How Isothermal Community College Strengthened Assessment with Planning & Self-Study
Leeann Cline-Burris is the Senior Director of Strategy and Analytics at Isothermal Community College, where she leads accreditation, strategic planning, and data-informed decision-making initiatives that support institutional effectiveness and student success. With a background in enrollment analytics and compliance reporting, Leeann works closely with faculty and leadership to turn institutional data into clear actions that strengthen programs and outcomes. In this conversation, she shares how Watermark Planning & Self-Study helped Isothermal simplify assessment processes, increase faculty engagement, and successfully navigate accreditation.
Previously, the assessment process was highly time-consuming and dependent on manual follow-up. Institutional Effectiveness staff had to reach out to faculty, coordinate schedules for large meetings, and manually compile materials for accreditation. This fragmented approach made it difficult to sustain engagement, consistency, and momentum across departments.
Culture at our institution has shifted significantly since implementing Planning and Self-Study, and faculty are quicker to do their assessment. They’re more engaged in the process. I would have a very difficult time in maintaining that momentum from a faculty perspective with any other tool. This is the first time I’ve seen them really engage in this way.
Anecdotally, the time to completion on assessment reports from faculty has gone down. They’re completing more of them on time, and I’m not tracking people down and asking them to submit. Faculty and staff are proactive about reaching out early to schedule assessment meetings rather than members of the Institutional Effectiveness team having to manage this communication. Additionally, some faculty and staff are completing their assessment reports independently ahead of these meetings. So I would say in that sense, it’s definitely made it a less labor-intensive process for them.
I estimate this saved at minimum of one hour per month in large meetings at the beginning of the reaffirmation cycle. Closer to the submission of the report, I’d estimate this saved closer to two hours per month.
We just wrapped up the SACSCOC visit and had our exit conference. So coming out of that process, with zero recommendations and zero findings, I would say that the assessment piece in that regard, being able to build in a self-study tool that people can collaborate on in real time, was a huge time saver. Not having to gather large populations of people in one room makes a big difference. People’s ability to work on it on their own schedule and align that with other priorities and things they’re working on is the biggest time saver.
It establishes continuity. If they’re used to doing their individual program assessment reports, they get to the evaluation where they’re kind of summarizing all of that by looking at some of the analytics and then pulling them into self-study. They’re used to a native system where everything looks and is visually consistent across all platforms. Accreditation will always be daunting and intimidating, but it makes it user-friendly with the ability to translate from one tool to another. I don’t spend my time tracking people down and reminding them to do things.