SAN JACINTO COLLEGE scores high on top 100 list
San Jacinto College leaders and personnel don’t sit on the sidelines, hoping their students will navigate community college and move on to careers and higher degrees.
“We are being very proactive and intentional, thinking through every step from first contact through completion, so that our students have a support structure and an environment that facilitates good decision-making,” said Laurel Williamson, the deputy chancellor and president of the college. “One of our themes is that students will never fail for a barrier we’ve overlooked or created. Our college is communicating in every way possible that we care about our students.”
The deeply saturated culture of student success at San Jacinto College is being recognized nationally. In the recently published Community College Week Magazine’s annual Top 100 list, San Jacinto College moved up two slots in both top overall associate degree producers and top associate degree producers among two-year institutions, ranking 24th and 15th, respectively.
“We are delighted that we have moved up in these categories, but we are also extremely proud of our result for serving minority populations,” Williamson said, referring to San Jacinto College’s 10th place ranking for overall service to minority students and eighth place ranking in service to Hispanic students.
San Jacinto College also hit a high note with a second place in associate degrees in the science technologies/ technicians category.
“We have been focusing on STEM careers with our students and with our outreach to area ISDs,” Williamson said. “There is a great deal of opportunity in these areas in our region with NASA, the petrochemical industry and the Port of Houston.”
Achieving success in student completion depends on a continuum of support, Williamson said. For starters, students must attend mandatory orientations and student success classes to prepare them to learn.
Student advisors no longer hand over 72-page course schedules and ask what classes students want to take. Instead, they ask questions about a student’s interests and career goals, providing information about course pathways, employment opportunities, transfer options and wages. Faculty assess their students’ performance, seeking to identify issues and best practices.
In one example, Williamson said a San Jacinto College chemistry professor tracked data that showed a number of students would quit after the first test.
With her next cohort, she scheduled 30-minute appointments to review the tests with every student who received lower than a C. By the second test, 80 percent of those students scored 20-50 points higher.
“The reason we are achieving such remarkable things here at San Jacinto College is our people — faculty, staff, employees — working in a collaborative and singularly focused way to support our students,” Williamson said.