Deadline: June 15, 2010
This year’s NCSD annual conference will be held on October 24 - 26, 2010 in Little Rock, Arkansas. The theme of the conference is "Enhancing Student Success in an Era of Partnership and Accountability". Presentations will be given as part of the conference’s 75-minute break-out sessions. Priority will be given to presentation proposals that describe innovative programs and practices related to community college student development. Although the options for presentation topics are very extensive, proposals are especially encouraged in the following areas:
Assessment:- Assessment of effectiveness in general and assessment of learning outcomes in particular, continue to be important to our work as student development professionals. This year, NCSD has decided to have a theme track on Assessment & Learning Outcomes. Possible topic areas include, but are not limited to: How does assessment relate to requirements of regional accrediting agencies? How do you find the time, money, and other resources to do good assessment? How can a department use the CAS Standards to develop or improve an assess- ment program? What needs to be included in an assessment plan, from conception to closing the loop? How do qualitative and quantitative assessment work together? How do you build a division-wide assessment program? What are learning outcomes, how do you write them, and how do you measure them? How can we contribute to creating and maintaining a culture of assessment as it relates to the learning college concept?
Student Success:
- In 1998, Marguerite M. Culp and Steven R. Helfgot challenged the student development professional in the community college to focus attention on student success. Other documents of our profession such as The Student Learning Imperative, Learning Reconsidered, Learning Reconsidered 2, and Toward the Future Vitality of Student Development Services: Redefining the Legacy in 2004 all also call us to a focus on student success. Possible topic areas for this theme track include, but are not limited to: How do we enhance the success of at-risk students? How do we help students make the transition from high school to college? How do we help students return to college after being away from education for a while? How do we identify students having difficulty early enough in their academic career to help them turn things around? How do we help the failing student turn things around? When and how are the best ways to intervene in order to best enhance student success?
Partnerships:
- In 1998, AAHE, ACPA, and NASPA published Powerful Partnerships: A Shared Responsibility for Learning. Those of us who work in student development services have always understood that we need to work with others in order to accomplish our goals. Twelve years later, this theme track allows us the opportunity to focus attention on how we utilize partnerships to help students to be successful. Possible topic areas for this theme track include, but are not limited to: How can we partner with academic colleagues to meet and then measure general education outcomes outside of the classroom? How do we partner with the parents of today’s students? How can we partner with the public schools to help their students become successful at our college? How can we partner among student development services departments to meet our common goals? How do we partner with business and industry to meet the needs of our community? How can we partner with sister institutions to meet our professional development needs in this era of shrinking resources?
Shared Journey Award:
- A special feature of the NCSD annual conference is the designation of exemplary practices aimed at furthering student development in community colleges. This process is named the Terry O'Banion Shared Journey Exemplary Practice Award, after the past President of the League for Innovation in the Community College and one of the most recognized and esteemed leaders of student development in higher education in the United States. Through this special application process, nominees present details of an existing or new program in terms of its goals, implementation approaches, and outcomes. Only the most outstanding proposals are selected to give presentations at the NCSD national conference wherein the winners are designated as Gold, Silver, and Bronze recipients. Programs given these awards are deemed outstand- ing because they are highly innovative and model best practices in the field, and because the evidence of effectiveness includes compelling results over time. Only programs judged to be truly outstanding will be recognized.
Those interested in submitting a conference presentation proposal should use the program submission form.
All presenters accepted as a part of this "Call for Presentations" must register for the entire conference. There are no exceptions to this policy.
The presentation proposal period has been extended to June 15, 2010.
