council summit.

Beyond the leadership development through NCAA student governance opportunities, SAs are extremely active in the community and volunteer in a wide variety of activities that benefit the local community. Dominican was awarded the PacWest Community Service Award in 2009-10 and 2014-15, and for 2015-16, SAs amassed 1,502 community service hours.

Academic Awards and Recognition Dominican joined the PacWest NCAA DII conference in 2009 and has won the academic achievement award six times. The average GPA for student athletes steadily improved from 2009 through 2016 (3.21, 3.25, 3.26, 3.34, 3.41, 3.40, 3.41). In the 2015-16 academic year, 87% (162) of Dominican student-athletes had a cumulative GPA over a 3.0. Since 2012, SAs have earned seven all district academic awards, four All-American scholar awards, and four PacWest scholar athletes of the year awards.

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Faculty-Athletics Representative Dominican’s Faculty Athletic Representative (FAR) is a 12-month faculty member who is granted six units of release time each semester and summer employment to serve as a secondary, integrative adviser for all student athletes. This individual monitors the academic and success of all student athletes and works with faculty and athletics staff in coordinating multiple early warning and follow-up actions with the student athletes. Residence Life and Student Housing Residence life provides a positive and holistic living experience encompassing inclusivity, relational development, and community contribution, through the promotion of the Dominican Ideals in programmatic efforts towards the resident population. In addition to the department mission, residence life focuses efforts on establishing educational goals and learning outcomes as part of students’ personal and social development. Resident Advisors (RAs) work with the approximately 550 resident students. RAs offer guidance and support, act as a knowledgeable campus resource, and report violations of residence hall policies. In addition to their job duties and responsibilities, RAs build community by providing educational and social programs for residents. There are 14 RAs on staff, and each is responsible for developing and implementing 3 programs per semester/6 per academic year (84 total programs). Programming is the responsibility of the RAs, and is supported by Student Life professional staff. Student Activities and Leadership The Student Activities department has grown over the last three years to support the diverse student body. The student government organization, the Associated Students of Dominican University of California (ASDU), has planned and executed campus-wide events and initiatives for undergraduate students, in increasing numbers over the last 2-3 years. The ASDU General Council hosts at least 20 events and supports another 30-40 events hosted by the Inter-Club Council (ICC) student organizations each academic year. The student events range from trivia nights to LGBTQ Ally Week to town hall discussions with the president of the University. Since Dominican hired a student affairs staff member in 2013 to oversee student programming, the legitimacy of the student government has strengthened and the programs have become more varied with increased turnout and student engagement over time. Their visibility on campus has grown steadily, and they have held more events with meaningful discourse over the last year in their social issues week series. There are 14 recognized ICC student organizations and this number has steadily increased because of the formalized structure of the recognition process over the last three years.

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AREA FOR FURTHER DEVELOPMENT

Data Collection (CFRs 1.2, 1.4, 2.10, 2.11) Systematic collection analysis and tracking of data is an essential input to the nascent co-curricular assessment function and the University needs to continue to build capacity in this area. A new associate dean of students has co-curricular assessment as a formal part of the job description. As co-curricular units conduct their self-studies, they will collaborate with the associate dean in designing and implementing processes that include review of indirect and, where possible, direct evidence of student learning and success. Other units have developed mission statements and are mapping where their outcomes intersect with the ILOs. The Co-curricular Assessment Committee is responsible for overseeing the cycle of pilot self-studies for selected programs and establishing baseline review of evidence of ILO engagement in all units. The committee aims, over time, to fully align assessment of learning in the co-curriculum with parallel work in the curriculum. Effective co-curricular alignment and assessment is a brand new process for the University. Success in the medium-term depends on an explicit—and continuing—institutional commitment to provide necessary resources for the launch. Critically, this will include formally recognizing the workload for staff associated with this critical exercise in capacity-building.

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6. Quality Assurance and Improvement: Program Review; Assessment; Use of Data and Evidence (CFRs 2.4, 2.6, 2.7, 2.10, 4.1-4.7)

Dominican University of California has been assuring the quality of learning through program review and an ongoing cycle of annual assessment in academic programs. Since 2013, it has increased its commitment to quality assurance with the creation of an Office of Assessment and the hiring of a full-time director of assessment. As a result, program faculty are claiming greater value from these efforts as support for decision-making and improving student learning.

QUALITY ASSURANCE AND IMPROVEMENT

Dominican’s culture and practices in the areas of quality assurance and improvement have evolved significantly since its last reaccreditation process. Dominican has built institutional capacity in the areas of program review and annual assessment reporting and used these leverage points to cultivate a faculty culture of evidence and inquiry centered on student learning. Much of the foundational work is resulting in revamped curricula, policies, and practices, and the pivot from a more compliance-focused institutional culture to one centered on meaningful inquiry based on collaborative review of evidence is well underway. A periodic newsletter highlights developments in teaching, learning, and assessment at Dominican. The Assesstival events during the spring terms in 2016 and 2017 brought together faculty and staff in a celebration of data and its uses. The Office of Assessment website provides resources, guidance, and models for designing and implementing effective assessment plans. Many programs have launched and sustained processes that would be considered “developed” or even “highly developed” based on relevant WSCUC rubrics (especially true for externally accredited programs where assurance is routinely required, e.g., nursing, occupational therapy, art, business, physician assistant, education). In other programs, the culture of assessment is “emerging” or “initial” and has depended on the good faith efforts of faculty. The development of ILOs has been a critical exercise of collaboration and alignment on multiple levels, involving all constituencies at Dominican (students, staff, and faculty) in a conversation that spanned eight months. The pilot assessment of the ILOs is bringing together faculty from the three schools and multiple academic departments across campus, for the first time in Dominican’s history, to jointly review student work as evidence of learning. ILO assessment is facilitating the cultivation of a teaching and learning commons, a space where faculty from very different programs can learn from each other and see the connections between the different components of the educational experience at Dominican. The pilot ILO assessment of critical thinking was completed in May 2017. Results are being shared with the community In September 2017 and a plan for campus-wide engagement with the ILOs is in place.

