Commitment to Excellence

The Board of Trustees of Kalamazoo Valley Community College believes that the vitality of its greater community is defined by the Institution’s capacity to promote and provide learning through a variety of strategies, its commitment to access and equity, its understanding and effective use of technology, its ability to address the needs of the job market for transfer and career programs, and its ability to contain costs.

The Board's Commitment to Excellence encompasses the following:

Civic Role and Responsibilities

• Use our widespread community prominence and accessibility to help forge positive relationships among diverse segments of the community
• Assess our communities needs and assets and implement appropriate programs to cultivate and enhance current and future community leaders
• Provide learners/visitors with an array of experiences to help them gain civic awareness and skills that enhance their participation in a democracy
• Strive to be exemplary institutional citizens and leaders
• Encourage staff and students to become active participants in community activities
• Support the arts in our communities, foster partnerships that support cultural events, and strengthen programming when the Institution serves as the community’s cultural focus

Employers and the Economy

• View the preparation and development of the workforce as a primary part of our mission and communicate to policymakers the uniqueness of our community colleges role
• View basic literacy, English-as-a-second-language, and remedial programs as essential parts of our mission with positive effects on democracy and economic life
• Provide people with the academic, technical and workplace social skills necessary for successful careers
• Expand services to support emerging, existing, transitional and entrepreneurial workers
• Meet regularly with employers to establish processes for timely curricular, policy and scheduling revisions that reflect new regulations or changing market needs and practices
• Collaborate with public and private human resource providers to reduce duplication and optimize coordination of services
• Develop strategic plans for global awareness and competence that respond to the needs of learners/visitors, businesses, and institutions
• Increase and expand programs for global understanding, including language and culture, that help connect the various cultures in our communities

P-16 Connections

• Develop partnerships and programs that help pre-school through secondary school youth for a lifetime of learning
• Develop partnerships with universities that ease academic and personal transitions to baccalaureate and graduate-level educations
• Fortify our role in preparing K-12 teachers by strengthening our science, mathematical, engineering, and technology programs
• Offer quality programs for teacher professional development where appropriate

Learner-Centered Colleges

• Embrace "learning" rather than "teaching" as the focus of our educational enterprise and focus on how different learning styles affect outcomes

Access and Equity

• Take proactive measures to ensure that all community members have the necessary incentives, support, and opportunity to meet their educational needs

Inclusiveness

• Welcome and support all people regardless of age, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, class, disability, sexual orientation, or other factors
• Develop strategies for maintaining an inclusive balance in enrollment and staffing
• Aggressively implement strategies to create campus climates that promote inclusiveness as an institutional community value

Curriculum

• Review our vision of the role of general education and align our core courses with this vision
• Develop comprehensive strategies for providing an array of experiential learning opportunities, including service learning, that promote democratic skills along with academic and technical competence
• Make dynamic curriculum construction, management, and delivery processes, including collaborative arrangements, an institutional priority in planning and resource allocation
• Use recognized occupational skills standards in developing curriculum for occupational education and training
• Repackage our courses, policies, services and schedules to meet the needs of continuous learners as customers
• Develop policies to ensure excellence and appropriateness in high school concurrent enrollment programs

Support Services

• Ensure that our learner-centered support systems provide attentive advising, services, and follow-up for all students
• Embrace remedial education as an access point to higher education and increased opportunities and make remedial courses mandatory for all learners who need them
• Provide re-entry and disadvantaged learners, including those in remedial programs, the same priority and support as all other learners

Credentialing

• Identify alternative approaches that augment conventional academic transcripts to communicate fully a learner’s skills, knowledge and relevant experience to prospective employers or other educational institutions
• Analyze the learning assessment process and become centers for the assessment of specific skills required by employers

Continuous Learning

• Provide strategies for continuous learning and develop programs for every age level
• Be appropriately informed about the various federal, state, and other assistance programs available to support continuous learners
• Have strategies in place that alert students, alumni, and community members to new learning opportunities and to financial assistance sources available to continuous learners

Human Resources

• Create a positive, professional work environment that values all personnel regardless of classification
• Seek and hire diverse and competent faculty and staff in every part of the Institution
• Allocate at least 2 percent of our annual operating budgets to the professional development and training of our personnel
• Prepare more people for higher education leadership roles and strive for more diversity in all leadership positions
• Recognize the importance of physical and mental health in the learning, retention, productivity, and well-being of all persons, and respond with programming, policies, and services to promote a healthful environment for learning

Accreditation

• Ensure that the accrediting process meets our quality assurance and public accountability goals and use it for strategic planning and professional development

Technology

• Help faculty understand and integrate technology as an essential learning tool
• Seek bold and unconventional approaches and consult with all stakeholders when developing information technology plans
• Plan for technological upgrading as a routine part of budgeting and resource allocation
• Computer literacy is a core requirement for all of our students and faculty
• Make the online environment accessible to all students and community members
• Ensure that the quality of all electronic courses and services are equal to or better than those on our campuses

Governance

• The Michigan state systems recognize and respect the roles of locally connected governing boards in representing community and college interests
• The Institution’s Board of Trustees communicates the characteristics of effective trusteeship and cultivates future trustees who exhibit those qualities
• The Institution’s Board of Trustees has defined its role clearly and represents the interests of the Institution’s communities
• Trustees and the Institution’s chief executive officer act as a leadership team and respect their differing leadership roles
• Trustees participate in local, state, and national in-service training

Finance

• The chief executive officer does and will continue to advocate for funding flexibility to support expanding programs that are not based solely on full-time equivalent criteria 
• By using strategic approaches and seeking political allies who share common goals, Kalamazoo Valley Community College aggressively makes the case for greater funding to accommodate increased enrollment and service needs

KVCC's Commitment to Excellence was adapted from the American Association of Community College's "The Knowledge Net -- Executive Summary of the Report of the New Expeditions Initiative" Copyright 2000.