Commencement 1

Strategic Plan 2020-2023

Letter from Dr. Belinda S. Miles, President

Situated in the lower Hudson River Valley bordering New York City, Westchester County stands out as one of the nation’s most distinctive counties. Westchester County houses nearly one million diverse residents who enjoy access to the world’s foremost financial and cultural center. It is home to an eclectic mix of vibrant urban, cozy suburban, and bucolic rural communities nestled between the Hudson River and the Long Island Sound. It is a center for commerce with 32,000 businesses ranging from Fortune 500 companies to thousands of small firms, all fueling job growth and economic expansion. Unbounded creativity is expressed in public art and at venues for residents of all ages to become immersed in a wide variety of literature, performing arts, and visual arts. Our healthcare system includes 11 hospitals, and the county ranks among New York State’s best in the ratio of primary care physicians to county residents. Within this dynamic network of global thought, diversity, innovation, and excellence is a higher learning system of 42,000 students attending 25 different institutions, including the county’s largest higher education provider, Westchester Community College.

A deeper look beyond this picture of abundance reveals that about one in 12 people in Westchester County lives in poverty, and about one in 15 under the age of 65 does not have health insurance. Issues of economic mobility are especially prevalent among community college students, with seven out of 10 nationwide indicating that they have faced food or housing insecurity. This stark reality is not how we wish to see ourselves now or in the future. As we contemplate the future beyond our 75th anniversary in 2021, we reaffirm the essential role of an accessible, high quality, and affordable education that creates multiple opportunities to eradicate these abhorrent conditions in our society.

Our raison d’être is to provide access to education and training that prepares students to thrive in their chosen careers and constructively participate in civil society. Because of our extraordinary work and accomplishments, we have pivoted toward greater but still unimagined levels of community impact.

This moment amidst unprecedented competition calls for us to consider our place among the most cutting-edge advances of our time:

  • Massive growth and adoption of big data analytics and disruptive technologies like robots, drones, automation, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality, which are creating whole new businesses and industries and accelerating changes in almost all other professions, including education.
  • Employment that is almost unrecognizable to a generation of workers who could count on a lifetime of service to a stable company. The “gig economy” is real for today’s college graduates whose work arrangements are constantly in flux and whose skills need to be constantly updated.
  • Cultural changes in society characterized by increasing diversity of individuals, thoughts, expressions, and engagements.

This is where our strategic plan commences. These are our strategies, actions, and indictors of success for improving outcomes at our college and for our community. This plan provides a roadmap of our areas of highest momentum capitalizing on our greatest strengths. It shows how we are already on a trajectory toward mass personalization of instructional delivery that promotes student success. The plan represents the thinking, input, and labor of an inclusive and broad-based community coalescing around emergent academic content, investigating innovative teaching practices, bringing an entrepreneurial mindset to longstanding practices, constantly striving for better, leading with confidence, and asking, “What’s next?”

A Personal Success Story for Every Student

As Westchester Community College approaches its 75th Anniversary, we are proud to tell you that our story has been one of relationships: everyone in Westchester County and its surrounding areas knows someone who has attended Westchester Community College. The heart of the college extends throughout the area, across the country, and around the world, through the shining contributions of our 80,000 graduates. Our strengths, then, derive from a well-supported, well-coordinated network that has been developed with the intention to provide clear, relevant pathways for every student’s success. And, here, our heart is in creating pathways for all students’ success, because our students’ success stories are our passion.

At the center of our strategic planning process has been the awareness of our students’ myriad needs before they arrive at the College as well as while they are enrolled and beyond. We have sought through a careful, extensive, and reflective process to include the voices and ideas of all of the College’s stakeholders: students, faculty, administrators, staff, local business owners and professionals, Board of Trustees members, and more. Through a rigorous listening process, we have become very comfortable with our responsibility to enable each student the opportunities he or she needs to flourish in an evolving social, economic, and technological landscapes. We embrace our responsibility as educators to approach our students with a holistic awareness, as we seek to continuously develop and scaffold pathways that extend from pre-college learning experiences, through the college experience, to transfer opportunities to four-year college, and to meaningful and sustainable career and workforce opportunities.

Westchester Community College is committed—heart and soul— to cultivating and fortifying clear educational and career pathways for all students. These pathways draw from relationships that begin well before college commences, stemming from strong connections to the community’s K-12 schools, and extend well beyond the College through solid transfer agreements with dozens of competitive four-year institutions and professional and career opportunities with local businesses and institutions.

At Westchester Community College, we celebrate the diversity of our students, and because of their individual gifts, are committed to supporting and elevating their academic experiences and student services experiences, endowing those experiences with an unshakeable commitment to equity and inclusion. We understand that our story is our students’ stories, and we are better for our plurality and diversity—and we extend that perspective into everything we do: We weave the network of support for our students with a commitment to innovative teaching, alignment with current educational and career trends, anticipation of new directions in the workforce, flexible programming and modes of delivery, and integration of high-impact practices. We are dedicated to always search beyond the “one-size-fits-all” approach to education and boldly continue to look for pedagogies, technologies, internal and external relationships, and support and administrative systems that provide all of our students with relevant, meaningful, and excellent opportunities.

ASPEN

In 2020, Westchester Community College launched a new, decentralized strategic plan governance structure, the Allied Strategic Planning Engagement Network (ASPEN). ASPEN replaced traditional, hierarchical committees by using agile principles where democratic co-creation supersedes participatory input. The result is a network of teams that are nimble and adaptive to user experiences and frequent feedback loops. The following articles provide more information on agile, its characteristics, and its applications in a variety of settings.