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Quality Assurance: 2006-14 As is typical of institutions of this size, prior to 2006, Dominican supported assessment and quality assurance by appointing faculty who would take responsibility for managing this area in exchange for release time. The lead faculty would convene Dominican’s assessment committee, design templates and guidelines for reviews and reports, and provide feedback on submissions. In the years leading up to 2014, all programs developed program learning outcomes (PLOs). Almost all programs initiated formal annual assessment processes based on a 5-year cycle in which all of their learning outcomes were to be assessed. Feedback was provided through several cycles. Program reviews were routinely launched and completed and most culminated in a memorandum of understanding (MOU) specifying a plan of action based on the findings and recommendations of qualified external reviewers. But several reviews did not culminate in a formal memorandum. Generally speaking, assessment activities tended to be viewed more as exercises in compliance, rather than as opportunities for genuine inquiry and reflection. Understandably, much of the work in assessment was not well documented and occurred “under the radar.” For example, survey results were informally analyzed by some programs but not summarized, published, closely tracked, or widely discussed. Assessment activities often occurred near the deadline without time for collaboration, planning, optimum execution, and deliberation of results. Quality Assurance: 2014-17 The creation of an Office of Assessment and the hiring of a full-time director of assessment in December 2013 was an essential step in strengthening and formalizing assessment efforts at Dominican. Assessment has become, in practice, a set of nuanced and targeted interventions designed to move each program out of its silo to higher, common ground. This substantial investment of new resources is beginning to bear fruit. During this period, the Office of Assessment has launched the following: a clarified program review process based on degree programs rather than departments, with improved support from the Office of Institutional Research; an inquiry-based model for annual assessment reporting; a curricular mapping process across all degree programs; a program of faculty development workshops; a web site to serve as resource and repository for teaching, learning, and assessment; and a comprehensive offering of support services for program faculty spanning syllabus and course design to revision of applicant interview processes. The Academic Assessment Committee facilitated, reviewed, and approved the first round of self-studies in spring 2014. The new program review manual clarified and expanded the required elements of the self-study, specified the roles and responsibilities of key players, and articulated the stages of the process from identifying guiding questions to developing the final MOU. The cycle was set to six years and a schedule of reviews agreed upon, prioritizing units based on a variety of factors, especially the time that had elapsed since the last self-study.

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Another important change was a new emphasis on a collaborative approach to writing the self-study with core faculty, and adjuncts where possible, involved in every step of the process. Some release time for full-time faculty and additional compensation for adjuncts and consultants have been made available to increase collaboration and facilitate timely completion of self-studies. Faculty are now required to meet and deliberate during each stage of the process in the new model. The result is not only a better self-study, but a strengthened learning community and more coherent curriculum.

PROGRAM REVIEW

A new program review manual delineates roles, responsibilities, and timelines for each stage of the process (up to and including the MOU) and has proven useful in practice through multiple reviews. Expert reviewers have contributed substantially to the quality of the process. The full impact of the new review process on student learning will become apparent only through subsequent annual reporting and, especially, as each program comes up for review. Three program reviews were completed under the new model (Service-Learning, Communications-Media Studies, and Humanities-Cultural Studies) by fall 2016. Five other programs completed their self-studies in fall 2017: Biological Sciences (undergraduate and graduate), Chemistry, History, and General Education. External reviews are scheduled or have occurred (GE) for these five programs. Details for each review are available in the individual self-studies, external reviewers’ reports, and memoranda of understanding. Owing to the fact that the current process has been in place for only three years and the reviews have only recently been completed, there has not been much opportunity to circle back and evaluate progress towards the milestones agreed to by all parties in the concluding memoranda. Nevertheless, every program under review has identified and enacted important changes during and subsequent to the self-study process based on what emerged. To aid in the follow-up to completed MOUs, the Office of Academic Affairs has created a tracking process for benchmarks by responsible party based on the annual assessment reporting cycle.

The revamping of the program review process has been an exercise in addressing gaps and refocusing institutional attention on many levels. It has been appropriated as an opportunity to revitalize frayed or broken links and reintroduce the community to the work of its programs. It has also become clear through this initial round that connections between program review and the strategic planning and budgeting process need to be clarified. How and when are faculty appointments and staff positions allocated? The focused strategic planning process of Dominican at 130 is clarifying the benchmarks and criteria for maintaining financial sustainability and achieving the educational mission of Dominican, so programs can now enter into the review process with reality-based expectations for program resources.

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ASSESSMENT OF STUDENT LEARNING

Annual Assessment Process In addition to changes in program review detailed above, the annual assessment process has undergone a significant revision. Beginning in 2014-15, programs have been encouraged to use an “inquiry model” for designing and implementing their plans, focusing on the burning questions that drive their interest in student learning. The new template has been employed with good results through two cycles of review. Based on feedback from programs that they needed more time to analyze and discuss the findings, the due date was moved to October 15 for the 2015-16 cycle of reports and to November 1 for 2016-17, based on the same rationale. Eight campus-wide faculty workshops serving over 55 faculty in 2014-15 provided basic training in course and syllabus design, curricular mapping, developing learning outcomes, use of rubrics, and other related topics. The success of the effort resides in discussions with faculty in which they can clarify their goals early and then work systematically toward answering questions that matter. The outreach to programs is ongoing and occurs in the form of meetings or workshops where faculty (among other things) design rubrics or surveys, review student work, or develop curricular maps.

