ACC has been a part of the Texas Success Center’s Guided Pathways work since 2016. The Texas Success Center provides ongoing support for colleges to improve student outcomes at their Pathways Institutes each fall and spring. ACC sends a team to each institute. At the spring 2023 Institute, the ACC team decided on an action to develop and launch a data engagement plan for instruction during AY2023-24 under the direction of Dr. Gaye Lynn Scott (VC Instruction) and in partnership with Dr. Jenna Cullinane Hege (VC Institutional Research and Analytics). 

In the summer of 2023, Dr. Scott and Dr. Cullinane Hege sponsored the Data Engagement Advisory Committee (DEAC), co-chaired by David Borden, Director of Special Projects, Office of the Vice Chancellor of Instruction and Susan Burkhauser, Director of Institutional Research, with 11 additional members representing full-time and adjunct faculty, assistant deans of pathways, data, and assessment planning, and OIRA. The charge for this committee was to develop a plan for data engagement for AY24 that supported data literacy across Instruction so that we develop skills that support us in making strategic decisions, and help us make strategic investments in student success. This would include the following: Why is data/data literacy important to student success; What is data literacy at ACC and for Instruction; [Who] Identify the roles; [How] Develop the strategies i.e., what will be done and with what resources. 

Ultimately, the DEAC proposed two initiatives for the AY2024 academic year. One of the proposals was to assess how departments use data to inform decisions, who is involved in the process, and how comfortable they are working with data. Provide faculty with the support and tools to understand the data, a platform to discuss or give input on it, and fundamentally shift the culture to where all faculty and instructional staff are accountable for using data to affect program improvement. This would include active participation in data-informed decision-making by accessing data, asking the right questions of the data, effectively using the data for analysis, and understanding what is missing or needs further study.

From this proposed initiative, the Data Engagement for Student Success Work Group was formed, co-chaired by David Borden, Director of Special Projects, Office of the Vice Chancellor of Instruction, and Jason Vidrine, Professor, Communication Studies. The DESS Work Group has 9 faculty members, 4 staff members (2 of which are also adjunct faculty) with specific technical expertise, and 1 student. The DESS Work Group has a faculty co-chair, and all sub-groups have at least one faculty co-chair. The DESS Work Group’s charge is: We will work to empower faculty and instructional staff to actively participate in departmental data-informed decision-making by increasing data literacy. To that end, we will assess and address faculty’s data literacy in order to improve data engagement, with the ultimate goal of increasing course completion rates.