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Comprehensive Development Plan

Activity Title: Strengthening Potomac State College by Increasing Student Engagement and Persistence through Investing in Course Evaluation and Redesign, Academic Advising, Career Services, Diversity Programming, and Endowment Funds.  

Overview The activity as designed involves working within existing organizational structures to significantly supplement and improve services that are already in place. The expansion of student engagement and success components include:

  • Empowering students to succeed through improved cutting-edge teaching pedagogies to impact courses with high failure rates and in new programs being developed by Potomac State College (Improve and Strengthen the Institution’s Academic Quality) o Assessing courses with high D/F/W (D, F or Withdraw) rates and sharing results with PSC’s Educational Designer who works with faculty to redesign (or design new) courses for student success o Faculty development in effective pedagogy, especially pedagogical practices that engage students via Active Learning, going beyond or strongly modifying lecture-style classrooms o Engaging students with Active Learning and other teaching pedagogy tools for success o Assessing student learning and engagement in the Active Learning courses and spaces
  • Increasing academic success, retention, and graduation rates for first-time full-time (FTFT) undeclared and underrepresented students (including rural students) by implementing diversity services, a centralized, proactive, comprehensive advising and career services model, and Co-requisite Math (Institutional Management) o Implementing a centralized, intentional, proactive advising model for FTFT undeclared students 
    • Providing face-to-face career counseling to FTFT students without a career path o Implementing a centralized, intentional, proactive advising model for students returning from academic suspension, placed on academic probation, below 2.0 GPA at midterm, or in danger of losing academic scholarships and/or need-based financial aid o Implementing diversity programming to foster institutional changes informed by theoretical frameworks to create an academic culture of inclusive excellence o Implementing co-requisite math to allow students to receive credit for the math courses and continue to develop the skills to be successful in college algebra; Competitive
  • Preference Priority (CPP) 1 - Implementing flexible and affordable paths to obtaining knowledge and skills (CPP 2)
  • Reinforcing measures to support student persistence and completion through Early

Alerts and Endowment Funds (Fiscal Stability)

  • Implementing an Early Alert system to increase student success and retention o Proactively assisting students who are in jeopardy of losing their West Virginia (WV)
  • PROMISE Scholarships, Pell Grants, merit-based scholarships, or are otherwise at risk o Using up to 20% of Title III grant monies each year to create an endowment that will be used for scholarships for students who may otherwise withdraw (Access Scholarship).