The Academic Assessment Committee, as an arm of faculty governance, represents faculty’s ownership and oversight in this domain, and its standing and elected membership comprises representatives of the Library, the Office of Diversity and Equity, General Education, each School (including separate delegates from the health sciences and natural sciences), and Academic Affairs. The Committee has moved toward a more active liaison model in which members share best practices and resources across Dominican. The committee also determines policy and manages annual reporting and periodic program review. The Office of Assessment does not directly oversee externally accredited programs. The Academic Assessment Committee is an important nexus for harmonizing external and internal reviews and sharing information on such issues as technical platforms for assessment (e.g., TaskStream, e*VALUE). Self-studies submitted for external accreditation typically serve in lieu of internal self-studies and the appropriate liaisons document the alignment of standards between Dominican’s expectations and each external accreditor’s requirements. Importantly, programs have made a wholesale shift from annual assessment based on data from individual assignments to a focus on culminating signature work that provides evidence of most or all of the key outcomes. Programs that evaluate students’ signature work now include Art/Design, Humanities-Cultural Studies, Communication-Media Studies, Psychology, Chemistry, Biology, Clinical Science, History, Counseling Psychology, and Public Health. While all of these programs have made the capstone evaluation meaningful to varying degrees, the programs are still piloting their protocols and it is therefore too early to provide robust evidence of improvements in learning that have resulted.

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USE OF DATA AND EVIDENCE

The Offices of Institutional Research and Assessment have substantially contributed to the ability of participating faculty to complete quality reviews. The required elements of the program review include those expected by WSCUC (e.g., mission, assessment of program learning outcomes, review of disaggregated retention and graduation data, external scan of comparable programs, attention to the student experience, and expert external review). Additionally, programs are encouraged to develop “guiding questions” for the review that they can investigate using various methods, including analysis of available data sets, surveys, interviews, web and library searches, and focus groups. This addition is emblematic of the desired shift from compliance to inquiry. When the self-study is approached as “action research,” the participants have the agency to prioritize the questions that matter most to them and are much more invested in getting the answers. The result is a more coherent and comprehensive report and, ideally, a more collaborative program culture centered on questions of student learning. Importantly, the locus of program review has changed from the department to the degree. Prior to 2014, large departments such as Natural Sciences and Mathematics (NSM) underwent a self-study that would cover multiple degree programs. For example, the last NSM self-study encompassed four degrees (MS Biology, MS Clinical Science, BS Biology, and BS Chemistry) and mathematics (which does not offer degrees but is an important component of General Education). The external reviewers were able to make some useful recommendations based on the report and site visit. But the report did not offer in-depth assessment of learning outcomes for each program or a deep portrait of their challenges and strengths based on review of evidence. Given the importance of the sciences and the large number of students in the professional programs that depend on courses offered by NSM, the Academic Assessment Committee chose to put the BS Biology, BS Chemistry, and MS Biology programs up for review under the new template, beginning in spring 2016.


Data Collection for Program Review (CFR 2.7) Despite evidence that the shift towards a culture of evidence is ongoing, challenges remain. Data collection and analysis for program review are still mostly paper-based or are only minimally automated in Google docs. There is currently no standard university-wide platform for gathering and rating student work or aggregating, analyzing, interpreting, and reporting on results. Moreover, much of the time and effort is consumed with the logistics of getting the right artifacts to the right people with the right instructions and necessary knowledge to complete the task and make sense of the results. With multiple assessment and program review cycles in place, Dominican can now strategize how best to continue moving towards assessment as routine rather than an add-on.

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Integration (CFRs 4.5, 4.6) Similarly, the work of assessment should systematically be integrated and incorporated into strategic planning efforts. Dominican can benefit from a more distributed model in which assessment liaisons (vs. the program chairs) oversee and work within their programs. While designating a program liaison is not always possible (in smaller programs), the school-level liaison model is a step in this direction. A program review of the Office of Assessment will be conducted during 2017-18 to determine its effectiveness and create a strategic plan. The driving questions will be:

How can the new foundation be built upon?

How can the assessment function be improved in order to advance Dominican’s mission as an institution dedicated to high-quality student learning?

What resources are necessary to fully support that mission? Dominican continues to move to higher ground in its overall trajectory through a sharpened focus on assurance of learning, significantly enhanced institutional capacity, and a rising culture of inquiry and continuous improvement based on evidence.

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7. Sustainability: Planning for the Changing Higher Education Environment; Ensuring Financial Viability (CFRs 3.4, 3.7, 4.1, 4.3-4.7)

Dominican faces many of the same challenges as other small, non-profit, private universities—some of them particular to our Bay Area location. In recent years, Dominican has responded by focusing on increasing student retention, adding new programs in areas of strength, creating the Dominican Experience, increasing non-tuition revenue, and ensuring effective financial management. Most importantly, rather than placing growth or diversification at the heart of our strategy, our emphasis is on quality, innovation, and reputation as the foundations of sustainability.

