2018-19 Instructional Program Review
First name
Steven
Last name
Lehigh
Email
lehighs@smccd.edu
Program Name
Please select your program. For CTE programs, use the 2018-19 CTE Instructional Program Review form.
Economics


Division
Please select your division
Creative Arts/Social Science


Submission Date
Oct-24-2018


1a. Provide a brief description of the program and how it supports the college’s Mission and Values Statements, its Diversity Statement, CSM’s and SMCCCD’s Strategic Plans, and the college’s Educational Master Plan. You may also discuss any factors that have impacted the program and its enrollment. Include changes in student populations, statewide initiatives, transfer requirements, advisory committee recommendations, legal mandates, workforce development and employment opportunities, and community needs.
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The Economics program provides two courses, introductory Macroeconomics and Microeconomics, primarily to students seeking to transfer or obtain an AA/AS degree. The department offers approximately 8 courses a semester, roughly split evenly between the two courses. The department is relatively small, currently consisting of one full time faculty member and one adjunct faculty member.

The AA-T in Economics is in place, streamlining the transfer process for students interested in majoring in Economics. In addition, the economics courses are a core element for students majoring in Business or related fields, and are popular electives for students majoring in math, and science, and engineering.
In addition to regular campus duties, Economics faculty have also participated in professional development activities, various committees, including the District Budget and Finance Committee and starting in 2018-19 the CSM Finance Committee, the honors program and established a solid relationship with the Learning Center to provide high quality tutoring and review sessions for our courses. The department seeks to maintain quality teaching in the classroom and access to assistance outside the classroom, ultimately pursuing the goals outlined in the college mission. Specifically we seek to develop critical thinking skills, and provide relevant information to promote students’ intellectual pursuits and promote academic excellence (CSM Strategic Goal 2) as well as provide an environment for students to achieve academic success (CSM Strategic Goal 1).


2a. Describe the results of your previous Program Review’s action plan.
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A) In conjunction with our previous analysis, the department continued to prioritize providing support through the tutors at the Learning Center. As previously discussed, one of the primary challenges is identifying and cultivating good candidates because tutors need to have already completed both coursestypically and thus the pool is limited and most aare around only one year. , we are such a small department but have created a significant demand. Despite the challenges, we had two great tutors last year, one of which whom attempted a new approach that kind of hybridizedcombined drop drop-in tutoring with the structure of an SI session. She had previous experience as an SI instructor so it made sense to experiment. Unfortunately, as with our experience with SI, student attendance wained waned as the semester went on and the drop drop-in format, along with review sessions, continued to be the best approach. For this year, we have three new tutors, two that who are bilingual, that who provide drop drop-in assistance four days a week for around 20 hours of total availability. In addition, the tutors run review sessions the week before exams, which. These sessions continue to be popular and, based on previous data, appear to increase success.

B) To better serve the needs of working students, those with transportation limitations or other scheduling constraints, oOnline/hybrid offerings are in development with a planned roll out in Fall 2019.


2b. Program coherence and effectiveness: Explain any curriculum changes since last program review, including SLO alignments.
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For the most part the program is unchanged since the last program review. There has been one small change to how the math pre-requisite is applied, we now except Math 190 as well, that doesn't appear to have much of an impact on enrollment or performance.

The implementation of AB705 could possibly have an impact in the coming years, so we will also need to be cognizant any changes that result..


Student Success and Equity
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3a. Course and program assessment. Discuss the results of your program assessment. Explain any strategies, research, initiatives, curriculum development or other activities intended to improve student learning and promote educational equity in your discipline, either at the course or program level.
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Our program is fairly narrow, we only offer eight sections total of two different courses a semester. The Econ AA-T requires more courses from outside the department. Without data on how many students achieve the AA-T, it is unclear how popular of an option it is, but aAnecdotally, it appears most of our students are either pursuing a Business degree, planning on transferring to a UC (where the AA-T has little benefit), or are taking the course as an elective/GE requirement. Facutly Faculty actively consult students on various majors (many schools offer multiple variations of business, econ and business econ) and transfer opportunities. Ultimately the program continues to perform effectively and provide offerings that serve student needs. Having additional program level data (AA-T degrees awarded, intended transfer path of enrolled students) available would help to inform where additional opportunities might exist.

