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Surveys paint picture of Bay students

ESCANABA — Bay College Director of Institutional Research and Reporting Penny Pavlat shared information from various surveys and metrics with members of the Bay College Board of Trustees Wednesday.

Pavlat discussed the Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE). The CCSSE looks at five benchmarks — Active and Collaborative Learning, Student Effort, Academic Challenge, Student-Faculty Interaction, and Support for Learners.

Bay received scores of 49.7, 51.9, 53.8, 55.6, and 50.2 for these benchmarks, respectively. In comparison, overall CCSSE scores for small colleges were listed respectively as 51.3, 50.9, 50.4, 53.0, and 52.2.

Pavlat also presented a look at Bay’s CCSSE performance in comparison to other community colleges in Michigan.

“In 2019, we actually were above (the) state on every single benchmark,” she said.

Statewide scores for CCSSE benchmarks were recorded as 49.3, 47.9, 46.7, 50.5, and 49.4, respectively.

Additionally, the CCSSE section of the presentation included information on individual aspects of student engagement at Bay. Some aspects of student engagement where Bay scored particularly well included frequency of computer lab use and peer-to-other tutoring, number of written papers or reports, number of assigned textbooks and other course readings, and usage of email to communicate with instructors.

“Then we have the ones that we can actually look at as opportunities,” Pavlat said.

These included frequency of skill lab usage and career counseling, number of books students read on their own, participation in community-based projects as part of regular courses, and class presentations.

Pavlat went on to present data from the Voluntary Framework of Accountability. The second section of her presentation compared Bay’s Fall 2012 cohort and Fall 2016 cohort.

By the end of their second year, 6.3 percent of Bay students in the main cohort for the Fall 2012 semester had completed a certificate or degree. In contrast, 21.7 percent of Bay students in the main cohort for the Fall 2016 semester had completed a certificate or degree by the two-year mark.

“We’re getting closer — they’re completing or they’re transferring, which is awesome,” Pavlat said.

Pavlat also showed the board outcomes at the end of six years for students in the Fall 2012 cohort. For the main cohort, 45.5 percent of students had received a bachelor’s degree, an associate degree (with or without transferring) or a certificate (with or without transferring), or had transferred to another school without receiving an award from Bay.

Pavlat also reviewed information from Achieving the Dream (ATD). According to the data, Bay’s fall-to-spring student persistence rate was 87 percent as of the f/all 2017 semester; in comparison, the rate for other Michigan schools in ATD at the time was 84 percent.

Bay’s fall-to-fall student persistence rate was 56 percent as of Fall 2016 — lower than ATD’s state rate of 59 percent. Pavlat said Bay has been moving towards closing the gap over the past few years.

“We had a six-percent gap over there in 2014,” she said.

In other business, the board looked back at Bay’s recent production of “The Wizard of Oz.”

“It was an awesome experience, and I just want to thank everybody that was involved,” Vice President of College Advancement Kim Carne said.

Carne also spoke about the future of live theater at Bay College. She said a wrap-up meeting will be held between college representatives and some of the key people behind Bay’s production of “Oz,” and these decisions would be made then.

“We do have interest from other directors … I know that there’s one that wants to do a smaller, more ‘college’ kind of performance, and that would probably be the next one we would consider,” she said.

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