SUSTAINABILITY: PLANNING FOR A CHANGING ENVIRONMENT

Dominican at 130: Dominican University of California in 2020-21 Dominican at 130 (the University will celebrate its 130th anniversary in 2020-21) is the title under which the current strategic planning work is moving forward. Dominican at 130 focuses on three strategic initiatives that emerged from the 2011-15 Strategic Plan and from years of cross-campus collaboration and planning efforts: the Dominican Experience, curriculum alignment, and targeted enrollment management and program innovation.

The Dominican Experience (DE) The Dominican Experience is Dominican’s emerging distinctive program, linking liberal arts and professional programs, undergraduate and graduate, in their commitment to a common student learning agenda. It is the University’s promise that each student will have the support needed for success in college, the education necessary for a career, and the life skills and ethical foundation to create a meaningful life. Students are supported through Coaching (students partner with mentors for guidance and support in the crafting of education and career plans); Signature Work (students answer real-world questions of their own choosing to demonstrate the integration of multiple skills); Community Engagement (students apply their learning through collaboration with community partners at local, national, and global levels); and an E-Portfolio (students capture demonstrations of learning using a personalized digital platform). When fully realized, the Dominican Experience will support students in achieving our four Institutional Learning Outcomes: Exploration and acquisition of knowledge; Development of intellectual, professional, and artistic skills; Practice of civic skills and social responsibility; and Cultivation of well-being. The Dominican Experience builds on the traditional four values of the Dominican educational model, intertwining study with reflection, community, and service.

Curriculum Alignment If the Dominican Experience is the University’s signature—linking liberal arts and professional programs and ensuring equitable access to success—it must live in both the co-curriculum and the curriculum. The curriculum, in particular, must be revised to make it central. Students must have more opportunities for discovery, which for undergraduates means more room for electives, minors, or double majors. In addition, the curriculum must not require an

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unsustainable level of staffing; nor can it be so diffuse as to distract students’ and faculty members’ focus from the shared components and outcomes. Reaching these key goals will necessitate that student-to-faculty ratios increase and that requirements be reduced in many majors (see below). Pathways to graduation, for inbound transfer students, and from undergraduate to graduate programs need to be clarified and streamlined.

Enrollment Management and Program Innovation Given that Dominican seeks to establish a market niche by becoming identified with a high-quality, distinctive educational model that also supports ongoing financial sustainability, the University must identify the appropriate overall enrollment target and mix of programs. New programs are designed to build on existing areas of quality and demand, with a goal of balance and modest growth, and many existing programs can innovate with the same goal. While growth potential is clearest in graduate programs and in health sciences, we are also targeting existing capacity in business and liberal arts. New programs currently in review, approval, or launch stages include a revised/re-launched Honors program, Low-residency MFA, Global Entrepreneurship, MS Healthcare Leadership, and MS Physician Assistant Studies. We anticipate that the additional student housing Dominican has leased beginning in fall 2017 will also be central to enrollment stability.

SUSTAINABILITY: ALIGNMENT AND FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT

Resource Planning The financial stability for the last several years can also be attributed to a very in-depth, conservative and transparent budget development process—one that is led by a committed and established financial management team. Our predictive models have shown total operating revenues staying essentially flat from year to year during this time; therefore, the budget development process has consisted primarily of re-allocation and re-prioritization of budgets and needs. Since the last review, Dominican has moved toward a more collaborative model to inform interdependent, accountable, integrated, transparent, and systems-based financial management. The budget development process is led by the vice president for academic affairs, with the approved annual budgets managed by the vice president of finance and administration. The assistant vice president for academic resources, planning and systems is the third member of the University’s core budget team as part of the University’s budget development process. The directors of human resources and institutional research support the budget team with requested data and support as needed. There are 14 designated budget centers (some revenue-generating, all with associated costs), and the core budget team routinely meets with all center managers to provide budget development guidance, review spending to date, discuss any risks, and mitigate potential overruns. The budget team also provides supplemental reports to enhance understanding of personnel and operating costs.

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The budget is a strategic tool that supports the vision of the University. Therefore, the work to develop a three-year budget model is a collaborative effort. Academic Affairs and Enrollment Management are able to provide enrollment projections for not only the incoming class but also the impact of new academic programs. Institutional Research provides enrollment projections for continuing students and takes into account retention, persistence and graduation rates. With the combination of new students, new academic programs and continuing students, the Budget Office is able to synthesize the projections to calculate net tuition revenue. The vice president for finance and administration seeks input from the vice president of advancement to evaluate the long-term strategy for fundraising efforts that will impact the operating budget (e.g., Annual Fund). The Budget Office has to make certain assumptions concerning auxiliary and other revenue, as well as compensation and operating expenses. These assumptions account for national trends, historical data and contractual obligations. The three-year budget model is reviewed and modified on an annual basis. As the budget development process continues to evolve and improve, additional templates have been created to provide even more information to center managers to assist in the information delivery process. We now have a multi-year budget development model, and all budget templates are adjusted to include the financial impact of current year decisions on future years.

