On the first day of classes, students and campus visitors were greeted with red, yellow, and green poster sheets covered by post-it notes hanging in the first floor hallway of Building A. What was that all about?

On Tuesday, August 16, COA held its convocation for all full-time employees. Convocation is like an in-service day; a day of meetings and information sessions to prepare for the new academic year.

One of the meetings during convocation was a nearly hour-long brainstorming session during which faculty and staff members were asked to contribute ideas for the college’s Quality Enhancement Plan
(QEP). The QEP is a 5-year program designed to improve student learning, and it is one of the requirements for our upcoming SACS accreditation reaffirmation. Many colleges develop QEP’s on topics such as reading, writing, mathematics, critical thinking, use of technology, or personal skills development in communication or time management. At convocation, employees were divided into three groups based on the color of their name tags, with the red group meeting in the Library, the yellow group meeting in the Foreman Center, and the green group meeting in the AE Atrium. Employees from different offices and campuses were assigned to specific groups based on the table where they sat. Then, employees were invited to jot down individual ideas on each post-it note, then as a group, they arranged similar topics into general categories. The result was 29 red, yellow, and green table size sheets with post-its, also known as “affinity charts.”

“The main goal of this exercise was to get COA employees to begin generating ideas for improving student learning,” said Laura Morrison, faculty member and QEP co-coordinator. “We think we may have accomplished some secondary goals of reinforcing COA’s primary mission of educating students and teambuilding among all employees of COA. We were thrilled to have such great participation from all levels of employees from maintenance and hourly employees to the President’s Leadership Team. The QEP committee is lucky to have Dr. Joe Peel, board of trustees member, serve because he suggested the affinity charts as an idea gathering method. It worked wonderfully.”

Bob Schenck, library director and QEP co-coordinator, added that he thought that the exercise was well-received. “Several people told me that it was a good exercise. And I agree with Laura that we did some teambuilding. The energy, enthusiasm and engagement that I saw during the exercise was gratifying, both as a COA employee and as a QEP co-coordinator.”         

The QEP Committee has been actively preparing for the multi-year process since the committee formed during spring 2011, and the session during convocation generated many ideas for topics. Consider these numbers about the affinity charts: for all the table groups in the three locations combined, COA employees generated 166 affinity categories containing a total of 1,120 individual ideas!

Summarizing the event, James White, a COA student and QEP committee member said, “It was truly great to see employees from departments all over campus gather together to share their ideas on improving student learning. As one of three facilitators, I was able to witness a free flow of ideas being exchanged during the brainstorming session between all employees present. Every employee’s ideas were viewed as important and worthy of consideration, whether they worked in maintenance or were President of the college. I feel fortunate to have witnessed COA employees working shoulder to shoulder for such an important purpose.”

College of The Albemarle received its initial SACS accreditation in 1968 and is currently preparing for the next reaffirmation of accreditation in 2014. If you have any questions or would like to suggest ideas to enhance student learning at COA, please contact the QEP committee at qep@albemarle.edu. 

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