Shoreline Community College s7

STUDENT SERVICES

TO: Services for Students with Disabilities Staff Kim Thompson Mary Jane Blair Claire Stenson-Ball Hilary Lott Farideh Ahmadi Kara Anne Nelson

FROM: Holly Moore, President Jim Perez, Vice President for Student Services

DATE: April 30, 2002

SUBJECT: 2001-2002 Program Planning and Assessment

The Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD) program continues to do excellent work in providing reasonable accommodation for students with special needs, and in implementing legal mandates on providing these accommodations. For this, we offer kudos to all program staff.

Mission/Purpose Throughout your report, the various displays provided by charts and graphics are quite impressive. Those within this section are certainly no exception. We don’t mean to take anything away from the content of this section, but we must point out matters of formatting. It appears that a reversal of “Outcomes” and “Strategic Directions” would result in a better description. Furthermore, this component might make a better overall fit in Sections 8 and 9, Goals and Objectives.

Students/Clients Served In this section, you do an excellent job of listing the various categories of students/clients served. Your data, however, is limited to percentage of the student population that fits into each of the categories of disability. This is where one of your great graphs would have been most helpful and would have made a powerful statement. Consider using a graph that would show specific numbers of students from each of these categories, perhaps on a year-by-year basis over a specific span of time. This would show and help track perceived trends.

Criteria for Measuring Effectiveness You list eight criteria that you determine to be appropriate measures. While we agree with most, it is unclear how some of these will be measured. The quantitative measures can be utilized by accurate record keeping and data accumulation. The qualitative measurement, however, is not so easy to assess. You make reference to a tool, for this latter measure, being developed in 1999, yet not ready for use. Do you anticipate this happening soon or will an alternative instrument be developed?

Enrollment/Staffing Trends Once again, excellent use of graphic displays. This is accentuated by the summary provided at the end of the section. Excellent work here!

Significant Anticipated Changes The narrative of this section appears to be somewhat short sighted. While you write as to the uncertainty of how, and if, DVR will affect the SSD program, what about some of the other rapidly growing programs that the College is experiencing? Programs like Running Start, Work First, and CEO will certainly impact SSD programs. Another element is the ever-changing technological impact on the services being provided. These are things that must be kept in focus.

Program Self-Assessment There are, no doubt, certain elements that are inherent with a program such as SSD. Two of these are the unpredictability of annual budget expenditures and the unpredictability of the number and type of services requested. No amount of record keeping will assist in predicting these elements. The most we can expect is to report the numbers on a regular basis throughout each academic year. Space is also an issue that is recognized for SSD programs, particularly with regard to testing space. We applaud you for continuing to work around this deficiency.

There is no mention of the Community Integration/Cerebral Palsy program in the report. Should not that program be mentioned here? It certainly seems to be a good tie to the SSD program and, perhaps, through its funding source(s), may provide some additional resources to the SSD program.

Diversity/Multiculturalism Excellent accomplishments and ongoing efforts in this endeavor. The students of the SSD program are a recognized cohort of the campus community.

Goals/Objectives Excellent descriptive outlines to indicate accomplishment of previous goals. Were any previous goals not accomplished? As for future goals, in addition to being quite ambitious, they are meaningful and, for the most part, measurable. That a process can be developed to predict the level of costs for some services is optimistic at best, but well worth the effort.

As stated earlier, the SSD program continues to be a vibrant Student Services program that is really much more than that. It is a resource for faculty and staff, contributing greatly to the campus’ diversity initiative; and it is a great change agent affecting who the College is able to serve and how the College delivers its services.

Keep up the great work! ss