Institutional Teams

Photos of the participating institutional members were taken at the Fall Planning Academy on September 10-11, 2015.

University of Houston

University of Houston-Clear Lake

University of Houston-Downtown

Houston Community College System

Lone Star College System

San Jacinto College District

Wharton County Junior College

Task Force Groups

Photos of the participating institutional members were taken at the Fall Planning Academy on September 10-11, 2015. Individuals marked with an asterisk are chairs of their task force group.

Corequisite-Remediation

Math Alignment to Majors

Meta-Majors, Default Degree Maps with Critical Path Courses

Proactive Advising and Informed Choice

Structured Schedules

Technology

Content Experts

LARRY ABELE is a national authority on the use of student and institutional data to redesign academic programs and student support systems. As the Director of the Institute for Academic Leadership at the State University System of Florida and Provost at Florida State University, he has improved retention and graduation rates through a strong commitment to data-driven actions and focused attention to details. Abele has demonstrated that success and progress requires many actions sustained over a long period of time. Some examples of successful actions he has been involved with include creating Freshmen Interest Groups; adding a “Successful Learning Strategy” course; adding tutors, both drop-in and by appointment, for certain courses; adding advisors; and adding coaches. To the extent possible, each of these actions was tested with randomized, controlled trials. 

BRIAN BOSWORTH is the founder and President of FutureWorks, a private consulting and policy research firm based in Seattle, Washington and working nationally and internationally on postsecondary education and regional economic development.  Before establishing FutureWorks in 1999, Bosworth's experience in economic and education policy and practice included eleven years of international development assistance work in Latin America and twelve years of executive leadership responsibility for state-based economic growth programs in the U.S.  He helped establish and served for eight years as co-principal of Regional Technology Strategies, a national non-profit organization working in technology and skill-based economic development.  Bosworth also worked for several years as an independent consultant with a number of national, state, and regional economic development groups.  

CAROL COHEN is the Director of the newly created University Advisement Center at Georgia State University.  The goal of the Center is to support academic progression by providing timely information related to degree programs and the academic resources that are available to students through a predictive analytics platform.  An expert on intrusive advising, Cohen instituted mandatory advising for all freshmen students, successfully implemented a markers advising system to track progression and established tracking and communication processes to ensure that the advisement needs of students were being met. Prior to the creation of the University Advisement Center, Cohen was the Director of Freshmen Advising at Georgia State.   In 1990, Cohen began her career in academic advising within the Georgia State Athletic Department, implementing the first ever academic support program designed for student-athlete development.   Cohen served in various roles within the Athletic Department completing her tenure there as Associate Athletic Director and Senior Woman Administrator in 2008. She received her bachelor’s degree from Berry College, and her master’s degree in Human Resource Development from Georgia State University.

SARAH DURHAM is the Student Services Coordinator for the Tennessee College of Applied Technology – Dickson, one of the 27 Tennessee Colleges of Applied Technology. She holds a Masters in Education and Bachelors in Business Administration. As Student Services Coordinator, she works with all aspects of student recruitment, admissions, and mentoring/counseling. Previously, Durham taught full-time in multiple learning environments, including an open enrollment, structured schedule training program. She serves as a representative and advocate of the mission of the TCAT system.

MONETTE McIVER is the manager of higher education services for the Charles A. Dana Center, providing leadership, guidance, and continuity across all higher education resources offered by the Center. In this role, she leads the Center’s national higher education developmental mathematics reform initiative, the New Mathways Project. McIver supports the ongoing effort to work at scale within Texas and develop and implement a plan for expansion to other states. McIver has more than 20 years of experience in education. She most recently served as a consulting director for the Center for Systems Transformation at McREL International, where she oversaw and supported work in school and systems improvement. She completed her doctorate and M.A. at the School of Education at the University of Colorado at Boulder. McIver earned a B.A. in Mathematics from Spelman College.

GARY RODWELL is the Architect and lead programmer for the STAR Academic Pathway system at The University of Hawai’i.  He along with an outstanding team have developed a revolutionary enterprise wide software platform that is able to quantify and evaluate each point along a student’s academic path and illustrate all these points together as the students narrative/pathway. His software has been the subject of multiple awards, newspaper articles and recent grants. Rodwell believes students, faculty, staff, administration and alumni should rightfully expect to receive significant educational and business value from their investment in information technology. Evidence of the sustainable success of STAR can be seen in the wide spread usage of STAR throughout the UH campuses with the average number of student logins a day in the range of 1,000-10,000.  Rodwell’s educational background is in Electrical Engineering, prior to being with the University of Hawai’i at Manoa, he was working with British Telecom and Chubb Australia on engineering projects.

CASEY SACKS has worked at the Colorado Community College System office for six years in Academic Affairs. She leads special programs, grants and resource development for the System. In 2011, Sacks was charged with leading a group of faculty and staff to redesign developmental education for 13 colleges. That effort resulted in policy that eliminated long, multi-course sequences in reading, English, and math. Sacks completed her Ph.D. in higher education administration at Bowling Green State University in Ohio specializing in institutional planning. She volunteers as a mediator for her county court system and is an active Rotarian. And she is an avid polo player – horses not water. 

SARAH TUCKER is the Interim Chancellor of the West Virginia Council for Community and Technical College Education. Prior to her current role, Tucker served as Vice Chancellor of the Community and Technical College System of WV, and the Director of Planning and Research for the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission and Community and Technical College System of West Virginia. Her work focuses on college access, particularly for first‐generation rural students, and redesigning developmental education. She completed her doctorate at the School of Education at the University of Michigan in 2010. Prior to pursuing her doctorate, she was a behavioral specialist and general education teacher in an adolescent girls group home. Tucker earned a B.A. in Psychology from Harvard University and a M.A. in Quantitative Research Methodology from the University of Michigan.

In addition to her duties in the central office, Tucker serves on numerous state‐wide committees and councils dealing with workforce development, economic development, and other issues relating to community and technical college education.

ELLEN WEED consults nationally with community colleges, universities, and state systems in higher education. Her expertise is in the areas of student success and institutional effectiveness-accreditation. Prior to relocating to Texas, she had dedicated over 30 years of leadership and service in various roles at the Tennessee Board of Regents (TBR) System, one of the nation’s largest higher education systems. During her tenure, she served as Associate and Assistant Vice Chancellor for the TBR System, Vice President for Academic Affairs at Nashville State Community College, and Chief Academic Officer at Nashville State Technical Institute. She directed the TBR System’s Block Scheduling Cohort Initiative: Advancing Structured Learning Communities, which received multi-year funding from the Lumina Foundation.  Over the years she was instrumental in helping shape the landscape for community colleges in Tennessee, so much to the point that last March the TBR System approved a recommendation to name the faculty office building at Nashville State Community College in her honor. Dr. Weed is the recipient of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) Commission on Colleges Meritorious Service Award. To date, she has served on more than 50 committees, many of which she chaired, for SACS.