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NMHEAR 2012

February 23 and 24
Albuquerque, NM

Costs

• Conference $85
• Pre-Conference $60
• Post-Conference $20

Registration

Registration form now available. 

PDF version        DOC version

(Note that all scholarships for Dr. Tinto's pre-conference workshop have been awarded.)

Program Draft

Click below for a rough draft of the 2012 NMHEAR Program.  Presenters should check to see if their names, titles, and schools are listed correctly.  Also check abstracts and send Susan Wood (sandrusw@nmsu.edu) any revisions that are necessary.  Unless requested, presenters will present on the day listed in the draft program, but the rooms may change.

PDF of program draft

Links and Loops: Student Learning, Assessment, and Retention

Invited Guest: Vincent Tinto

Vincent Tinto, a Distinguished University Professor at Syracuse University, has carried out research and written extensively on higher education, particularly on student success and the impact of learning communities on student growth and attainment. His most recent book, Leaving College, published by the University of Chicago Press, lays out a theory and policy perspective on student success that is considered the benchmark by which work on these issues are judged. He has consulted widely with Federal and State agencies, with independent research firms, foundations, and with two and four-year institutions of higher education on a broad range of higher educational issues, not the least of which concern the success students in higher education in particular those of low-income and underserved backgrounds. 

Dr. Tinto also works with the Council for Opportunity in Education, the Lumina Foundation for Education, the Community College Survey of Student Engagement, and the United Negro College Fund’s Institute for Capacity Building on issues pertaining to student success in higher education. He has consulted with the European Access Network and the Dutch Ministry of Education to develop programs to promote access to higher education for disadvantaged youth in Europe. His current research, funded by grants from the Lumina Foundation for Education and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, focuses on the impact of learning communities on the academic achievements of under-prepared college students in urban two and four-year colleges.

Dr. Tinto has received numerous recognitions and awards. Most recently he was awarded the Council of Independent Colleges 2008 Academic Leadership Award, the National Institute for Staff Development International 2008 Leadership Award and was named Distinguished Fellow in the Council of Learning Assistance and Developmental Education Associations.

Keynote Address

Student Success Does Not Arise By Chance

Professor Tinto will speak to the behaviors of institutions that underlie their ability to increase the success of their students. But he will also argue that there is still much to do to ensure that their efforts are sustainable and scalable in ways that reach all, not just some, students. In doing so he will describe several national initiatives that are now taking place to address the larger issue of student success in college.

Thursday Session with Dr. Tinto

Access Without Support is Not Opportunity

Despite the increasing access of students to higher education, in particular those from low-income backgrounds, we have yet to see any significant gains in college completion.  Indeed the gap in the completion of two and four-year degrees between high and low-income students has increased somewhat over the last two decades even as the gap in access to college has declined somewhat.  Given that so many students, in particular  low income students, enter college academically under-prepared, attention will be given to those actions now being taken by two and four-year colleges to provide students the type of support they need to succeed in college. 

 

Pre-Conference Workshops
Thursday, Feb 23 8:30 to 11:30

Workshop 1  Vincent Tinto, Distinguished University Professor, Syracuse University	Promoting Student Success in College An interactive workshop that will enable participants to learn about and begin to develop new initiatives designed to increase the success of their students. At the same time, it will describe how various types of assessments can improve the effectiveness of existing initiatives and help ensure the success of new ones. Participants should expect to spend significant amounts of time working with colleagues and sharing what is occurring on their campuses with individuals from other campuses.
Workshop 2  Jeffrey Seybert, Director, National Higher Education Benchmarking Institute	Identifying Key Performance Indicators: The Foundation of an Institutional Dashboard Over the last 10-15 years higher education has been confronted with increasing mandates for accountability and transparency. Colleges and universities have a responsibility to their various stakeholders to provide accurate, concise, easy-to-understand, up-to-date information and data about organizational performance. A key tool available to facilitate this process is an institutional dashboard--a brief document that graphically displays critical institutional information in a succinct, easily understood, visually appealing format. A critical component of the dashboard is a set of key performance indicators (KPIs). This workshop introduces the concepts of dashboards and KPIs, reviews the sources for and individuals involved in identifying KPIs, and outlines the steps involved in creating a set of institutional KPIs. Workshop participants will work in small teams in a simulation exercise to first identify several hypothetical components of their institution's "core business" and then to extrapolate first-level KPIs to measure the effectiveness of the institution in accomplishing those major institutional priorities.
Workshop 3 Chris Burnham, Regents Professor of English and Rebecca Powell, graduate student, NMSU	Learning Outcomes Logs: How Can We Know What They Have Learned Unless We Ask Them? LOLs are concentrated writing exercises used to monitor student progress toward achieving specific learning outcomes for a course. An often overlooked means of assessing learning is simply to ask the learners themselves. Supplementing more traditional assessments like exams, students are asked periodically to assess the progress of their learning. Based in reflection-in-action and continuous assessment theory, teachers provide a list of the course learning outcomes and a list of recent class-related activities. Students then write paragraphs explaining how a specific class activity helped them master one of the specific learning outcomes. Once students have addressed one outcome, they cannot address it again until progress on every other outcome has been assessed. Over the course of a semester, the teacher monitors whether students understand how class activities target specific outcomes and can adjust pedagogy in light of the assessment. LOLs have been used successfully in graduate and undergraduate classes, and also for program assessment. Our workshop will have four parts: 1. history and theoretical justification; 2. practice reading and assessing student responses; 3. using LOLs for program as well as classroom assessment, and 4. discussing how participants might use or adapt LOLs to their circumstances.
Post-Conference Workshop Friday, Feb 24 1:00 to 4:00	Annual Meeting of the New Mexico Association for Institutional Research and Planning

 

 

For more information, contact Susan Wood.