The 2005 Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE) ranks Tacoma Community College (TCC) one of the top performing two-year colleges in the nation for 2004-2005.
“This is a great honor for TCC and evidence of the commitment to learning by the faculty, staff and students,” said Dr. Tim Stokes, TCC vice president for academic and student affairs.
TCC will be featured in the next CCSSE national report. The CCSSE is comprised of questions regarding institutional practices and student behaviors that are correlated with student learning and retention.
TCC received the highest marks in the area of academic challenge 55.1; 4.8 points higher than the average benchmark score. This area emphasizes the amount of assigned work, the complexity of cognitive tasks presented to students and the standards faculty members use to evaluate student performance.
Students at each surveyed college are asked a range of questions from how much does your college emphasize organizing ideas, information or experiences in new ways? to how many papers or reports of any length did you write?
The four remaining areas that the survey focuses on are active and collaborative learning, student effort, student-faculty interaction and support for learners.
Other colleges that have received this recognition in the past are Northwest Vista College (Texas), Miami-Dade College (Fla.), Valencia Community College (Fla.), Prince Georges Community College (Md.), Tallahassee Community College (Fla.) and Montgomery College (Md.). These are some of the best community colleges in the country, said Stokes.
Established in 2001, the CCSSE is a project of the Community College Leadership Program at the University of Texas at Austin. CCSSE works in partnership with the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), a survey that focuses on four-year colleges and universities. Both surveys emerged in response to concerns about the quality of American undergraduate education.
For more information about the CCSSE, visit ccsse.org.