Data measures and budget modeling for Dominican at 130 To support the success of the three strategic initiatives, members of the Dominican community—including the senior leadership and (separately) a Summer Curriculum Working Group comprising faculty, staff, and leadership representatives—spent much of summer 2017 developing the data models, budgets, and other parameters needed to guide implementation. These planning tools will also help us monitor and assess how effectively progress is being made toward the three initiatives’ implementation and outcomes. Aligning Dominican at 130’s outcomes with the institution’s financial resources will better inform the fiscal allocations required to support the University’s educational effectiveness efforts. Most importantly, it will allow for Dominican to adapt and thrive as a learning organization as it navigates its way through the changing landscape of U.S. higher education. Following a charge from the President, the VPFA and senior leadership team developed two budget models for three years hence (FY21), based on a more sustainable student-to-faculty ratio of 14:1—the median for institutions in Dominican’s Carnegie peer group—and on enrollments of 1,800 FTE and 1,890 FTE. Both enrollment numbers assume the addition by 2020 of three cohorts of students in the new Physician Assistant Studies degree program; the former anticipates a slight decrease in other programs, while the latter keeps existing program enrollment roughly constant. Most other costs and revenue sources were held steady for the sake of this planning exercise, but the models were to include 2% annual tuition increases, 2% annual compensation increases, a 2% annual increase to the strategic initiatives fund, and 3% increases to major contracts (e.g., utilities, health insurance). Both enrollment targets yielded a sustainable budget within three years, with 1,800 FTE showing a negligible deficit and 1,890

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producing a modest surplus. Aligning Dominican at 130’s outcomes with the institution’s financial resources will better inform the fiscal allocations required to support the University’s educational effectiveness efforts.

Building on this work, the Summer Curriculum Working Group (supported by a Teagle Foundation planning grant for Curricular Coherence, in collaboration with Mills College) developed parameters, tools, and an ambitious one-year timeline for faculty to undertake systemic curriculum alignment work. These were reviewed by the President’s Cabinet and presented to the full faculty and academic staff at the annual Fall Faculty Retreat in August 2017. The 14:1 ratio was translated into an average class enrollment target—20 students—which will be the single driving metric for curricular change, alongside the substantive directions noted above (more flexibility, focus on the Dominican Experience, etc.). Further data modeling and peer institution research resulted in the additional recommendation of moving from a 3-unit based to a 4-unit based undergraduate curriculum—thus minimizing the impact of increased class sizes on faculty workload, as well as fostering more reflective student learning. Finally, limits were proposed for the number of units to be required in GE and most majors. Curricular alignment work to support the Dominican at 130 planning model will proceed in all majors and programs during 2017-18, following swiftly behind revision of the General Education (GE) curriculum. GE revision began in earnest in 2016-17 with a thorough program self-study and based on the recommendations of the external reviewers, redesign strategies for the GE curriculum were shared with the campus and were given preliminary approval by the GE Board in August 2017. The redesign includes a 36-unit total GE program comprising 4-unit courses. An implementation timeline has been developed for 2017-18 that includes informal campus discussions, formal shared governance approvals, alignment of the GE program with the Institutional Learning Outcomes (ILOs), and further curriculum integration between the liberal arts and professional programs. Link: General Education Program Review 2016-17 site Link: General Education Redesign 2017-18 site

An additional impact of curricular alignment will be to consolidate a sustainable and steady level of tenured and tenure-track faculty staffing, as well as easing the burdens on support staff—both topics raised by the Commission in its 2010, 2013, and 2014 responses to Dominican. Currently, an undergraduate curriculum that has grown increasingly complex and requirement-heavy over time—while enrollment has declined modestly—requires the delivery of many more discreet courses each academic year than the full-time faculty can teach or the overall enrollment can fill. This has resulted in the proliferation of tiny classes (with fewer than 10 students), and, in turn, the practice of hiring hundreds of adjunct faculty in an attempt to deliver the promised curriculum without incurring overwhelming costs. Like many private institutions in the Bay Area and nationwide, Dominican was compelled to confront the negative impact on employees of this model when its adjunct faculty voted to unionize (with SEIU Local 1021) in December 2014.



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While the resulting Collective Bargaining Agreement has introduced a marked improvement in compensation for adjunct faculty and the adoption of clear, equitable processes for hiring, assigning workload, and evaluation, it will also increase personnel costs significantly in each year of its term. In addition, the accompanying expansion of workload for those academic and human resources staff charged with supporting contract implementation and for full-time faculty (especially chairs) who supervise and schedule adjunct faculty has put further strain on Dominican’s thinly-stretched personnel. Compared to its Carnegie peer institutions, which spend an average of 46 cents on non-academic support for every dollar spent on instruction, Dominican spends only 39 cents per dollar (see ACTA Institute for Effective Governance report, July 2017; and IPEDS). Recognizing this disparity from the norm has helped faculty to acknowledge that staff are comparatively overburdened; that increasing our student-to-faculty ratio need not result in any damage to the quality of the educational experience we provide our students; and that making this significant change will be a key component of long-term fiscal sustainability.

These factors make it all the more important that we realize the goals collected under the rubric Dominican at 130. A more focused, less sprawling curriculum delivered in 4-unit classes (for undergraduates) will not only enable the university to concentrate its resources on the kinds of high-impact, in-depth learning prioritized in both the 2010-15 Strategic Plan and the Dominican Experience vision; it will also result in a better supported, right-sized faculty, including more intentional deployment of the specialized skills that only adjunct faculty can provide.

