Spartan Times

The SEIR of Vision 2010: Part five of a five part series

Jasmine DeFreitas
Reporter

With all of the forthcoming changes stemming from Vision 2010 at Colorado Northwestern Community College, it is important that all parts of CNCC are connected, from the faculty and students to different programs. That is what the SEIR—the Student Experience, Involvement and Resources committee–is focusing on.

SEIR’s mission is to connect students, staff and faculty to resources that will improve the student experience. The committee hopes that this focus will help with student retention because everything in the student experience will be more interconnected. The idea is to encourage students to be more involved with each other as peers, with their instructors, and with other aspects that could help students better succeed.

The SEIR committee will be making ongoing changes, even now, unlike the other committees that will be launching most of their new changes next fall. As each SEIR project is completed, CNCC will be affected. For example, as soon as the SEIR committee sets up Wi-Fi, students will be able to access it immediately.

“One of our objectives is to connect students immediately and continually,” committee chair Sandy McKelvey said. “We are looking into creating Wi-Fi hangout areas and sprucing up areas around campus to make them more inviting.” The committee will also evaluate the student experience at orientation.

The SEIR committee has several projects they are working on, including a program called OrgSync (www.orgsync.com), an online group management and networking program that is “very cool,” according to McKelvey. OrgSync allows students to “view news, discussions, upcoming events and meetings and your calendar in one spot,” according to the site.

Other features are the co-curricular transcript where students can keep up with all of their participation hours in different organizations, find out when dues are required, and more.

All CNCC clubs will be invited to participate in it. The groups trying it out first are SADHA, Relay for Life, RAs and the SEIR group.

“Our goal is to have the advisers trained by December, and then have a rollout for the rest of the campuses before Winter Break,” McKelvey said. “We think that the groups will really enjoy this program. It has a lot to offer.”

The SEIR committee is working to incorporate technology into every part of what Vision 2010 is trying to accomplish. This could include helping faculty and students use Web 2.0 technologies (things like blogs, social networking applications and wikis; find out more about Web 2.0 technologies at www.techsoup.org), increase a “presence” on Facebook, adding Second Life–a 3-D virtual world that is used for communicating and interacting–Desire2Learn, OrgSync and Wi-Fi in student areas.

“Whatever it is, our group will probably be involved somehow,” McKelvey said. McKelvey believes that students will enjoy the changes, so she expects a positive reaction.

No comments yet.

Leave a comment