Inside Higher Ed Questions and Rio Salado College Responses
1. This one might be best for a call, but Phil Hill and I were surprised to see the high percentage of Rio
Salado students who are not seeking a degree or certificate. How much a part of the college's mission
and focus is on transfer credits?

Rio Salado College (RSC) serves a diverse student population, including many non-traditional, parttime, and non-degree-seeking students, with a variety of educational services that complement our
online certificate and degree programs.
Rio Salado was founded on a visionary philosophy — to push the boundaries of traditional higher
learning— and designed specifically to provide adult educational services to underserved and unserved
student populations. Part of the fabric of our college has been, and always will be, to provide flexible,
affordable pathways for both traditional and non-traditional students.
We welcome all students who access our services —whether they are certificate and degree seekers,
adult re-entry students, transfer students, early college students, incarcerated re-entry students,
workforce training students or life-long learners.
We understand the responsibility we have to help students navigate the barriers to higher education.
Providing seamless transfer opportunities to other colleges and institutions through transfer and
articulation agreements is one important component of the work that we do. In addition, as one of ten
colleges in the Maricopa Community College District, we have numerous examples of students who
start their educational journey with Rio Salado and move on to successfully complete degrees at a
sister institution. In addition, our Monday start dates and flexible online format supports students at
other higher education institutions within our ecosystem to help them complete required classes
needed for successful degree completion. However, certificate and degree completion and transfer
rates are just a few of our objectives.
Traditional metrics do not measure the impact or highlight the importance of the other work we do, such
as the increased earning potential and community development that generally come with higher
learning.
Among the largest, non-traditional populations we serve include approximately 7,000 dual enrollment
high school students. These students generally do not continue their education at Rio Salado after high
school and as such, are not included as completers in our metrics. Nonetheless, the national data on
the importance and impact of dual enrollment programs on student success (higher first semester GPA,
higher credit accumulation, higher college completion rates) along with the positive impact the program
has on individual lives, families and their communities underscores the reason we devote resources to
this invaluable program.
Rio Salado also serves nearly 8,000 Adult Basic Education students who are preparing to earn a high
school equivalency credential or increase their reading and writing skills through English second
language classes. The majority of those students who continue on in higher education will do so at one
of our sister institutions to attend classes in-person. The college does not receive recognition for this
work in traditional metrics, but it is important role work and positively impacts individuals, families and
our community.
Additionally, as part of the work RSC does related to accountability, we track the success of our transfer
students to the three public universities in Arizona (The 2010/11 – 2015/16 5 year trend shows a
77.10% increase in bachelor degrees awarded to students that had completed a minimum of 12 credit
hours (up to 60 or more hours) at Rio Salado College).

 Our mission also takes into consideration that many RSC students have great challenges. They are
parents, care-givers, working full-time, living on fixed incomes. Some students struggle with medical
issues, poverty, food insecurities, homelessness, addiction and countless other obstacles that make it
difficult to be a traditional student. Their success is why we created our rolling Monday starts and
accelerated course options.
We are committed to improving current programs and services, finding new ways to improve access
and success, and removing barriers that make it difficult to pursue higher learning.
Rio Salado College Vision and Mission:
Our Vision
We reinvent the learning experience to change lives.
Our Mission
We transform learning through:


Active community engagement and organizational responsiveness



Customized, high-quality courses and programs



Data analytics and institutional accountability



Flexibility, affordability and innovation



Personalized service and a commitment to student success

2. Phil acknowledged that your clarifications paint a broader, more nuanced picture on student outcomes.
But he points again to the 5 percent completion rate under the new federal Outcomes Measures, which
appears to capture 43 percent of Rio Salado's enrollment. Any response on this one?