The list below defines the other data points that will be measured and monitored as part of the Dominican at 130 planning process. Table 7.2 Dominican at 130: Data Points for Planning Process

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Overview of Outcomes from the 2011-15 Strategic Plan The current campus planning work grew out of the 2011-15 Strategic Plan, approved in 2010. The 2011-15 Strategic Plan successfully established goals for the University, and—as with all strategic plans—required adjustment based on evolving analysis and market conditions. In hindsight, however, the plan also highlighted the challenge of overly prescriptive (and sometimes contradictory) goals, and the need for more focused and nuanced planning. From the nine central categories of the 2011-15 Strategic Plan and the multiple initiatives under each, the University has in recent years narrowed its focus to those initiatives that were truly strategic, academic in nature, and university-wide. Thus the three priorities for Dominican at 130 were identified. The categories in the 2011-15 Strategic Plan were recently evaluated with regard to progress made, and to emphasize how some of them have evolved into the current initiatives—centrally, the Dominican Experience. One of the major managerial initiatives of the strategic plan was Responsibility Centered Management (RCM)—a decentralized approach to budgeting that sought continuous investment in academic programs and services. While the prescribed practice of RCM would have required tremendous additional investment in staff and infrastructure, the initiative resulted in a new budget model designed to be more predictable, more aligned with clearly articulated institutional priorities, and more transparent. In addition, there has been a shift from a long period of unreliable projections to a three-year budget model focused on annual balanced operating budgets and clean audits.

SUSTAINABILITY: FISCAL HEALTH

As Dominican narrows its strategic focus in order to evolve continually toward a high-quality, distinctive academic model, the University also requires a continuing emphasis on enrollment management, as well as diversification of revenue streams beyond the core academic program. Enrollment Management

Student Retention and Success Dominican is tuition dependent; therefore, and in keeping with our commitment to quality, a key area of focus in recent years has been to increase student retention significantly. The 4-year graduation rate has risen from 35.5% to 57% from the fall 2007 to the fall 2012 entering cohort. Similarly, the retention rate for 1st to 2nd year undergraduate students, which in fall 2007 was 69%, has significantly increased—reaching 86.7% by fall 2015. For the past two years, a small Retention and Persistence group, comprising the VPAA, Dean of Students, Dean of the Dominican Experience and Director of Institutional Research, has met on a regular basis to review data and identify areas of weakness and potential intervention. Retention and graduation rates are key indicators of institutional and student success. With the launch of new and renewed academic programs and full implementation of the Dominican Experience, Dominican students should continue to flourish in graduation, retention and persistence rates.

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From Enrollment Growth to Intentional Stability In order to deliver revenue growth, Dominican’s previous Strategic Plan emphasized enrollment increases and entrepreneurial diversification of academic programs. Today, in a context of demographic changes in the college-bound population, including a decline in numbers that has led to increased competition for enrollment impacting private higher education in particular, our focus has shifted to developing a core distinction and a program mix that reflects our existing strengths, mission and identity. Sustainability means, for instance, not growing our undergraduate nursing program beyond capacity simply because market appetite exists. Dominican has seen the danger of a dip in outcome quality—now addressed and corrected—following the admission of several exceptionally large classes of nursing students in the early 2010s. Other constraints on growth include the very limited on-campus space available to the University, “land-locked” within a residential neighborhood. According to a recent analysis of Dominican’s academic space by architects Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, Dominican’s average square footage per student, and also per faculty and staff member, is far below the average for our peer institutions. Wiser space use will be required of us, which suggests significant enrollment growth may be possible only in evening, weekend, summer, and/or hybrid programs—or in existing programs with unused capacity. Nevertheless, stabilizing enrollments at a sustainable level is also crucial.

Program Balance, New Program Development and Curricular Renewal Therefore, the University is not only streamlining and focusing the existing curriculum; it is also developing new and updated programs in limited and intentional ways—such as carefully building on our strength and appeal in health-related fields by having added a degree program in Public Health (revised for 2017-18 to incorporate Health Science, as Global Public Health) and launching, in 2017-18, graduate programs in Physician Assistant Studies and Healthcare Leadership, as well as an MFA in Creative Writing with a track in Narrative Medicine. Revisions to the GE curriculum and existing majors/minors will better align with the distinctive features of the Dominican Experience, such as community-engaged learning. This process includes building in structured communication between faculty and enrollment professionals regarding what changes might increase the market appeal of liberal arts majors, in particular. Additional markets and populations In addition to the significant improvements in retention and graduation rates, some of our most recent enrollment data suggests modest success already in moving our emphasis away from net enrollment growth and toward stability, by building on areas of quality. While the University’s student headcount has declined 18% over the most recent five-year period, FTE declined by only 12%. This suggests Dominican is not only retaining more students; but that students are moving towards graduation at a faster pace by earning more units. With the support and encouragement of the Board of Trustees, enrollment personnel have been intentionally increasing their outreach to transfer students, while simultaneously the Schools and academic support offices have been examining how to create more transfer-friendly policies and curricula. Our yield among transfer students (admission-to-enrollment

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ratio) is significantly higher than for our first-time first-year undergraduates—41% versus 17% in fall 2016, for example. In 2017-18, Admissions will pursue transfer initiatives with local community colleges by boosting financial aid through two main funding sources: increasing the top transfer merit scholarship award by $5,000 to align with other Bay Area institutions, and offering an additional $1,000 in the form of the North Bay Transfer Grant program for students coming from the three geographically closest community colleges. On the negative side, however, a steady decline in the Adult Degree Completion population has thus far not been halted by either curricular change or targeted digital marketing—and may be indicative of a saturated and/or tapped-out market. Other Revenue Sources: Non-degree Programs; Advancement and Donor Development In the past five years, Dominican has more than doubled its annual revenue from sources other than student tuition. The University has seen particular growth in income from non-credit bearing educational programs. In Advancement, as in enrollment and academic programs, the focus has been on building sustainable depth and quality, and on not overreaching in the quest for short-term gains but rather, proceeding planfully. Non-credit bearing programs In 2014, faculty in the Nursing department revised and re-launched an existing small summer program for internationally educated nurses (IEN) who wished to become licensed to practice in California. This program now runs year-round, serves over 300 students per year, and in FY16 brought Dominican $590,000 in net revenue. The University’s non-credit “college” for senior learners, the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, has also delivered continual growth, bringing $155,000 in annual net revenue in FY16, in addition to an increased endowment gift of $1M from the Osher Foundation in 2013. Since 2012, Dominican’s Education department has partnered with online continuing-education provider EDS to certify professional development units for school teachers across the U.S.; this partnership yielded over $1M in net revenue in FY16. While revenue is modest from executive education programming in the Barowsky School, the University realized some $35,000 from this source in FY16.

