Presidents Fellowship Institutional Capacities Assessment Tool

The items in the following assessment tool reflect statements of strong institutional capacities at colleges that achieve high and improving levels of success for students while in college and after graduation. Organized into three domains of practice, the assessment tool asks you to rate your perception of the current status of several items in each area at your institution. Once complete, your institution’s president will receive summaries of scores across each area, providing a summary picture of areas where your institution may need to invest additional strategic effort, in addition to identifying strengths. The president will not have access to which response was provided by you or others who complete the assessment.

In this assessment tool, the term “student success” has the following meaning:

  • Success in college: Students (1) learn and (2) complete credentials.
  • Success after college: Students (1) get good jobs and/or (2) transfer and attain a bachelor’s degree.
  • Equitable outcomes and access: For Black, Hispanic, Indigenous, and low-income students, the college ensures high absolute rates and minimizes gaps in (1) learning and completion outcomes for students in college, (2) transfer and workforce outcomes for students after college, and (3) enrollment of different demographic groups relative to the college’s service area.

Directions: Assess the extent to which your college engages each of the following practices, according to the scoring rubric.

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Domain 1

Strategic Finance
The college has a transparent budget—available for all to see and understand.
College cabinet members, deans, and unit heads communicate across the institution the importance and relevance of aligning financial allocations to mission and priorities.
For each budget cycle, the college’s president and cabinet name the values and priorities that the next budget should clearly address. These statements are used throughout the budgeting process and made public.
There are instances of significant resource reallocation during each year’s budget process that are correlated to student success goals.
The college explicitly connects most or all efforts at increased appropriations or local funding initiatives to student outcomes and community impact.
College leaders review the extent to which all foundation and government grant requests are aligned to institutional priorities, and takes steps to increase alignment.
Transparency on finance and mission impact is built into training for budgeting and financial management, including those who lead and manage student success initiatives.
The CFO periodically meets with each member of the senior cabinet to discuss student success priorities, how budget allocations can be better aligned, and how to improve financial processes to promote (and remove barriers to) student success.
The CEO and cabinet have a process to uncover potentially underutilized resources within the college that considers year-end balances, shared services, and human capital expenditures.
The college has a plan to put underutilized assets to work, and that “reallocation” plan is shared with the board of trustees.
The CFO (or other senior college leader with responsibility for finance) has identified areas of “diffused costs” that no single person has clear authority over (i.e. software contracts, data centers) and the president/cabinet has developed goals and plans to create efficiencies in those areas.
The college cabinet has an existing process for establishing goals and plans to control “diffused” costs.
The college cabinet has identified top opportunities for growing external revenue streams and has plans to grow those revenue streams.
The college has a portfolio management process that considers all real property assets.
The college leadership team annually benchmarks operational costs against peer colleges to identify possible areas for reducing overhead and making investments.
Before any initiative is started or funded, the college addresses questions about expected outcomes, cost per student, cost at scale, return on investment for both mission and revenue, and scalability.
The president and cabinet annually evaluate all strategic initiatives funded the prior year and decide whether to continue, modify, or stop them.
The president and cabinet understand fully the implications of public funding mechanisms (including performance funding) on the bottom line and have developed scenarios for the impact of possible student success outcomes on revenue projections.
There is a climate of institutional receptivity to partnering with local K-12 systems to achieve economies of scale, cost savings, and new revenue.
CAOs, CFOs, and COOs meet regularly with their counterparts at local K-12 systems to look for common ground to reduce or share costs and support mission outcomes.
The college places coaches/advisors in local high schools and/or trains high school advisers to improve college-going rates, readiness, and entry into high-value programs of study.
The college collaborates with K-12 districts and university partners to understand each other’s incentives to deliver student outcomes and seeks common initiatives to improve outcomes.
There is a climate of institutional receptivity to partner to achieve economies of scale and cost savings, and generate new revenue for community colleges and four-year institutions where students most often transfer.
The college raises funds jointly with a university partner for transfer student scholarships.
The college president and other senior leaders meet with leaders from four-year institutions to identify revenue streams that could be increased through collaboration.
The college works with employers to recruit students for workforce programs.
The college and employers share costs associated with student internships and other work based learning (e.g., transportation).
The college receives large-scale investments from employers to fund equipment, faculty, and other costs needed to educate students in high-value programs.
A substantial and increasing portion of employer donations come through operating funds (rather than philanthropic dollars).
The college shares with CBOs costs associated with students receiving CBO benefits (i.e., space and other costs for food bank and tax/FAFSA preparation; transportation between campus, home, and CBO).
The college president (and other senior leaders) meet with comparable leaders from K-12 partners to identify and then collectively pursue revenue streams that could be increased through collaboration.

