What is a QEP?
A Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) is a 5-year project that challenges colleges to improve student learning and/or student success. QEPs are required for institutions seeking reaffirmation of accreditation through the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC).
What is Santa Fe College’s QEP?
SF’s QEP, Equity-Minded Education: Uniting for Student Success, will advance a comprehensive professional learning program for faculty through a Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence (CTLE). This program will emphasize equity-minded teaching strategies to improve academic success for all students.
SF’s QEP will:
- Provide faculty with support and resources to help all students succeed academically and progress toward educational goals.
- Engage students to inform equity-minded teaching practices and increase student success.
How will the QEP work?
Equity-Minded Education’s comprehensive professional development program will support equity-minded teaching and encourage cross-college collaborations to enhance student success through three initiatives:
- Introduce and Reinforce Equity-Minded Teaching Themes. This initiative focuses on providing coordinated, foundational learning to support faculty in adopting shared equity-minded teaching practices that create more equitable learning environments. SF will use proven professional development programs including the American Association of College and University Educators (ACUE), the Student Experience Project (SEP), and Transparency in Learning and Teaching (TiLT), in addition to designing custom professional learning opportunities through the new SF Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence (CTLE).
- Implement and Assess Departmental Action Research Plans with a QEP Focus. Once faculty strengthen their equity-minded teaching strategies, they will collaborate within and across departments to review student success data, apply theme-based strategies to courses, and assess the impact of various approaches. The resulting departmental action research plans will be implemented and modified through an annual cycle to surface effective approaches, which will be shared across the College.
- Partner with QEP-Sponsored Student Fellows for Equity-Minded Education. Learning from students and collaborating with them to promote success are important features of equity-minded teaching. This initiative employs students as partner consultants. Student fellows will serve as a focus and advisory group, providing formative feedback about professional development, departmental action research plans, and faculty artifacts. These fellows will also lead campus panel discussions and forums, raising greater awareness of equity challenges and student experiences.
What is the timeline for the QEP?
The QEP is a five-year project extending from Fall 2023-Spring 2028 and has three phases.
- Phase I: Pre-Implementation Preparation - Fall 2022 - Summer 2023
- Hire QEP Director and project support staff
- Conduct action-research training for QEP staff and relevant personnel
- Prepare professional development programming
- Phase II: Implementation - Fall 2023 – Fall 2027
- Launch equity-minded faculty professional development
- Develop Departmental Action Research Plans
- Conduct student panels, focus groups, and feedback campaigns
- Phase III: Project Assessment - Fall 2027-Spring 2028
Although project assessment will be ongoing throughout the project cycle, in Year 5 project personnel will:- Review and analyze QEP data
- Discuss lessons learned
- Develop plan to institutionalize
- Identify next steps
How will the QEP improve student success?
The QEP aims to improve pass (course success) and retention rates for all SF students while narrowing racial equity gaps.
How will the QEP strengthen SF?
- Improve our understanding of inequities on campus and in the communities we serve.
- Providing faculty with equity-minded teaching strategies
- Amplify student voices
- Promote cross-college collaboration among faculty, staff, and students
Resources
SACSCOC Resources
SF QEP Resources
Why are we doing a QEP?
The Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) is part of the College’s accreditation process. The regional accrediting body, The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC), requires its member institutions to develop and implement, over a five-year period, a detailed, carefully designed action plan that addresses a focused, well-defined topic or issue pertaining to the enhancement of student learning outcomes and/or student success.
The Quality Enhancement Plan provides an opportunity for the College to identify a specific aspect of student learning/student success that can be improved and then develop a detailed comprehensive plan to effect improvement.
How does SACSCOC evaluate the QEP?
The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC), will evaluate the Quality Enhancement Plan on five criteria:
- Topic: The institution identified a topic through its ongoing, comprehensive planning and evaluation processes.
- Broad-based Support: The topic has broad-based support of institutional constituencies.
- Focus: The plan focuses on improving specific student learning outcomes and/or student success.
- Resources: The institution commits resources to initiate, implement, and complete the QEP.
- Assessment: The institution has developed a plan to assess the achievement of its QEP.
How was the QEP topic selected?
In spring 2021, SF leadership initiated a process for the College community to identify potential QEP topics. Responding to this call, faculty and staff submitted five proposals for SF to consider for its 2023-2028 QEP:
- A Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence that would create a culture of professional learning and use evidence-based practices to improve student learning and success.
- A Model for Inclusive Excellence, which advocated adopting the AAC&U inclusive excellence framework to link diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts across the College.
- An e-Portfolio project designed to advance integrative learning, helping students to link coursework to their larger purpose and to increase their self-direction, persistence, growth mindset, and metacognitive skills.
- A Freshman Experience Course to allow students to map coursework to their future career and to integrate academic support skills to increase student persistence and overall success.
- Cyber Saints: Online Teaching and Learning at Santa Fe, a proposal to make the online learning experience more accessible for students and promote a greater sense of community.
The SF community identified equity as a unifying theme across these topics. Following consideration of all proposals, faculty and staff identified college-wide interest in the creation of a Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence that would create a culture of professional learning to improve equitable outcomes for all students.
Contact Information
Please direct questions or comments to qep@sfcollege.edu.
Ann Laffey, M.A.
QEP Co-Author, Associate Professor, Anthropology, Social and Behavioral Sciences