Advancement: Major Gifts Some of the most significant accomplishments in fundraising and donor-base development in Dominican’s history have occurred since our most recent WSCUC review. Three successive gifts in 2014—first, from Trustee Rolf Lewis (in support of the Meadowlands Health Sciences building), then from Board Chair Andrew Barowsky (in support of the Dominican Experience and the Barowsky School of Business) and finally from the Bernard Osher Foundation (in support of the Osher Endowment)—broke by some distance the University’s highest fundraising total in a single year. Since then, seven-figure gifts from individual donors (Albert Lepage, John Boneparth, and Susan and Dennis Gilardi) and a foundation (Valley Foundation) have followed. The complete refurbishment of the Meadowlands building, between 2013 and 2015, illustrates both Dominican’s building and extending of its donor base and also the University’s deliberate

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emphasis on matching the scale of our capital initiatives to a realistic assessment of our capacity to fundraise. The Meadowlands project—which has resulted in a state-of-the-art health sciences facility within an environmentally-friendly, landmark-quality historic building—was completed on-schedule and without any increase to the University’s debt load, thanks to an extensive outreach campaign. Of the 337 donors to Meadowlands, 8% were first-time donors. As the University moves forward into future capital projects, beginning with the construction of the Center for the Dominican Experience in the Alemany Library building, our focus will continue to be on directing donor activity toward strategic priorities, without incurring debt burdens. Dominican is in the early stages of a targeted "mini-campaign" around the estimated $8.9M renovation of the Center for the Dominican Experience. The advancement team has assembled a strong list of major prospects for funding in addition to the several major gifts already pledged for the project. After conducting an initial campaign planning study to examine institutional readiness for a comprehensive campaign, leadership concluded that further infrastructure and outreach needed to be established before embarking on such an ambitious endeavor. In early 2015, Advancement added two additional gift officers, focused on cultivating the pipeline of donors with the capacity of a major gift of $10,000 or more. To date, in FY17 Dominican has secured $2,414,495 in new planned gift commitments. Our hope is to show continued growth over the next several years, and conduct a new campaign feasibility study with representation from our expanded donor base. Scholarships also continue to be a priority for advancement. Advancement partnered with the Office of Financial Aid to introduce “Close the Gap” scholarships in 2016. Focused on returning seniors and juniors, this scholarship program provides necessary support for students to finish their degrees. The average amount of money students need is relatively small—often less than $5,000. Dominican’s Close the Gap campaign ensures that these exceptional students don’t have to withdraw when their diploma is in sight. The Advancement team successfully raised $144,000, and this year 24 students were awarded a total of $87,500. Funds were awarded based on an algorithm that assessed weighted GPA, loan indebtedness, and estimated family contribution.

Annual Fund Dominican is addressing the nationwide downward trend in annual giving by introducing (or in some cases, reintroducing) new acquisition strategies. In Annual Giving, a prolonged search for a replacement director in 2015 left the University at a disadvantage, but Dominican has embarked on an aggressive plan to face that challenge. This plan includes bringing back phone solicitation after a nine-year break; creating a video appeal by email (May 2017) and conducting the campus’s first-ever Day of Giving in March 2017. The latter was a resounding success. With a "stretch" goal of 300 donors in 24 hours, the day yielded 637 gifts, and raised just over $86,000. As the University looks forward to FY18, Dominican will be building on those strategies for annual gifts; doing more targeted approaches to parents (a previously neglected group); and

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adding a position with a focus on stewardship, so that our donors feel supported and respected "post-gift."

Corporate, Foundation, and Government Relations Over the past year (2016-17), the Corporate, Foundation, and Government Relations (CFGR) team submitted a total of 48 grant proposals for funding; 24 grants, gifts and contracts were awarded, generating $1,485,466 for the University. An additional $474,237 in gifts from foundations and corporations was secured through solicitations conducted by Development Directors (major gifts), Alumni Relations (golf tournament, reunion, events) and Athletics (sponsorships). Proposals are often submitted in one fiscal year and not awarded until the next fiscal year. In years when Dominican is in a capital campaign (e.g., Meadowlands), the number of proposals and amount of funding received are higher than in years with no such campaign. For example, in 2014, $600,000 of the $1.093M in foundation funding came from two capital gifts – Fletcher Jones Foundation ($500,000) and Irwin Foundation ($100,000). Likewise, in 2015, $1.25M of the $2.03M in foundation funding came from two capital gifts – Valley Foundation ($1M) and Wiegand Foundation ($250,000). Also in 2015, the Nagel Foundation, which had granted Dominican $30,000 annually for the past decade, sunsetted and awarded Dominican a one-time, endowed gift of $250,000. In recent years Dominican has secured funds for the first time from several prominent national and regional foundations, including the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Teagle Foundation, the AARP Foundation, and the CrankStart Foundation.