As previously mentioned, faculty have been participating in various equity training/activities and have focused our attention on collaborating with the LC Learning Center in a variety of ways to figure out the most effective approach. In the past we've experimented with SI, drop in, review sessions etc. We continue to explore new approaches, trying more frequent/focused tutorial sessions this past Spring (in addition to our regular routine.)

We're scheduled to assess SLOs this year, our past two assessments have been satisfactory. We may look to vary our assessment this cycle, including collaborating on assessment with the Learning Center, to provide a different perspective and more robust results.


3b. General Education / Institutional assessment. Discuss participation in any General Education, Core Competencies, institutional or interdisciplinary assessment activities. 
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The department has collaborated with the LC Learning Center on variety of strategies to utilize support services to improve success. Besides gauging attendance and feedback, we have a difficulty quantitatively assessing how effective we’ve been because of the challenges tracking and disaggregating the data. We will continue to look for ways to improve assessment over the next cycle.

Our course SLOs directly map to ILOs 1 through 4, and the content of our courses touch on ILOs 5 and 6 but are not explicitly assessed. We will continue to look for ways to participate in the ILO assessment process.


4a. Provide a brief description, including actions, measurable outcomes, and timelines  
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A) Assess and improve reduce equity gaps – We need to collect more thorough data on why the gaps exist and assess the effectiveness of our current support systems. We will continue to collaborate with campus wide initiatives, such as Year One, explore opportunities to collaborate with our learning communities and training around equity and pedagogy.

B) Assess impact of AB705 – Collaborate with Econ faculty across the district to make sure pre-requisites are still suitable after changes are made to math offerings. Discuss any other issues that may arise, such as impacts to enrollment or success rates

C) Offer courses online/hybrid courses – In an effort to diversify our offerings and meet a wider variety of student needs we will introducing online courses next year.

D) Faculty Diversity Internship Program – Our full time faculty member has signed on to sponsor a teaching intern as part of the Faculty Diversity Internship Program. Hopefully the applicant will be accepted for the Spring semester. The program will help diversify our faculty hiring pool, as well as provide a valuable mentoring experience.

E) Textbook access – The department has been monitoring the discussion around lower cost textbooks and issues around accessibility. While we haven’t found a suitable zero cost option, we have been proactive around providing Integrative Access, allowing students to seamlessly pay for their textbook/access codes through WebSmart. This has allowed for easier use of financial aid (including the Promise Program) as well as for Veterans on the GI Bill etc. We will continue to monitor/adopt/promote the program as it develops.


4b. What will your program do to increase student success and promote student equity in the next two years? What kind of professional development and institutional support will be engaged and enacted to meet these goals?  
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In addition to the proposals in part 1, our faculty will continue to participate in professional development focused on equity and pedagogy. We will also look for new opportunities to collaborate with the various the support centers, learning communities and Year 1.


4c. Describe other professional development activities and institutional support and collaborations that would most effectively ensure that the program achieve its goals and plans.  
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A) More data/insight in to the causes of the equity gaps. As mentioned above, it would be helpful to know why are students aren’t succeeding. Some possible factors include Math/English preparation prior to the course, direct challenges with the content, outside circumstances (and/or are they more likely to choose a particular course to drop if something comes up, how many are taking the course for their major vs elective…the list goes on. In order to address the issues efficiently we need to know the best place to focus and where we can make the most impact.

B) More professional development on in in-class strategies to address equity gaps. As well as,
facilitating more opportunities to collaborate with other instructors, support centers and learning communities.