is five-year grant from the U. S. Department of education has
greatly benefitted Suffolk students during the past 4 ½ years. Besides
streamlining the enrollment and admissions processes, it has enabled
the College to improve accessibility to advising, added two new writing
centers, and created a library of faculty-developed learning objects to
a virtual Learning Commons (vLC). By fall 2015, the vLC will have
increased online academic support from zero courses to 30 courses
being supported online. Suffolk now provides students with a robust
resource of online support for learning both inside and outside of the
classroom for the most common courses students take.
faculty members have taken advantage of the opportunity to
learn new technology contributing to the further
development of the vLC. Suffolk students are now able
to receive extra help even when they can’t get to campus.
instructors can link desired vLC pages to their online course sites in Blackboard
to provide seamless extra help. faculty have shared that they use the vLC to: find
approaches to common teaching issues, discover how their colleagues are teaching
the same topics, and spend more time on critical thinking and analysis in class.
other online highlights include featuring success stories from Suffolk alumni and
members of the community to assist students in determining the right education to
attain their career goals; spotlighting professors in order to help students connect with
our faculty, increasing the likelihood of degree completion; featuring select learning
objects that help students more confidently access the wealth of resources at the
College. Tracking shows thousands of visits to the learning areas each month—by
students, faculty, staff and administrators.
e grant project has also made it possible for the College to better serve students
with disabilities. As an example, to help vision-impaired students online learning
access to screen-reading software and voice-output calculators occurred this year.
Looking back over the grant period, we have seen the following improvements to
advising:
• e College created three Academic Advising and Mentoring Centers where
faculty members interact with students. ousands of students seek help at
the centers every semester and are able to access the support they need to
successfully complete their courses.
• Counselors and instructional faculty developed curriculum and materials for
advising, and received professional development in holistic advising.
• instructional faculty went on to create a guide for advising and devised
principles for a Mid-term Academic Alert process that lets students know about
any academic performance issues in a timely way.
SeiS replaced the College’s paper application with a more complete, convenient,
and modern web-based online application system. is included the implementation
of an e-transcript system so that applicants no longer need to mail paper copies and
College staff no longer needs to enter transcripts into the system by hand. electronic
scanners on each campus further eliminated the reliance on paper documents.
e project also installed SArS grid for automated scheduling and planning, and
sponsored a major upgrade of the College’s portal to the Luminis iv system. SeiS
also provided the Suffolk Community College foundation with $150,000 in
2014-2015 Review of Accomplishments
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DISABILITY SERVICES
