2011 9,149 5,382 2,860 17,337 *missing dataset Source: Student Services Office

The Counseling Department provides both advisement services and short term personal counseling. Advisement has been impacted by ECC’s participation in the Alliance for College Readiness, a collaborative project between Elgin Community College and the feeder high schools within our community college District 509. The Alliance for College Readiness is beginning to “move the needle” for incoming students’ preparedness for college level

coursework. Other initiatives through Achieving the Dream will impact students’ progression through developmental coursework. Personal counseling and crisis intervention continue to

demand Counselors’ time. Referrals for more intensive and prolonged counseling are made on a regular basis using the colleges’ Student Assistance Program. The College’s Behavioral

Intervention Team (BIT) frequently utilizes the services of the Associate Dean to ensure that students with behavioral issues are supported and have opportunity for success.

COST EFFECTIVENESS

The costs of operating the counseling office has increased on average approximately 6% each year, primarily due to increased salaries. The office budget for 2011 was $1,585,924 compared to $1,131,257 in 2007. Salaries will continue to comprise a majority of the operating expenses and they remain high due to the longevity of staff.

There are no plans for eliminating services. The Associate Dean for Student Success has been tasked to identify and work directly with undecided students to get them started on the selection of the career/major/transfer institution decision process during their first semester. We anticipate enhancing services to students in educational planning by encouraging them to come to their education planning appointments having utilized the course planning tool and reviewed the transfer agreements.

Within the State of Illinois, there are cooperative agreements for career and technical programs so that community college students can study at other institutions at the in-district rate if their district college does not have the preferred career program. Counselors are familiar with these agreements and refer students to the Dean of Student Services and Development to obtain the appropriate documents. Documents are prepared for next day delivery.

QUALITY

Staffing consists of six full-time faculty counselors (one retiring in December 2012), four part- time faculty counselors, one part-time substitute faculty counselor, two full-time administrative assistants, one full- time receptionist, one part-time evening receptionist, one part-time faculty transfer coordinator (recently retired and not replaced at this time) and a full-time associate dean. All of the faculty counselors have a minimum of a master’s degree in counseling and the average experience with ECC is over 15 years. Two of the counselors have doctorate degrees and many are LCPC's (Licensed Clinical Professional Counselors). The support staff members are relatively new due to recent turnover in staff. The Associate Dean for Student Success, who supervised the department for four of the five years covered by this review, has 14 years of experience with ECC and over 30 years background in higher education.

Counselors are members of the faculty bargaining unit (ECCFA) and are evaluated using the instruments and processes negotiated with the union. Additionally, regular feedback is provided when there are concerns, complaints, or compliments. When problems arise, individual meetings with individual Counselors are held. To date, all meetings have been

addressing complaints and concerns quickly and protocols are established and communicated to improve the departmental functioning. While individual issues are addressed in private, the “lessons learned” are communicated to the department in order to improve service.

All of the counseling faculty have been trained on privacy and confidentiality issues. The entire staff stresses confidentiality in every day operations from the asking of information at the reception office to the private meetings with students in counseling/advising appointments. The staff has all been trained and updated on FERPA regulations and has been trained in appropriate ways to share and request information with students. All of the counselors have private offices. Counselors have developed a release of information form, to utilize when it is necessary to share information with others, with consent. Counseling staff routinely seek verbal permission when others are included in an appointment.

Counselors have a weekly departmental meeting to share information and discuss campus and departmental issues. Counselors also serve on campus standing committees and provide relevant updates and reports. A summary of changes and new information for counselors is maintained in a Counseling folder on a shared drive. New information is communicated by the Dean of Students Services and Development by email using “Notes to Know” in the subject line. In addition to this evaluation process, departmental reviews have been undertaken and

improvements in quality have resulted. Responding to concerns expressed in the Noel-Levitz SSI about Counselor availability, appointment slots have increased by 33%. All recommendations of the Noel-Levitz Consulting report of 2010 have been implemented. We look forward to the results of the 2012 CCSSE to ascertain whether additional progress has been made. In the meantime, the Counseling Department conducted a Counseling Center Evaluation in 2009 and 2012. Combined results from both surveys (from students served) indicate high satisfaction in terms of expectations being met during visits with the Counselor, as well as excellent

experiences with reception (see Appendices D-1 and D-2).

Additionally, the associate dean participated as a peer reviewer in counseling program reviews for McHenry Community College and Harper College. As a result of this experience, a

customized version of the Program Review Survey from Harper was adapted for use in this program review.

A number of recent realignments and collaborations have improved student access to services in the Counseling department. These include:

• Maximizing the use of staff after losing one part-time position in FY12.

• Assigning the Technical Enrollment Facilitators (TEF’s) from Registration/First Stop to the Counseling Center during peak advising periods. TEF’s help students who have accurate Educational Plans build their schedules and assist them with enrolment as needed.

• Interpreting the ECCFA-Board January 2011 - December 2013 contract to support full-time counselors being required to schedule 36 appointments weekly (rather than 24) plus staffing one four-hour intake period and providing three hours of on- line or telephone student contact support. Each full-time counselor has ten hours of time for Professional Service, and several use part of this time for student contact as well.

• Hiring a substitute Counselor in fall 2011. This has benefited the department by allowing students to be seen when scheduled appointments would have needed to be rescheduled due to Counselor illness.

• Creating a collaborative environment among support staff who share common areas, enabling Career Service and Counseling staff to provide back-up to each other during peak times.

• Identifying an adjunct counselor to monitor and respond messages sent to the Counseling e-mailbox. E-mail requests average 60 per month with larger numbers surrounding enrollment periods.

While the Counseling Department has long prided itself in meeting the individual needs of each learner; indeed, the difficulty for the administrator/supervisor has been to identify processes that meet the needs of specific populations, and to work with the Counselors to apply these processes in a manner that increases efficiencies and distributes the necessary level of support to each population. This task continues. The Student Development Milestones and data collected and analyzed through Achieving the Dream’s Advising task group and the Cultural Competency task group will continue to inform practice.

The new ECCFA-Board contract requires a yearly meeting between the Counseling Department and the Dean for Student Services and Development to discuss counselor workload (Article 4.2 D). In practice, the first formal meeting resulted in very different suggestions from full-time and part-time representatives. The full-time representative focused solely on the psycho-social needs of individual students, while the part-time representative focused on utilization of technology and alternate modalities of reaching students. It is the dean’s intent to incorporate both priorities into a “levels of support” program to meet students’ needs, leveraging the Student Services Developmental Milestones (Appendix D-1) throughout.

PLANNED IMPROVEMENTS Short-Term Goals

• In order to provide an improved, coordinated, systematic method for scheduling and documenting services, a new automated scheduling and reporting software (SARS) has been purchased and will be implemented by fall 2012. This will allow the counseling staff to maximize resources and enhance student success through:

o More efficient scheduling

o Elimination of unnecessary paperwork o Maximization of staff resources

o Decreased wait times for students o Elimination of scheduling conflicts o Reduction of no-show rates o Enhanced information sharing

o Production of real-time reports and data o Improved service delivery for drop-in students

o Increased overall student satisfaction with the scheduling of appointments

Next Five Years

• A reorganization plan for the Counseling Department was presented in spring 2012 to the Vice President of Teaching, Learning and Student Development for consideration. Action has been deferred pending a consultant visit in summer 2012.

• A change in staffing is under consideration. The consultant will review the department. Recent and anticipated retirements will provide opportunity to realign the departmental structure. The consultant’s report as well as a rationale developed by the Dean of

Student Services and Development, who has supervised the department since September 2011, will be considered.

• Following a spring 2012 retreat and discussion of an article by Eric White and Janet Schulenerg “Academic Advising – A Focus on Learning” (About Campus/January-

February 2012), two counselors have worked with their peers to develop a matrix which identifies learning outcomes for each type of session in which a counselor and student participate. This is an ongoing project. Appendix D-4 contains the most recent

summary.

• The department must increase awareness, develop technical expertise, and utilize ECC’s Course Planning tool as a basis for educational planning, and creating opportunities for counselors to respond to students in off hours using e-advising (piloted in summer 2012). This has been piloted through off-hour response to the counseling mailbox and off-hour advising for summer 2012 bridge students.

• Analysis of this year’s pending CCSSE survey results will provide a basis for discussion and additional planning.

RESULTS FROM PRIOR PROGRAM REVIEWS REPORT