Domain 2

Human Capital
College leaders have adopted a human capital strategy that is clearly and centrally tied to the college’s goals and priority reforms for advancing student success.
Human capital is elevated to the level of strategy, reflected in all major reform initiatives, staffed at the cabinet level, and treated by the president as essential to mission fulfillment.
Annual priorities for improving human capital are set at the cabinet level and aligned with student success goals.
The president shares human capital strategies with the board, proposes annual goals and budgets that advance human capital strategy, and incorporates human capital goals in the president’s annual review.
College leaders are implementing a recruitment strategy aligned to student success priorities, have adopted specific goals for recruitment across the college and for each major division, and routinely monitor progress toward those goals.
The president and senior team set expectations for strong, diverse candidate pools for every position, provide financial support for aligned recruitment strategies, and have strong policies and procedures for recruitment that aim to advance student success goals and priorities.
Position descriptions across the college prioritize the skills and characteristics of faculty, staff, and administrators that are most needed to fulfill the college’s priorities for advancing student success (in addition to the specific skills needed for the job).
The college requires the use of hiring tools, practices, and processes (e.g., interview questions, assessment rubrics, hiring committee composition) that prioritize employee skills and characteristics the college has identified as necessary to advance student success (in addition to the specific skills needed for the job).
Onboarding experiences for every employee include orientation and professional development that impart the institution’s values and strategic priorities for advancing student success.
College leaders have adopted a limited set of professional development priorities for faculty, staff, and administrators aligned to student success goals and informed by student outcomes data.
Every employee has a professional development and training plan that ensures ongoing, sustained learning experiences aligned to student success and equity goals, differentiated based on their roles and tenure at the institution.
The college provides mandatory professional development and training aligned to student success goals through multiple formats to ensure that both full- and part-time employees engage in developing their capacity to contribute to improving student success.
The college adopts a significant, centralized professional development budget each year aligned to student success strategies, and requires that professional development dollars in division budgets are also aligned to collegewide student success goals and strategies.
The college transparently rewards adoption of practices designed to improve student outcomes and that in fact improve student outcomes.
The college incorporates into promotion and tenure processes professional development requirements aligned to student success goals and strategies.
Salary increases and pay scales align to performance-based measures, including student outcomes and progress toward student success goals and prioritized reform strategies.
Tenure and promotion practices are rooted in efforts to advance student success and require faculty and staff to refine their practices based on an understanding of outcomes rooted in data and other student-centered information.

Domain 3

Data Use
The president and senior team periodically (at least once a year) analyze data about the population in the service area—including demographics, income level, and educational attainment—to identify opportunities to improve community outcomes.
The president and senior team periodically (at least once a year) review regional economic and workforce data and engage in employer conversations to understand where the good jobs are in the region and what degrees/certificates they require.
The president and senior team periodically (at least once a year) assess the alignment of the college’s programs and enrollments with the number of existing and projected good jobs.
The president and senior team periodically (at least once a year) review disaggregated data about employment and wage outcomes of graduates to better understand where the community college’s students are working and how they are faring in the labor market.
The president and senior team periodically (at least once a year) review disaggregated data about K-12 and high school partners to better understand where the community college’s students are coming from and student success rates by district/high school.
The president and senior team periodically (at least once a year) review their students’ disaggregated bachelor’s attainment data, including how many students transfer to and attain degrees from each four-year college students frequently transfer to.
The president and senior team regularly review leading and lagging indicators—disaggregated by race/ethnicity, gender, income level, and age whenever possible—on students’ progression and completion.
The president incorporates data review into a regular assessment of institutional performance and opportunities for student success reforms through reflection on current practice, resources, and capacity.
The president regularly seeks and reviews research on exemplary practices from colleges that have achieved high and improving levels of student success for all students.
The president has identified no more than five major student success reform priorities for the college, backed with clear data showing why those reforms have been prioritized.
The president consistently incorporates data into communications to engage internal college stakeholders—including the senior team and board of trustees—in developing and advancing reform priorities and strategies.
The president consistently incorporates data into communications to engage external stakeholders—including leaders from K-12 schools, employers, and universities—in scaled partnerships that advance student success reform priorities and strategies.
The president and senior team define a limited set of disaggregated leading and lagging indicators of student success they regularly use to focus discussions collegewide, determine strategies, and assess progress.
A limited set of leading and lagging indicators has been adopted by the board and the president and is regularly used by the board to focus policy and budget discussions and assess progress on student success.
The president charges the senior team with communicating messages that contain a limited set of priority data points to advance reform priorities throughout the college and with external partners.
The president models the importance of data inquiry and student outcomes, regularly referencing data linked to reform and outcome priorities when asking questions and making decisions.
The president regularly incorporates data into efforts to make the case for change and celebrate wins.
The senior team has defined KPIs (key performance indicators) for themselves, managers, staff, and faculty against which they and their supervisors assess their work.
Senior college leaders and leaders of major reform efforts regularly use data to assess the efficacy of reforms.
College leaders regularly keep, modify, or stop work based on decisions that incorporate data review, and have created a culture that makes it safe to admit things are not working, close ineffective programs, and stop unsuccessful initiatives.
The president and senior team have a plan to develop the capacity of administrators, faculty, staff, and others within the institution to understand and effectively use data to advance student success reforms.
Data quality is nonnegotiable, and the college works to ensure reliable data are available in all areas of student success (learning, completion, labor market, transfer, equity, and access).
The president and senior team have established a centralized data function responsible for one central source of truth for measuring student outcomes and informing the allocation of resources across the institution.
The president publicly celebrates good questions, decisions, and outcomes rooted in data, and advocates for data use.
The president invests resources—including money, people, and time—in practices that data show have positive impacts in student outcomes at scale.
The college has established a disciplined innovation cycle that incorporates data review to inform decisions about what to invest in and whether innovations are effective and should be continued or scaled.