Galveston College’s QEP, Mindset Matters, seeks to boost first-year credit momentum—the number of credits students earn toward degree completion. This goal will be accomplished by cultivating an environment where students feel connected to Galveston College and believe they are capable of learning and growing, thus increasing help-seeking behaviors and engagement with Galveston College resources.

A review of best practices helped identify three strategies to create the desired environmental shift: 

1. Learning Communities: Galveston College will establish first-year learning communities designed to connect students to their Whitecaps community, create a culture of growth mindset, and familiarize students with college-support resources.
2. Credit Support Infrastructure: Galveston College will ensure its infrastructure both supports and celebrates credit momentum goals.
3. Messaging Campaign: A messaging campaign will reinforce the benefits of credit momentum, encourage use of college resources, and support a culture of growth mindset. While all students will benefit, strategies will primarily target first-time-in-college students, which data identified as most in need of support.

Strategies will be monitored and assessed through two student success outcomes. SSO 1 will measure students’ first-year credit attainment, including the number of part-time students who achieve at least 15 credits and the number of full-time students who achieve at least 30 credits. SSO 2 will measure environmental and attitudinal shifts in students, faculty, and staff focusing on an increase in growth mindset.

Mindset Matters was developed through an ongoing assessment process that engaged faculty, staff, and students in presentations, small-group discussions, listening sessions, games, and surveys. Through this process, institutional data revealed credit momentum as an impediment to student success. Further dialogue identified a first-year experience program as the best way to tackle the credit momentum problem. The QEP topic was further distilled to one facet of a first-year experience—learning communities—along with infrastructural support and messaging to improve credit momentum.

To ensure that adjustments can be made as the QEP progresses, an assessment plan has been developed to monitor leading and lagging indicators. Credit momentum data will be collected and analyzed each semester, and used to monitor progress and target student messaging. A standardized belonging and growth mindset scale will be administered to gauge attitudinal shifts across campus. Other data will be collected to assess complementary goals including awareness and use of college support resources, time-to-degree completion, summer enrollment, and penetration of the messaging campaign.

Mindset Matters aligns with the mission and values of Galveston College, and ample resources have been devoted to increasing student success through credit momentum. Mindset does matter!