Majuro, MH – It appears that the Vision Statement announced by the College of the Marshall Islands last April is more than rhetoric. At Foundation Day ceremonies last spring CMI announced the goal “to become a model community college in the Pacific region.” Recently, three external reports give reason to suggest that CMI’s vision may not be such a distant reality.

Last week, the College of Marshall Islands received word from the Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE) that it was being recognized for “outstanding performance.” The Community College Survey of Student Engagement provides a much-needed tool for assessing quality in community college education. CCSSE results help colleges focus on good educational practice — defined as practice that promotes high levels of student learning and retention — and identify areas in which community colleges can improve their programs and services for students. Two-time Harvard President Derek Bok in his book, Our Underachieving Colleges, calls CCSSE and its four-year college counterpart NSSE a “promising initiative to improve undergraduate education.”

CCSSE’s survey instrument, The Community College Student Report, provides information on student engagement, a key indicator of learning and, therefore, of the quality of community colleges. Each year, CCSSE releases the results of its survey, which is administered directly to community college students at CCSSE member colleges during randomly selected classes. The survey asks questions about institutional practices and student behaviors that are highly correlated with student learning and retention. Results are public, and they are presented for the full CCSSE population, various subgroups within the full population, and individual colleges. Results include national benchmarks and institutional benchmark scores for five key areas of engagement.

The results are compared against all 525 “small colleges” (enrollment less than 4,000 students) in the national survey and a “cohort” of 260 colleges from 2007. The categories and results are:

CMI’s report ranked it above average in every category, prompting Dr. Courtney Adkins, CCSSE’s Survey Operations Coordinator at the University of Texas at Austin to remark, “we have identified a handful of community colleges, that when compared to other colleges of similar size to have demonstrated outstanding performance.” CMI is one of those colleges. CCSSE plans to include a vignette on CMI in its 2007 National Report along with “colleges that are among the highest performing institutions in their size categories,” according to Dr. Adkins.

Wilson Hess, President of the College of the Marshall Islands, states “these vignettes will illustrate how CMI faculty are improving teaching and learning by designing new developmental programs and incorporating new teaching methods. CCSSE results help us better understand what methods are working and where we need to make further improvements.”

Hess also cautions, “because we have scored higher than many of our peer institutions in every category does not mean there isn’t still room for considerable improvement. For instance the results indicate that far too many students come to class without completing readings or assignments and do not spend enough time studying outside of class. We also know that we can do more to have students interact with instructors via e-mail and strengthen programs to help students develop academic and career plans. We also need to demonstrate that our students are achieving stronger measurable outcomes in the basic skills and in their academic and professional coursework. This survey is a learning tool as well as a measure of performance. However, it is a very good indicator that we are headed in the right direction.”

In other recent events, the U.S. Department of Education San Francisco Regional Office has declared CMI to be a “low risk auditee” based upon its recent history of clean and timely audits. This puts CMI in the top USDOE ranking and allows it to benefit from expedited processing and electronic drawdowns of student aid.

Recent visitors from the U.S. Department of Energy toured CMI’s construction projects and reviewed plans for the new Maintenance Building and Energy Center for which contracts have just been awarded. During their visit they pronounced that “no one in Micronesia is looking at large sustainable energy projects like this.” As a result of their observations, the College of Micronesia, FSM’s physical plants director visited this week with CMI Project Management Unity Director Tony Tomlinson and Physical Plant Director Tony Prout to study the College’s energy and construction plans. Construction of the new Maintenance Building and Energy Center begins this month and it includes plans for alternative solar, wind, and biofuel energy sources.