Judgment of Compliance: The College certifies COMPLIANCE.

Narrative:

WCC publishes many documents in both print and electronic form. Through these documents, the college's academic policies and procedures are available to the campus community and other interested parties. Academic policies and procedures are thoroughly reviewed in the respective department and then by the Academic Affairs Council before any additions, changes, or deletions are made. The Office of Admissions and Records reviews the college catalog and program brochures annually before they are printed. The staff of the Office of Admissions and Records, department heads, division heads, and the Vice President of Academic Affairs review the WCC course schedule each semester.

One way that academic policies and procedures may change is through a Continuous Improvement Project (CIP). Each year several processes or procedures are selected as CIPs. These processes or procedures are the subject of extensive review and analysis by a cross-section of institutional personnel. During the time that the policies and procedures are being discussed, members of the team are asked to investigate other North Carolina community colleges to assure that any new policies adhere to good educational practice.

In 2001 matriculation was chosen as a CIP in order to examine Wayne Community College's enrollment management process. A number of meetings were held on how to improve the process from the time students applied for admission to the college until they had registered and paid, and many suggestions were made. One of the suggestions was to install an automated phone system to remind students of the deadline date for tuition payments. There are several registration periods for the students, including preregistration for currently enrolled students and an early registration period for new students. If students do not pay by the deadline date for preregistration or new student registration, they are purged from their classes. Then they must go through the same registration process again. Many times, the students may have to select classes that are not convenient for them, or they may not be able to take as many classes as they had initially because, by this time, so many classes are closed. Before the automated phone system was installed, Student Services staff would call students who had not paid; however, not all students were contacted. After the installation of the new system, the Director of Admissions and Records compared the student purges in Spring 2004 to those in Spring 2005 and found that the new phone system helped cut the number of students purged by forty-two percent.

At the conclusion of each of these continuous improvement projects, any policies or procedures requiring revision are forwarded to the respective council for approval. If policies are changed after publications are printed, the web version of that document is updated immediately. In addition, critical changes in academic policy are disseminated to students via CAMNET (an in-house closed circuit television system available to students throughout the campus). The same information is available on the web page and is provided to faculty and staff via e-mail. College academic policies are disseminated through the WCC General Catalog, Student Handbook, course schedule, College Procedures Manual, college web page, and other publications.