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Community College of Philadelphia
Leadership Institute
Project Final Report
1. Project title & team members’ names.
CCPfaqs (Frequently Asked Questions) web site. Team Members: Sandra Gonzalez-Torres, Associate Director for Act Now/Act 101 Jennifer Sheppard, Acting Coordinator of Grants in the Office of Institutional Advancement Tanya Stewart-Austin, Budget and Financial Analyst in the Office of Finance and Planning Aerie Webb, Assistant Professor of English Mentor: Dr. Samuel Hirsch, Vice President for Student Affairs
2. An overview of the project proposal/goals.
Proposal Summary: Given that: the College has no standardized format for “Frequently Asked Questions” (FAQs), and the FAQs that do exist are difficult to find when navigating the MyCCP portal or the College’s web site, We propose to: compile and standardize existing FAQs, establish an easily accessible location for FAQs to be posted on the MyCCP portal and/or the College’s homepage, and develop a style guide for departments to follow when creating future FAQs. Rationale: A centralized location for standardized FAQs will enable students, staff, and faculty to easily find answers to common questions about Admissions, Financial Aid, Advising, Counseling, Records and Registrations, and Student Life. This will greatly decrease confusion and dissatisfaction with the College overall.
3. An explanation of how the project relates to this year’s theme of “Fostering
Student Engagement and Persistence.”
Students are more persistent when they feel empowered, and they are more fully engaged when they feel that faculty, staff, and administrators are genuinely invested in their success. But when our students can’t figure out how to get the answers they need as they try to understand and follow college policy, they may feel frustrated and disempowered. If they then approach faculty, staff, and administrators who are unable to help, that frustration may be compounded; nothing will have altered their conviction that the institution doesn’t care, and they may become less engaged and less likely to persist. It is our shared mission to help our students get the answers they need. Currently, the answers to pertinent questions regarding course registration, financial aid, and many other areas relating to college policy are spread out across a wide range of web sites and online documents. While most of the information the students need is available online, it can be hard to find and difficult to understand without expertise in a particular area or department. With the hope of doing better for our students, we are creating the CCPfaqs web site, a centralized location for simple, easy-to-read, standardized frequently asked questions, which will enable all of us to quickly and easily help our students find answers. Students will then see that we are eager and able to help them, and they will be able to find the answers for themselves.
our Leadership Institute colleagues, however, we realized that MS Word would not be suitable. While we were momentarily daunted by our unfamiliarity with web development technology and our inability to create what we wanted ourselves, our unfamiliarity proved to be our greatest creative asset because it kept us asking questions and moving forward instead of settling for less than what we had envisioned. Next, we met with Matthew Shupp, Acting Director of Student Life, to discuss using Student Life’s FAQs and having the Office of Student Life "house" our project upon its completion. As the meeting progressed, we shared with him our frustration with the creation of our FAQ page. He informed us that Student Life does not use MS Word to create their web page, and instead uses the software Dreamweaver. He not only educated us about what the software does; he also offered to have his work study student create our FAQ search page using this software. We set up a meeting with Matthew and his work study student, Shaheer Franklin, but in the meantime, we met with an Information Technology consultant who introduced us to the miracle of knowledge-based applications. A knowledge-based application is a system where data collected using a program called My SQL is connected to a search engine that can instantaneously find the data queried. The IT consultant created an application that matched our vision perfectly, and we christened our project CCPfaqs. He taught us how to populate the database with questions, and he modified the application according to our specifications. In addition, he created user names and passwords for every department on campus so that they can populate the application with their frequently asked questions should they choose. At our meeting with Matthew and Shaheer, Shaheer explained how he could create a web page in Dreamweaver to act as the "front end" of this application. The "front end" would serve as the home page with which students would interface. Finally, we again met with Jody and also with
Bill Bromley, Technical Support Services Manager. They assured us that our project could easily be uploaded to CCP's server.
Academic Computing, Matthew Shupp, Acting Director of Student Life, and members of the Leadership Institute. Worked with an IT consultant to develop “back end” of CCPfaqs web site. Met with David Watters, Acting Dean of Students, and Dr. Samuel Hirsch, Vice President of Student Life and our CCPfaqs Mentor, to update them on the progress of the project. Met with a CCP student worker to develop “front end” of CCPfaqs web site. Met with Jodi Bauer, Chief Information Officer and Bill Bromley, Manager, Technical Support Services, to show them the CCPfaqs web site and confirm their support for uploading this web site on to the MyCCP portal system.
6. For short-term projects, if now completed, an overview of how they turned out.
Not applicable.
7. For long-term projects, an outline of next steps and long-term goals.
Finalize template questions. Discuss the possibility of creating a list of key words for the search page. Create instructions for offices and department explaining how to upload questions and answers on the back end administration page. Finalize “back end” (administration page) where offices and departments will be able to add and edit the FAQs. Upload and finalize the look of the “front end” (the search page) of our CCPfaqs web site. Also add a feature so that students can e-mail different departments if they have unanswered questions. Finalize revisions of the FAQs from Records and Registration, Financial Aid, and Admissions. Meet with these departments for approval of our edits. Give CCP’s IT department the code to upload our CCPfaqs web site to the College server. Cut and paste questions and answers from Records and Registration, Financial Aid and Admissions into the new CCPfaqs web site once IT has uploaded it onto the server. Meet with focus groups (students, faculty, staff, and administrators) to assess the ease and success of the CCPfaqs web site. Revise CCPfaqs web site and CCPfaqs Style Guide in response to feedback. Over the summer, meet with other departments and offices to encourage them to create their own frequently asked questions and answers to add to the CCPfaqs web site. Demonstrate the CCPfaqs web site during Professional Development week to enlist the participation of more departments. Market and advertise the CCPfaqs web site to students after we have enough FAQs from CCP offices and departments.
