About the College

Institutional Description

Surry Community College is a public, community-centered, comprehensive community college with an open-door admissions policy. It is a member institution of the North Carolina Community College System. Its primary service area consists of Surry and Yadkin counties. The College offers educational programs which lead to associate degrees, diplomas, and certificates. It also offers a variety of learning opportunities and services through continuing education offerings.

College Mission

The mission of Surry Community College is to promote personal growth and community development to a diverse population through excellence in teaching, learning, and service.

Approved by the SCC Board of Trustees on March 10, 2014.

Institutional Goals

To fulfill its mission, Surry Community College will:

1. Increase student enrollment, retention, and goal completion.
2. Improve and expand student learning through excellence in academic programs and academic support services.
3. Support the educational and economic development of our community.
4. Secure and manage resources to ensure growth and success.
5. Effectively communicate with internal and external stakeholders.

Approved by the SCC Board of Trustees on October 10, 2022.

Values

In planning and implementing activities to accomplish its mission, the College affirms the following values.

• Excellence in teaching and learning through an emphasis on achieving course outcomes.
• A culture of collaboration, cooperation, and caring among students, faculty, staff, and community stakeholders.
• Development of students’ sense of personal responsibility.
• Emerging technologies to enhance students’ learning and to increase institutional effectiveness.
• Continuous improvement and research-driven decision making.

Approved by the SCC Board of Trustees on October 10, 2022.

Learning College Philosophy

Surry Community College faculty subscribe to the following “learning college” principles:

1. The learning college creates substantive change in individual learners.
2. The learning college engages learners in the learning process as full partners, assuming primary responsibility for their own choices.
3. The learning college creates and offers as many options for learning as possible.
4. The learning college assists learners to form and participate in collaborative learning activities.
5. The learning college defines the roles of its learning facilitators by the needs of the learners.
6. The learning college and its learning facilitators succeed only when improved and expanded learning can be documented for its learners.

To achieve meaningful, lasting learning, students must be intellectually engaged. In order to take responsibility for making their own choices, learners must become good decision makers. The faculty seek to improve the thinking skills of learners through activities and assignments that require intellectual engagement and higher-order thinking. The College has adopted the Paul and Elder model of critical thinking, a model that gives students tools to think effectively about any subject. The model consists of the Elements of Thought to analyze thinking, the Intellectual Standards to evaluate thinking, and the Intellectual Traits to improve thinking.

The Elements of Thought represent the essential components of reasoning. All reasoning has a purpose, is an attempt to figure something out or solve some problem, is done from a point of view, is based on information, is expressed through concepts and ideas, is based on assumptions, contains inferences and conclusions, and leads somewhere or has implications and consequences. Learners analyze thinking by identifying and explaining its elements.

The Intellectual Standards are applied to thinking to ensure its quality. Good reasoning is clear, accurate, precise, relevant, with the appropriate amount of depth and breadth, and is logical, focused on significant issues, and fair. Learners evaluate thinking by comparing it to these standards.

The Intellectual Traits exemplify the attitudes or values of critical thinkers. Skilled thinkers are ethical thinkers, are confident that they can think their way to a reasonable answer, and do not claim to know more than they actually do. Skilled thinkers are able to persevere through confusion and questions to achieve understanding and hold themselves to the same standards to which they hold others.

Terry O’Banion, Creating More Learning-Centered Community Colleges, League for Innovation in the Community College (1997).

Richard Paul and Linda Elder, The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking Concepts and Tools, Foundation for Critical Thinking (2009).

Quality Enhancement Plan

Recognizing the importance of good communication skills for all college graduates, Surry Community College has created a plan to improve the quality of instruction and student learning in the area of written communication. The five-year plan, started in 2014, is called “The Write Choice for Success,” and focuses on developing a culture in which students improve their writing in four key areas using the writing process.

The College seeks to improve student writing in these four areas:

1. Clarity and precision - using specific details to communicate effectively
2. Accuracy and correctness - representing sources fairly and conforming to the conventions of documentation, grammar, punctuation, spelling, and usage
3. Depth - addressing the complexities of a significant topic
4. Organization - writing in focused and coherent sentences and demonstrating appropriate organization and formatting for audience and purpose

Students will use the stages of the writing process to improve their writing:

• Prewriting
• Drafting
• Revising
• Editing

Since the only way to improve writing is to write, instructors will assign both formal and informal writing assignments in all classes. The Academic Support Center Writing Lab provides one-on-one tutoring and group workshops in written communication to help students manage the increase in writing assignments.

In addition to grades at the course level, student performance will be tracked through institution-wide assessments such as the standardized ETS Proficiency Profile test and general education artifact assessment.

Performance Measures and Standards

The Performance Measures for Student Success Report is the North Carolina Community College System’s major accountability document. The annual performance report is based on data complied during the previous year and serves to inform colleges and the public on the performance of our 58 community colleges.

In 2010, a review process was established to ensure the measures and methods for evaluating colleges were current and remained focused on improving student success. Every three years, a committee that is inclusive of college leaders; subject matter experts; and research and assessment professionals are appointed to review the measures and recommend modifications. Recommendations from the most recent review were approved in 2021.

The system consists of seven performance measures. While these measures do not reflect all aspects of Surry Community College’s mission, they do reflect many of the key elements of our mission. We are committed to continuous assessment and improvement of the programs and services we offer.

The following table indicates how Surry Community College rated on each measure for 2021‑2022. Questions may be addressed to the SCC Office of Institutional Research at 336‑386‑3436.

Performance Measures and Standards 2023 Report (For Fiscal Year 2021-2022)

-Updated July 26, 2023

Graduation Rate Disclosure

Title II, Public Law 101-542, dated November 8, 1990, requires educational institutions to disclose graduation rate data. Such data for Surry Community College are available in the Office of Institutional Research, Richards Building, