MATC Matters

Looking at AQIP
Category 3-Understanding Students’ and Other Stakeholders’ Needs

AQIP has identified nine categories of related key processes that provide a framework for the assessment and improvement of higher education institutions. The third category, AQIP Category 3-Understanding Students’ and Other Stakeholders’ Needs, focuses on how an institution identifies and addresses student and other stakeholder needs through processes and systems designed to help build relationships with students and other stakeholders and collecting and analyzing data related to satisfaction and the institution’s efforts to improve in these areas.

At MATC, the College has identified four key groups of students and stakeholders:

• Prospective students-Persons who have not yet matriculated to MATC, including those who may or may not have indicated an interest in MATC and those who are going through the admissions process but who have not yet registered for classes.
• Current students-Students who are enrolled in a course and/or program. Current students are subdivided into seven groups:
  1. program students;
  2. undeclared/undecided students;
  3. students taking credit courses (but not in a program);
  4. students taking non-credit courses;
  5. state-defined special population students;
  6. students who are considered underprepared for college-level English, math or reading and
  7. students who are taking Business Industry and Community Services contract classes and customers of the Business Procurement Assistance Center (BPAC).
• Community groups-Organizations and agencies such as community groups (United Way, Centro Hispano), state and local legislators, taxpayers, alumni, grant providers, donors, other higher education institutions, K-12 schools, economic and workforce development boards.
• Business and industry-Businesses or organizations that individually or jointly purchase education training services and those who employ MATC students and graduates.

Measures related to Category 3 include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Student satisfaction using the Noel-Levitz Student Satisfaction Inventory
• Graduate Six-Month Follow-Up survey
• BICS and BPAC customer satisfaction surveys
• Graduation and retention rates
• Employer surveys, including a longitudinal survey of employer satisfaction with MATC graduates
• DaneTrak survey (provides a view of community perceptions about MATC annually)

Many of these measures can be found in the College’s Balanced Scorecard or within the Three-Year Strategic Plan.

The Systems Appraisal, a feedback report on MATC’s Systems Portfolio, acknowledged the College’s active commitment to development and improvement in this area, and identified as an opportunity the need to make these efforts more consistent across the College.

The College has implemented activities aimed at improving systems for understanding needs including the creation of five Systems Integration Councils (SIC), training in and use of continuous improvement principles, more accessible online survey tools to gather data from student and stakeholder groups, the creation of partnerships with key student and stakeholder groups, an online training matrix website used by BICS to collect client requests and exploration of a Customer Relations Management (CRM) system to allow for better documentation of needs. Many of the 10 current Action Projects are related to understanding the needs and improving the services to students and other stakeholders.

The Action Projects most closely related to Category 3 are:

• Admissions to Restricted Programs-assisting students applying to programs with waitlists
• Discrete Registration-programs and courses not using the “normal” registration process
• Non-Degree Transition-supporting student transition from non-credit developmental and remedial courses to degree credit courses
• Course Portfolios-creating portfolios of instructional materials to ensure quality instruction district-wide
• Alternative/Flexible Learning-improving processes that allow for increased accessibility of learning opportunities

Identifying, measuring, analyzing and addressing student and stakeholder needs continue to be a strong focus of MATC’s activities and overall quality improvement goals. The College will continue to be a cornerstone of the community by always knowing who the customer is and meeting their needs proactively.