Senior Teams Assessment Tool

This tool will help presidents and their senior teams reflect on the composition of the senior team, how the senior team collaborates around common purpose, and the level of implementation of the student success reform agenda.

The items in the following assessment tool reflect strong practices observed through Aspen’s research and direct engagements with excellent community colleges, which we define as those achieving high and improving levels of student success (1) both while in college and after graduation (2) overall and for students of color and low-income students. The assessment tool is organized in several domains of practice emerging from Aspen’s research and prompts users to rate their institution’s adoption of each item within each domain. Once complete, a summary of scores will allow colleges to identify strengths and weaknesses in specific practices aligned to each item and also to observe which domains most need improvement.

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

Composition
The college’s senior team is strongly committed to achieving high, improving, and equitable levels of student success.
The college’s senior team members are bold and courageous in advancing student success reforms.
The college’s senior team members are good communicators, emotionally intelligent, and good listeners.
The college’s senior team has members with the strategic, analytical, and innovative capacity to lead reform.
The college’s senior team members are ethical and follow through on what they say they will do.
The college has individuals in senior team roles—including team members responsible for academics, student services, and finance—who are highly capable of leading student success reforms.
The college’s senior team has the diversity of thought, background, and demographics needed to advance student success and equity.
The president has a plan in place to strengthen the senior team to better align its composition and capacity with prioritized student success reforms.

Domain 2

Common Purpose
Each year, the senior leadership team has defined a limited number of prioritized reforms (no more than five) the college will focus on to advance student success.
The institution’s priority student success reforms are discussed frequently at senior team meetings.
Senior team members have a clear, aligned way to explain why the college is engaged in priority student success reforms.
In meetings and other settings, the president frequently repeats explanations about why student success reforms matter.
All senior team members can name the institution’s priority student success goals and major reforms, and how they relate to one another.
Each major reform has a clear set of mission-aligned outcomes with associated indicators of progress and key milestones.
The senior team sets aside time to discuss whether and why the college is (or is not) making progress toward priority student success goals, informed by data showing the level of progress.
The senior leadership team has a shared understanding of the competing priorities (e.g., too great a focus on enrollment versus student success) that stand in the way of adopting priority reforms and developed plans to overcome those barriers.
Each senior team member has a concrete communications plan to ensure their division staff understand the importance of priority student success goals and reforms.
Each senior team member has a concrete plan to ensure their division staff understand and use common data sets aligned to priority student success goals and reforms.
Each senior team member has a concrete resource allocation plan to reinforce the importance of priority student success goals and reforms within their division(s).

Domain 3

Collaboration and Implementation
The president regularly sets the conditions and expectations for candid conversations in meetings, including about substantial challenges and failures.
Members of the senior team are open and honest with one another and the president about challenges they face in advancing student success reforms and provide helpful feedback when they discuss challenges.
All senior team members are substantially engaged in implementing each priority student success reform.
The main decision-making committee/workgroup for each priority student success reform includes appropriate senior team representatives from different units that need to be involved for the reforms to be implemented effectively.
Beginning in the planning stage, each priority student success reform includes a dedicated senior team sponsor responsible for remaining close to the design and implementation of major reforms, and for bringing needs and challenges to the president and senior team.
Senior leaders responsible for each priority reform lead a pre-mortem analysis to assess and plan to overcome likely reasons for failure, engaging individuals with both strategic and tactical viewpoints in the analysis.
Senior leadership team members have incentives in place to collaborate on institution-wide student success goals (e.g., identical elements in their annual performance reviews).
During senior team meetings and one-on-one check-ins with senior team members, the president emphasizes, specifically, why collaboration is needed to achieve student success goals.
The senior leadership team commits to providing needed staff and financial resources to ensure strong end-to-end project management for all priority reforms.
SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time-bound) goals are set for all priority student success reforms.
The senior team is confident that, for all priority student success reforms, agreed upon timelines are being monitored to assess progress on goals and strategies.
Senior team members can identify who within their divisions is responsible for monitoring progress toward priority student success goals and ensures timelines and assessments of effectiveness are in place.
When goals are not met for priority student success reforms, response plans are developed and effectively implemented.
Progress to SMART goals is shared across the senior team.
Senior team members are comfortable admitting to one another and to the president any challenges, delays, or failures in implementing priority student success strategies.
The senior team has fun together during meetings and outside of work.

Senior Teams Assessment Inquiry Guide

Senior Teams Assessment Inquiry Questions

Based on your Aspen senior team assessment tool results, where is your college strongest and weakest?

  1. In composition of the senior team, reflecting its capacity to enact student success reform? In what particular questions/domains

  2. In building common purpose around major student success priorities? In what particular questions/domains?

  3. In collaboration around and implementation of major student success priorities? In what particular questions/domains?

How effective is the senior team? 

  1. Which priority student success reforms are working well at the college? What data and evidence lead you to that conclusion? What in the senior team assessment results could explain that conclusion?       

  2. What priority student success reforms is the college struggling with most? What data and evidence lead you to that conclusion? What in the senior team assessment results might be causing those struggles? Did you learn anything from the assessment about the strengths of your senior team that might inform ways to improve? 

  3. In what specific ways might your senior team’s behavior (or lack of action) stand in the way of institutional reform?

  4. Among the team’s weaknesses, what seems most important to address?

How does your senior team assess and improve its effectiveness? 

  1. Does your senior team periodically evaluate its effectiveness?  If so, does it follow through on areas for improvement?  
  2. Does the president effectively evaluate the senior team?  Do senior team members evaluate one another?  Do those evaluations lead to growth for senior team members?
  3. What works well in those processes? What could be improved?  

Next Steps

  1. What are the 1-5 most important things you have uncovered about your senior team from your assessment tool?  How do those things relate to advancing priority student success reforms? 
  2. Among the areas of strength, what do you want to keep doing and perhaps enhance? 
  3. Among the areas of weakness, what few changes do you think would make the biggest positive difference?
  4. What challenges do you have (or anticipate) in further strengthening the senior team?  As much as possible, identify specific challenges.
  5. What immediate next steps will you take to ensure progress on these lessons learned?