Institutional Effectiveness

Student Achievement

Jefferson State Community College uses a number of factors to evaluate student success.   These factors are updated annually and include:

Programmatic Accreditation

In addition to accreditation by SACSCOC, fifteen of the seventeen AAS programs hold additional membership in area specific accrediting bodies. In order to maintain these memberships, programs must meet a rigorous standard of program and student performance.   The fifteen areas with additional accreditation are: nursing, clinical laboratory technology, physical therapist assistant, radiologic technology, funeral service education, culinary apprenticeship, construction management technology option of the construction and building science technology program, accounting, business management, finance administration, child development, emergency medical technology, office administration technology, business transfer, and veterinary technology.   Highlights of these programs include:

• Veterinary Technology Program was named in the top seven for
  Veterinary Assisting and Technology Programs in the nation.

• Child Development Program was the first of its kind in the
  state and is the only Early Childhood Associate Degree Accredited
  Program in the state.

• Nursing produces more graduates than any other college in the
  state of Alabama and 38th in the nation.

• Being named in the top ten digital colleges in the nation.

Student Performance on Licensure Examinations

The College has a number of accredited programs that have national licensure examinations. Licensure examinations provide a national standard and benchmark for many of our programs.   For programs that require a national exam the college has a long history of meeting and/or exceeding national benchmarks with few exceptions. The results for 2014 are:

Program	Licensure/Certification Pass Rate
Registered Nursing	91%
Physical Therapist Assistant	100%
Medical Laboratory Technology*	60%
Radiology Technology	100%
Funeral Service Education	86%
Veterinary Technology*	44%
Emergency Medical Services	90%

*Medical Laboratory Tech (MLT) and Veterinary Tech (VT) both failed to meet their national standards for this year. Both programs are experiencing a similar issue where students can gain employment without being licensed. This creates a situation where students delay examination to a point where they are so far away from the pedagogy of the field that passing a standardized exam becomes difficult.   The programs are aware of this deficiency and have addressed the problem and offered solutions in their planning and assessment documents.

Placement Rate for Graduates

Job placement is a paramount outcome, especially to our students. Each year the office of Institutional Effectiveness coordinates with individual areas to ascertain job placement and student perception of preparedness.

The placement rate for the College’s AAS programs was 84%.

There were five programs during this time period that achieved 100% placement of graduates.

77% of AAS students were either Satisfied or Very Satisfied with the preparation they received from our college.

Twelve programs had a satisfaction rating of 80% or higher with six of those at 100% satisfaction.

Transfer Students

The College has three university reports available for assessing student success. These reports show the College’s transfer students and their achievement rate when compared to all transfer students from two-year colleges. The three colleges below comprise 49% of our total transfer students.   In each instance the average GPA for a Jefferson State student exceeds the average of all Alabama two-year college students. The Alabama Commission on Higher Education (ACHE) maintains a database with student data collected from all public institutions of higher education in the state of Alabama. A specific report on Transfer and Migration shows Jefferson State with the second highest number of students transferring from a two-year to a four-year institution for all public institutions in the state of Alabama. Combined with our transfer reports, the College fulfills its mission of preparing students for transfer to four year schools.

Institution	Period Covered	Average GPA   for JSCC Students	Average GPA for all Alabama Two-Year College Students
University of Alabama	Summer 2012-Spring 2013	2.96	2.87
University of Alabama in Birmingham	Summer 2012- Spring 2013	2.79	2.61
University of Alabama in Huntsville	Summer 2012- Spring 2013	3.39	3.02