Back See this section in context: Criterion 4 Core Component 4B

4B.5: Preparation for Continued Learning or Occupational Skills

Sauk guarantees the quality of its transfer and career programs. This guarantee, publicized in the college catalog, ensures that the education Sauk students receive has prepared them to transfer to another institution or to meet their career goals. In the last ten years, only two students have received reparation through the guarantee, in both cases by repeating, at no charge, an electrical course in which a former adjunct had failed to deliver the outcomes specified in the course outline.

Internal Measures:

The systematic assessment of career and transfer areas required by the Assessment Plan provides a snapshot of what graduates can do in ways that guide curricular and budgetary actions toward improvements in student performance.

• Transfer degrees: The 2003 Assessment Plan establishes a system of goals and objectives designed to assess whether transfer degree completers have mastered discipline- and program-specific outcomes. After several years of experience with the system, it became clear that without a capstone course requirement, many of the disciplines had no required course path, so classroom assessment results being obtained were formative rather than summative. As a result of this finding, the 2010 plan adjusts the focus of the assessment for transfer students to the General Education Core Curriculum areas. Some specific discipline-level assessment may continue in areas where faculty determine that need exists; however, external data is currently the primary summative assessment source for transfer students at the discipline level.
• Career programs: As the result of a revision to the Assessment Plan, effective fall 2010, two common objectives have been established in all of the career programs, with a common rubric to allow cross-institutional aggregation of assessment data and the ability to discuss findings both at the program level as well as across the institution:
  • Graduates will demonstrate knowledge and skills consistent with entry-level employment:
  • Graduates will demonstrate professional behaviors consistent with entry-level employment standards.
  The common rubrics for this objective were developed by the faculty during fall 2010 in time to be used in the spring when internships, clinicals, and other “hands on” projects were assessed. Appropriate action plans should reach the Operational Plans for FY13. The Assessment Core Team recommended the change in response to HLC Peer Review Team concerns at the 2006 Focused Visit that more standard rubrics be developed, but it is also a natural development in the organic growth of the Sauk assessment system.

External Measures:

Additional evidence of students’ attainment of the stated learning goals comes from a variety of external measures that feed into various planning systems of the college. Additional evidence that Sauk graduates are ready and able to continue their life of learning may be seen in the following:

• Graduate Follow-up Study: For over 20 years, Sauk annually surveyed degree graduates. Respondents consistently reported a high level of satisfaction with the institution and success in obtaining employment or pursuing continuing education. In 2008, the survey was discontinued because the findings were so consistently positive that the cost to continue was not justified.
• GPAs of Sauk transfer students: Sauk monitors the grade point averages (GPA) of students at the universities with the most Sauk transfers. Sauk students usually achieve GPAs higher than other community college transfers and higher than most native students, as illustrated with recent data in Figure 4iv below.

  	Average GPAs of Sauk Transfers	Average GPAs of Transfers from all Community Colleges	Average GPAs of Native Students
  Illinois State (2009 – 10)	3.34	3.22	3.16
  Northern Illinois (Fall 2010)	3.07	2.91	2.76
  University of Illinois (Fall 2010)	3.21	3.47	3.20
  Western Illinois (2009 – 10)	3.37	2.89	2.89

  Source: GPA reports from transfer universities

  During FY11, faculty identified and requested external data to be used for operational planning. Beginning in FY12, faculty will be provided the GPAs of former Sauk students by major at the transfer institutions noted in Figure 4iv above. Additional requested internal and external data will be refined and provided beginning in FY13. These changes, a result of a revision to the Assessment System, are designed to expand the data sources available to inform curricular aspects of operational planning by each department and academic area.
• Career and Technical Education Follow-up Survey: Sauk surveys career program completers every spring, in compliance with ICCB directives. The ICCB provides institutional and statewide data to each college. Sauk provides this data to the program review teams for consideration in their program review. Unfortunately, Sauk has not gained much benefit because the number of respondents for each program is fairly low.
• Pass rates of Sauk health career students on license and certification exams: For Sauk’s highly reputed health career programs, certification and licensure exams provide an example of their rigor. From FY06 through FY10, Sauk students have exceeded the state and national pass rates on the National Council Licensure Examination (NCLEX) for all tests nearly every year (see Figure 4v).

  	FY06	FY07	FY08	FY09	FY10	Average Rate
  LPN Pass Rates
  Sauk	100%	93%	95%	100%	79%	93%
  State	93%	91%	90%	91%	na	91%
  National	88%	87%	86%	86%	87%	87%
  RN Pass Rates
  Sauk	100%	87%	100%	93%	94%	95%
  State	89%	86%	90%	91%	na	89%
  National	88%	85%	87%	88%	86%	87%
  Radiology Pass Rates
  Sauk	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%
  National	91%	91%	91%	91%	92%	91%
  EMT B Pass Rates
  Sauk	66%	70%	93%	93%	100%	84%
  National	77%	79%	78%	77%	77%	78%
  Paramedic Pass Rates
  Sauk	na	na	75%	na	100%	88%
  National	-	-	83%	-	83%	83%

  Source: Health Careers Office

• Employer follow-up surveys in the health careers programs: Annual surveys ask questions which focus on additional skills of employability related to social skills, maturity, and communication. Employers have evaluated RN (ADN) and LPN program graduates since 1999 and RAD graduates since 2005:
  • Solve problems within expected level of performance: 100% of ADN and LPN employers rated this as average to outstanding. None rated it below average
  • Communication skills: 100% of ADN and 94% of LPN employers rated these skills as average to outstanding.
  • Relationship skills: 100% of ADN employers rated these as average to outstanding. 97% of LPN employers rated these as above average or outstanding. 100% of RAD employers rated these as good or excellent.
  • Accept responsibility willingly: 97% of ADN and 100% of LPN employers rated this as average to outstanding.