QEP Topic Announcement

As part of the reaffirmation process set forth by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC), institutions must propose a Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) that supports the College’s mission and strategic plan and improves institutional effectiveness. The QEP should develop and a strategy that the College will use to enhance student learning or student success.

A subcommittee with membership drawn from across NOVA has been working for months to determine a QEP topic for our upcoming reaffirmation. During the topic identification process, a central concern emerged among the final six themes: academic success services were not consistently available to all NOVA students across all campuses. The subcommittee saw a way to turn this concern into a topic and proposed that NOVA’s QEP focus on providing students with access to comprehensive academic success services at all campuses. In addition, considering the impact of the pandemic on our academic support services, the subcommittee expanded this topic to include virtual access to these supports.

Based on the work of this committee and input from college-wide stakeholders, the topic for NOVA’s QEP will be Student Academic Success Services (SASS).

This topic supports NOVA’s mission and the three overarching goals outlined in our Strategic Plan 2017-2023: Every Student Succeeds, Every Program Achieves, and Every Community Prospers. Further, it centers NOVA’s efforts where they matter most: on improving our students’ academic success.

SASS will be grounded in evidence-based practices and leverage our engagement with Achieving the Dream to help NOVA make effective use of our student outcomes data to support the decisions on and delivery of student academic support. The QEP metrics will align with NOVA’s existing key performance indicators, including retention, persistence, and completion. And, the QEP will have an intentional design focus on closing equity gaps in student outcomes.

My thanks go to the QEP subcommittee, led by Woodbridge MSTB Dean Alison Thimblin, for their thoughtful, collaborative, and student-centered work.

Now, NOVA moves on to the next step in this process. In the coming weeks, a diverse, multi-campus, multi-unit QEP Development Team will be assembled to build on the work started by the QEP subcommittee. With their leadership, NOVA will develop a QEP that:
• has a topic identified through its ongoing comprehensive planning and evaluation processes;
• has broad-based support of institutional constituencies;
• focuses on improving specific student learning outcomes and/or student success; and
• includes a plan to assess achievement.

NOVA’s QEP will include a literature review of promising practices, the development of specific goals, implementation steps, performance outcomes, and a plan to assess the QEP.

Over the next academic year, faculty and staff will have the opportunity to learn more about the QEP and provide feedback. Developing the QEP is an opportunity for NOVA to enhance overall institutional quality and effectiveness. I hope you will continue to participate in the process.