The second in a series of district planning meetings led by Senior Dean of Research and Planning Gregory Stoup took place Friday Nov. 1 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Concord as various faculty members from Los Medanos College, Diablo Valley College and Contra Costa College, as well as members of the Contra Costa Community College District gathered to come up with a strategy for the years to come based on themes including student success and prioritizing student goals.

The main goal of this second planning meeting, referred to as a charrette, was to move closer to having content that will go into an actual draft of a plan.

The first meeting looked at a variety of topics such as an environmental scan of the district broken into categories such as age, education attainment and labor market. It also looked at enrollment trends of the district since 1978 pointing out the recession peaks and the percentage growth of students in categories such as gender, age, ethnicity and instructional delivery method.

In that first meeting it was also made a point to look at trends in higher education that should be mirrored in all institutions as well as building on the vision, values and mission of the district.

The second charrette held break-out session where faculty gathered and pondered the question and ideas brought up in the first meeting as they attempted to further strengthen those ideas and flesh out how to go about making those goals a reality.

Feedback from the first meeting fell into two broad categories in relation to structure and content. Structure being prioritizing goals of the students and having a greater clarity of purpose, essentially having students follow a true class structure to reach and fulfill their requirements for their major for transferring or graduating. Content themes included serving the community, equity, learning and student success.

The feedback to the structure portion was summed up in three main points. First, the terms really needed to be defined such as what does being committed to student success really mean and what does valuing equality really mean. Secondly, greater clarity in direction was needed in terms of helping students achieve their goals via translating real plans and actions. Lastly, knowing the true priorities is needed in terms of allocating resources where they need be.

Feedback from everyone in attendance from these themes and topics are taken and summarized as a writing team will work with the chancellor’s cabinet to refine a true plan. Finally, a draft mission, vision and strategic direction will be fleshed out by the end of the month with the final plan being reviewed by the District Governance Council.

For more information contact Gregory Stoup at [email protected] or go to the district research page at 4cd.edu/research/default.aspx