Southwestern was one of only seven of the state’s 58 community colleges who met the challenge of new, improved and much tougher thresholds to achieve Exceptional Designation.

The other six are Bladen (Dublin), Coastal Carolina (Jacksonville), Sandhills (Pinehurst), Wayne (Goldsboro), Western Piedmont (Morganton), and Wilkes (Wilkesboro).

Each year the General Assembly utilizes performance measures to assess the state’s community colleges.

“This is really an affirmation of the validity of our number 4 ranking nationwide that we received last year from Washington Monthly,” said SCC President Cecil Groves.

“Our success isn’t ranked on how big our budget is or how many new buildings we have. It’s all ranked on our students,” said Groves.

Among the areas measured are the retention, graduation and transfer rates of curriculum students, the progress of basic skills students, the passing rates of students taking developmental courses and the success rates of developmental students taking college level courses. Also, 80 percent or more of students taking licensure or certification exams had to pass the first time, plus no one exam could have a pass rate of less than 70 percent.

Another measurement requires that 87 percent of the college’s students who transferred to University of North Carolina institutions had to perform as well as “native” UNC sophomores and juniors within a designated time.

Southwestern ranked as one of the top three colleges in performance of college transfer students. “We have a vigorous college transfer program and this system evaluation just goes to show how successful we are statewide,” Groves said.

“It proves Southwestern is doing one tremendous job of teaching and learning- and we are doing it institution wide as a team,” Groves said.

He added that the credit goes to dedicated faculty and staff and a supportive SCC board of trustees and foundation who are “insistent on our commitment to students and who give us the freedom in our teaching.”

The complete 2008 Critical Success Factors Report is available on the NC Community College System Web page at: http://www.nccommunitycolleges.edu/Publications/docs/Publications/csf2008.pdf.

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