Office of Institutional Assessment

• improving the quality or performance of programs and services;
• comparing a program’s quality or value to the program’s previously defined principles; ʻ
• informing planning, decision-making, and policy discussions at the local, state, regional, and national levels;
• evaluating programs and personnel;
• assisting in meeting accreditation requirements;
• identifying models of best practices and national benchmarks;
• celebrating successes of the approaches taken in improving learning and development;
• evaluating how they have contributed to concepts of social justice and cultural competence;
• creating a culture of continuous improvement—a culture of accountability, learning, and improvement 

The office of Institutional Assessment will:

• Assess the effectiveness of academic departments and student affair services on an annual basis.
• Create an assessment plan with a five-year focus
• Collect  data both on the quantitative and qualitative level.
• Create plans, best practices, and outcomes to ensure successful accreditation reports and visits
• Provide professional development opportunities that center around assessment best practices.
• Provide data to Department Chairs, Deans, Staff, and Senior Administrators to support assessment efforts

National Center for Education Statistics – General RCC Stats

IPEDS (Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System) – Institution Characteristics

Jeff Van Dreason, Dean of Institutional Assessment

Jouiliana Bosneva, Director of Instructional Technology, Design And Digital Learning 

Elisa Raab, Director of Institutional Research 

Jalal Ghaemghami, Coordinator of Instructional Technology

Tina Torres, Department Clerk 

The New England Commission of Higher Education (NECHE) is the agency that accredits RCC and more than 200 other higher education institutions in New England. 

Accreditation is a status that provides assurance to prospective students, their families and the general public that Roxbury Community College (RCC) meets clearly stated Standards for Accreditation and that there are reasonable grounds to believe the institution will continue to meet those standards in the future. While it is difficult for any institution to excel at all the standards, it is important to strive for excellence while also noting important areas in which the College needs to improve. This is how we hold ourselves accountable and engage in many of RCC’s core values: accountability, equity, honesty, integrity, respect, and excellence. 

The short answer is our reputation would be damaged beyond repair and the College would close. Students do not want to attend an unaccredited college because it is a signal of an institution that is not living up to minimum higher educational standards. Credits and classes may not transfer to other institutions, and students would lose access to funding in the form of federal grants and loans.

No, not if we work together and embrace a culture of assessment and continuous improvement. Everyone has a role to play in taking a hard look at what RCC does well, and where we can improve.

RCC is preparing a comprehensive self-study, which is a 100-page narrative report, with additional data and evidence in the appendices. This document will be sent to NECHE in early 2025 and will be followed-up by a four-day visit in April 2025. At this visit, representatives of New England colleges tour the campus and interview students, faculty, staff, and administrators, validating what’s in the report and asking our community about our mission. There will be a brief report at the end of their visit, highlighting RCC strengths and areas for growth. From there, the visiting team will prepare a report and submit it to NECHE. NECHE will work with the College on addressing any factual errors in the visiting team report before making a decision about the college’s accreditation in the Fall. 

NECHE never goes away because continuous improvement isn’t a place we can arrive at and permanently stay. Continuous improvement means always striving to do better. Think of this process as a challenge to be excellent and work hard to do better for our students. NECHE is the mechanism for measurement, not the reason why we do it. Depending on the Fall report from NECHE, there may be a need for follow-up visits, but our goal is for minimum follow-ups. That means only one additional five-year report after the 2025 self-study followed by the next self-study in 2035. 

The standards address the following elements: (1) Mission and Purposes; (2) Planning and Evaluation; (3) Organization and Governance; (4) The Academic Program; (5) Students; (6) Teaching, Learning, and Scholarship; (7) Institutional Resources; (8) Educational Effectiveness; and (9) Integrity, Transparency, and Public Disclosure. A group of faculty, staff, students, and administrators split into 9 committees in the Spring of 2024 to gather evidence and write drafts of each section of the report. A steering committee is taking that work and assembling a draft that the college will review in the Fall of 2024. 

Updates on key areas that NECHE has asked us to focus on, including our strategic planning process, financial standing, improving our use of data, ensuring faculty and staff capacity, and continuing to develop a culture of assessment. 

Assessment ensures that we are doing what we are upholding our promises to our students and community. It’s one thing to say we live up to our mission and institutional learning outcomes, but how do we prove it? We prove it through assessment, which is a process involving every person and every department at the College. Once we get in the habit of understanding the importance of this practice, and once we routinely review what we do, collect data, note what works and what doesn’t, and improve based on this data, we will have embraced a culture of assessment. 

Three things:

1. Read the draft of the self-study this Fall and provide feedback.
2. Look for guidance on how to embrace our growing culture of assessment from senior leadership.
3. Participate in interviews with the NECHE Visiting Team about how we fulfill our unique and important mission at RCC.

Multiple opportunities to provide feedback about the report will be available, and your help in this process is crucial. Members of the RCC Community will be asked to review the drafts and offer suggestions. The Steering Committee will work hard at ensuring the report overall represents RCC. However, there is a list of over 50 bullet points of standards to address, and there is a strict page limit for text that will be fleshed out by evidence, documents, and data in the appendices. Your feedback and participation are fundamentally important to this process, but everything you share may not end up in the final draft.