The expanded IPEDs outcomes measures do reflect a lower-than-average 5% completion rate
because these measures are still captured at the 45th day/census date and, as pointed out, included
less than half (43%) of the total student population due to our unique and flexible model of rolling start
dates. When we look at VFA data, which allow us to report our full student population, we see that our
150% graduation rate is nearly triple that of the IPEDs metric at 13%. The 13% rate is higher than our
peer institutions who show a 150% completion rate of 10%. When we look at VFA data on our
credential-seeking cohort, our 150% graduation rate is 42%, compared to 16% at peer institutions.
Additionally, we know that 90% of our students are enrolled part-time. As such, it is unreasonable to
expect that they will complete a degree in 2-3 years - our students' average time to completion is over 5
years. IPEDs metrics are based on the assumption that students should be enrolled full-time. As an
open-access community college, our mission is to serve students who are dedicated to earning a
credential, including students that are not able to attend college on a full-time basis.
3. We've covered the "regular and substantive" faculty interaction issue, which has been a regulatory
challenge for WGU. Do you all have a response to Phil's concern that the courses he looked at appeared
to show that faculty-student interactions appear to largely revolve around assignment grading?

The RSC model is significantly different than WGU's. Throughout our courses, students interact directly
with a single faculty member highly qualified in their discipline, rather than being assigned separate
course instructors and assessment evaluators. In terms of the criteria for regular and substantive
interaction, there is widespread agreement that those terms have not been defined with consistency
and clarity for implementation. “Somehow the OIG thinks they can determine - without any

 disagreement or ambiguity – the ‘ordinary meaning of those terms’ based on their own interpretations.”
– Phil Hill, September 23, 2017, WGU Audit Findings
However, in regards to the components of “regular and substantive interaction” we have understood to
be prioritized by the Department of Education, RSC addresses in the following ways:
1.

Interaction must be initiated by the instructor:
a. Faculty create personalized "From Your Instructor" content, including multimedia
learning objects, at the beginning of each lesson, for every course, to engage students in
the course learning objectives.
b. RSC courses have, minimally, weekly due dates, with some courses having multiple
assignments due each week that faculty review and respond to.
c. Faculty are required to conduct weekly roster management in which they review student
progress and reach out to students accordingly.
d. The RSC course Message Center allows instructors to communicate to individual
students directly or with the entire class at once (by section and/or start date). Faculty
have the ability to see whether students have accessed messages, and will ask the
Instructional Helpdesk to reach out to a particular student if the faculty member's efforts
have been unsuccessful. The Instructional Helpdesk is staffed with qualified and
experienced adjunct faculty members who provide further support to students based on
faculty request.

2. Interaction must be regular and somewhat frequent:
a. Weekly assignments that are graded, are not “merely graded”, in that faculty are
required to provide feedback that is annotated, personalized feedback and also provide
rubric citations. This is regular interaction that goes beyond “merely grading”, and is
discipline dependent (see below).
b. The weekly roster management requires weekly instructor initiated engagement with
students.
c. The proprietary analytics system, RioPACE, developed within the RSC LMS, help
faculty, advisors and students evaluate engagement and interaction in a course, to
manage regular interaction.
3. Interaction must be of an academic nature:
a. All of the above examples reference interaction that is academic in nature, related to
course content and learning. There is additional interaction that may occur around
supporting students through life challenges that are shared with a faculty member or in
regards to co-curricular activities and academic supports (such as tutoring).
4. Interaction must be with an instructor that meets the accrediting agency’s standards:
a. All RSC faculty have been reviewed and approved under the new Higher Learning
Commission qualification standards.
Though all RSC courses have the previously-mentioned elements in common, the nature of much of
the faculty/student interaction is discipline-specific. For example, in an English class, interaction is
largely in written form as instructors work with students to produce thesis statements, propose
strategies to research their chosen topics, suggest revisions to essay drafts, etc. The writing process is
iterative and requires active faculty-student engagement. On the other hand, a student in a Spanish
class receives personalized sound files from his/her instructor that model correct pronunciation and
syntax in the target language. The sound files are stored in our LMS, along with instructor comments on
the students' oral production, so students have access to monitor their own skill level as the course
progresses. In Biology courses, faculty post weekly course announcements to alert students to content
that is particularly challenging, and students in Engineering courses have Skype sessions with their
instructor to work on group projects. Faculty in other disciplines may utilize discussion boards, lead
simulations, and/or create or curate videos to send to students individually or post for the class.