ASPEN STEERING COMMITTEE

  • Belinda S. Miles, President and Steering Committee Chair
  • Ben Naylor, Chief of Staff and Vice president of Strategic Operations
  • Yelizaveta Adams, Assistant Dean of Institutional Research, Planning, and Effectiveness
  • Dawn Gillins, Controller
  • Garrett McAlister, Deputy Chief Information Officer
  • Rinardo Reddick, Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion & CDO
  • Mark Stollar, Director of Strategic Marketing and Communications
  • Al Ugoji, Assistant Dean of Process Strategy & Excellence
  • Eric DeSena, Faculty Representative
  • George Keteku, Faculty Representative
  • Sherry Mayo, Faculty Representative
  • Phil McGrath, Faculty Representative
  • Heather Ostman, Faculty Representative
  • Gwendolyn Roundtree Evans, Faculty Representative
  • Kim Walsh, Faculty Representative
  • Salawut Oomon, Staff Representative
  • Peter Pagan, Staff Representative
  • Jan Phair, Staff Representative
  • Mitchell Udoff, Staff Representative
Framework

WINGS (Wildly Important & Necessary Goals)

In monitoring Westchester Community College’s progress in implementing the Strategic Plan, ASPEN has identified the objectives and goals presented on this page.

Strategies and Objectives

Strategic Framework: Advance Academic Innovation and Excellence

Strategic Framework: Elevate and Integrate the Student Experience

Strategic Framework: Steward Resources to Secure a Bright Future

Strategy 1 Cultivate, fortify, and enrich educational and career pathways that attract new students and support them from entry to completion.

  • Objective 1: Enrich and align academic initiatives, technology, innovation, high-impact practices, and instruction with current and emerging evidence-based strategies in anticipation of new directions in education, community, and workforce development.
  • Objective 2: Scaffold and align academic support services with educational and career pathways.
  • Objective 3: Expand programming, flexible and innovative modes of delivery and methodologies to meet and fully support our diverse student needs, aspirations, and schedules.
  • Objective 4: Craft and coordinate clear pathways to college for K-12 school students that expand their educational opportunities and prepare them for the transition to college.
  • Objective 5: Seek out and secure seamless post-completion transfer agreements and opportunities with four-year colleges that expand prospects for students choosing the college as a preferred pathway toward a bachelor’s degree and beyond.

Strategy 2 Implement an integrated, structured, and inclusive student experience based on research and high-impact practices for early and on-going student engagement.

  • Objective 1: Increase and integrate academic and student development opportunities that prepare our diverse student body for a complex and ever-changing world at the college’s main campus and extension locations.
  • Objective 2: Fortify the student journey with robust recruitment activities, redesigned intake and onboarding, and comprehensive educational, personal, and financial assistance.
  • Objective 3: Maximize strong, inclusive, and holistic support systems and reduce barriers to student success.
  • Objective 4: Foster more student-relevant relationships with business and industry leading to professional coaching, mentoring, experiential learning, and the potential for career placement.
  • Objective 5: Integrate our values into all aspects of student and campus life.

Strategy 3 Build institutional capacity as a high-performing community-based, educational organization.

  • Objective 1: Identify and establish new and alternative revenue streams that support the college’s mission and strategic objectives.
  • Objective 2: Seek out and form strong public-private partnerships that augment academic and student development programs, increase enrollment, improve infrastructure, share risk, and generate new alliances.
  • Objective 3: Foster a culture of continuous improvement and organizational effectiveness with advanced teaching, managerial, and professional practices.
  • Objective 4: Invest in human capital through enhanced on-boarding and ongoing professional development of all employees.
  • Objective 5: Increase efficiencies in administrative and business processes through enhanced technology adoption and utilization.
Mission, Vision, Values

Mission

Westchester Community College provides accessible, high quality and affordable education to meet the needs of our diverse community. We are committed to student success, academic excellence, workforce development, economic development and lifelong learning.

Vision

Westchester Community College is dedicated to empowering every student to create a personal success story, one that supports a lifetime of learning, growth, and opportunities to contribute in meaningful ways to our communities and our ever-changing world.

Values

To better ourselves and our relationships, we are committed to:

  • Personal Excellence – Promote life-long learning, academic growth and intellectual development.
  • Respect – Support an environment of open, honest, and collegial communication.
  • Integrity – Expect personal accountability through ethical behavior.

To better our community and collective efforts, we are committed to:

  • Collaboration – Work together on the achievement of a common goal.
  • Civic Engagement – Advance active involvement in the life of the community.
  • Innovation – Encourage, empower and promote a creative environment

To better our society and our world, we are committed to:

  • Diversity – Fostering an inclusive community through acceptance and understanding.
  • Environmental Sustainability – Protect, preserve, and conserve resources for the future.
  • Empathy – Respond to each other’s views and opinions without judgement.
History: Constructing the Strategic Plan

The Strategic Plan Team went to great lengths to inform, solicit, and involve all stakeholders in the process of constructing the strategic plan. This inclusive outreach included sub-teams that focused on the three communities that make up, influence, and impact the college: students, external partners, and internal partners. Customized surveys, listening and feedback sessions, and exercises were conducted with each group. A campus-wide Town Hall, Visioning Workshop, and Summit provided forums for representatives of all the groups to interact and share ideas and insights that have been incorporated into the plan.

As with any forward thinking entity, many plans are already in place. These existing initiatives are the result of committed committees, and their diligence and hard work is to be applauded. The Strategic Plan Team has analyzed and included the ideas in these plans and will rely upon and incorporate the benchmarks, goals, and resulting data into measurable outcomes on an ongoing basis.

The Strategic Plan will also serve as a template for influencing existing and future initiatives. It is inspired and shaped by our Mission, Vision, and Values. Westchester Community College must maintain the agility to adapt to an ever-changing educational landscape. We must continuously look towards the future in order to best ensure the success of all of our students.