Running a very lean organization with balanced annual budgets while simultaneously trying to transform the institution is taxing the capacity of Dominican’s infrastructure. There are areas where organizational restructuring and/or reprioritizing—refocusing staff resources—may help the University move more effectively toward its goals, but Dominican also recognizes that the opportunity for such refocusing is finite. Data Management for Better Planning (CFRs 3.7, 4.1, 4.5) Beginning in 2014, Dominican rebuilt its Institutional Research office from the ground up, having previously managed for some time with a single position split between IR functions and data integration, including in the budget process. There is still work needed to build our capacity for responsive and fully integrated data reporting that can underpin the planning process, particularly in the alignment of academic course scheduling, enrollment, budget, and faculty planning. Alumni Giving (CFRs 4.5, 4.6) Like many universities, Dominican is struggling to boost alumni participation rates. Nationally, the average undergraduate participation rate has declined from 13.8% in 2001 to 8.7% in 2013. (Source: Voluntary Support of Education survey results, 2001-2013). The challenge is particularly

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problematic among more recent graduates. Among alumni who graduated from the 1940s through the 1970s, Dominican enjoys a solid average participation rate of 21%. For graduates from the 1980s through current, the rate drops dramatically to an average of 3.8%. Overall, Dominican’s participation rate at the end of FY17 stands at 6.7. The need for stronger alumni communication and engagement is a key strategy for strengthening participation. Research shows that those alumni who are more informed about their institution give more than those who are not as well informed. However, Dominican is working to better connect and utilize their preferred communication methods (e,g., online, social media). For alumni who want to engage in person, a revitalized Alumni Board has offered a growing number of events in recent years, including several providing alumni a chance to learn more about new developments at Dominican. A pilot program to engage alumni as mentors for students—part of the integrative coaching model—was enthusiastically received by alumni, generating 40 participants; however, the staff time required to manage effectively even this limited pilot led to a severe stretching of resources in the small alumni relations office. At this time, the University is evaluating how to provide the support that will be necessary to take such a project to scale. Admissions, Enrollment and Marketing (CFR 3.7) Much of our strategy for program innovation and development is outlined above, and is paying dividends. However, in the past several enrollment cycles, there have been fluctuations in enrollment and meeting targets. The enrollment management division has recently restructured, allowing more focus on specialization to reach goals. Working closely with the Marketing and Public Relations staff, the admissions offices are focusing on telling the Dominican story through digital tools to reach a wider audience of prospective students. The enrollment management division is expanding its footprint with social media tools, e-communications and web platforms for college search. The University invested in a major marketing project in 2016-17 and has now started taking those materials live, a process that will continue through the 2017-18 academic year. Along with strong messaging, Dominican needs to upgrade our presence in social media and on the website to ensure it is nimble, enrollment-focused, and responsive to the preferences of contemporary students. The Undergraduate Admissions team is fairly young in experience; however, a few staff are Dominican alumni and bring valuable experience to prospective students. An external factor to the admissions cycle is the change in the financial aid policy of Prior-Prior. The change in timing of the financial aid packaging provides an opportunity and challenge to align recruitment, communication, and yield efforts with the financial aid office.

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8. Conclusion: Reflection and Plans for Improvement

The work of this report provides Dominican University of California the opportunity to reflect on where it is at this moment and more importantly to what futures the foundations of today will lead. Located near the heart of the culturally rich region that is the San Francisco Bay Area, Dominican has cultivated a diverse student population and an increasingly diverse faculty. National longitudinal studies show Dominican is one of the top colleges among its peers in transforming lower-income students into higher-income wage

earners. Community engagement programs at the University receive national attention and awards. A local institution, Dominican is able to provide a global perspective for students who study here, whether as degree candidates or exchange students. While the University faces many of the same challenges as other, small, tuition dependent, private institutions of higher education, it has responded by strategically focusing on increasing student retention, adding new programs in areas of strength, creating the Dominican Experience, increasing non-tuition revenue, and bolstering effective financial management. The research of Dominican’s president on the landscape of schools similar to the University in size, history, and programming supports the strategic focus on the Dominican Experience, curriculum alignment, and targeted enrollment and program innovation. From this work has emerged a vision for Dominican as it moves beyond its recent quasquicentennial celebrations, beyond Dominican at 130, and toward the generations to come. The president is shaping the institution’s future direction with the community; its shared governance mechanisms are beginning to approve and implement this vision at the University. This model establishes a common student educational experience and signature programs to enhance quality, recruitment, and retention. It maintains a liberal arts core and general education and a residential experience. Expansion of professional and graduate programs is deliberate and purposeful and does not chase quick-fix, in-the-moment trends. The model builds on strengths already present and aspires to ideals consistent with the mission and history of the University. In 1850 Catherine Adelaide Goemaere, Dominican’s founder, arrived in rambunctious, polyglot California. Earlier that year she had left France on a ship. She rode a mule across the Isthmus of Panama, sailed up to Monterey, and started what would become the University. Goemaere had ideas for the present and the future. No stranger to hard work, she emerged as a natural leader for a rapidly evolving and culturally diverse environment. She and her colleagues established a curriculum and experience relevant to the students of their era. Reflecting in a letter back to France, written from San Rafael in 1889, Goemaere says, “I came here and began a community… knowing neither English nor Spanish… the good God has blessed our work, but we could do so much more.” Today on Goemaere’s San Rafael campus, languages and cultures meet. The community she started has grown and morphed and is still dedicated to educating students for the future. The ‘blessed work’ is ongoing. The work to come has a vision and a road map. Catherine Adelaide Goemaere, one dares to presume, would be pleased.

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