9. Assessment results or plans for assessment.
Thus far, assessment of the evolving project has been informal feedback from colleagues and our mentor. This feedback has yielded useful modifications, including a specific template for creating questions and a link to a PDF version of the CCPfaqs Style Guide. As we continue with the project, we will elicit feedback from students, staff, faculty, and administrators. Formal assessment includes convening focus groups, distributing surveys, and adding a web counter to the CCPfaqs "front end." Informal assessment, including anecdotal and word-of-mouth feedback, will be ongoing.
10.A summary (from each individual) of what you learned by doing the project and
how it impacted you as a leader.
Sandra Gonzalez-Torres Associate Director for Act Now/Act 101 I always appreciate further professional development experiences and I had hoped that participating in the Leadership Institute would teach me more about the institutional processes of the Community College of Philadelphia. It has, and much more… I am grateful for the relationships I have developed with the ten Leadership Institute participants, the facilitators and of course, my team. It is these relationships that have allowed me to broaden my perspectives on how the College works and how leading is really all about relationships. The Leadership Institute’s team project has allowed me to work with some amazing women. The more I learned about my own leadership style, the better I was able to seek support from this group. Each of these ladies is smart, creative and committed to the mission of the College. Their dedication to our project made working with them an amazing experience. I appreciate the fact that as we found challenges, our team became more devoted to the project and its success. Of course, leadership is also about applicability. I look forward to continuing the work we have begun, and to the day when everyone on campus will use the CCPfaqs when they have a quick question!
Tanya Stewart-Austin Budget and Financial Analyst in the Office of Finance and Planning First and foremost, I would like to thank the Leadership Institute for giving me the opportunity to be a participant in this year’s class. I know that had I not participated in the LI that I may not have been awarded the opportunity to interact with the other participants, LI facilitators or presenters. Everyone that I came into contact with over this journey has given me some insight on how to become an effective leader. It has been a pleasure working with my team and I believe that as my team continues to work on our project, we will continue to grow and become more aware of our leadership abilities as a result of participating in the LI. One of the most important things that I have learned from my work on the LI project so far is to be conscious of the effects that any given project may have on the College as a whole. When we were in the planning stages of our project, we did not think of the consequences that the project could have on the College. For example, our first idea involved students participating in an online format. Initially, we did not consider the legal ramifications that an online format could bring about for the college. Being conscious of how a project may affect the College has been beneficial because it changes one’s understanding of why some things that may seem like good projects or policies cannot be instituted in the College. The project has also impacted me as a leader because the experience has shown me the importance of being a team player. The process has revealed that a leader must also have the ability to work within a team. There are times when a leader must lead and there are times when a leader must work as a team member. In addition, I have learned from this experience that a leader must be open-minded. A leader has to share his or her vision and listen to what others have to contribute to the vision.
As a result of participating in the LI, I believe that I can better maintain an open mind when exploring the ongoing changes that the College is, and will continue, to undergo. I believe that this experience has given me the tools that are required to contribute to the College’s growth in sustaining its integrity and mission in correlation with the rapid changes in the educational environment.
difference between my “vision” and the project we had settled on, was the difference between a “possibly good thing” and “an absolute necessity.” I stopped dreaming about what might have been and started to understand the success of our project as crucial to our students. Our shared vision became my own. I also learned to do things fast—or at least faster than I would have. My mode of operating (as a writer in any context) has always been to spend a long time writing and rewriting until I have a product I’m happy with no matter how many times I read it. But the writing and planning we did for this project served a different function, and I wasn’t used to that. I had to let go of that control and trust that what we had done would serve its purpose, and any other stake I had (in one word over another) had to be side-lined as simply not relevant. More important, I learned that ideas can be put into practice at CCP, and this has emboldened me to think about how to pursue some of the other ideas I’ve had. I started thinking about this because in the course of completing our project, I discovered that the people who know how to do things I don’t know how to do can actually be found, and not only can they be found; they are willing to listen. Certainly we would never have been able to get our project off the ground if this were not the case. My point is that I have all sorts of areas of in-expertise which have intimidated me in the past because I knew that alone, I would never be able to accomplish what I had imagined. But since I now know people in these different departments, I can approach people for help whether I’m trying to help my students in-the-moment or in a more long-term kind of way—which means that I, along with others, can get things done. As a leader I have discovered I have potential because of my desire to see certain things happen. My skills as a leader would probably relate to my willingness to identify with visions larger than my own while continuing to advocate for the changes I imagine. I have been
emboldened by this experience because I have realized that to make change happen, I will have to leave the imaginary land of “perfection”—where I never say a wrong thing or write an imperfect phrase—behind. I will need to take risks, prioritize, and trust that our shared vision will lead us to those skills we need as we engage our students and they persist in achieving their goals.
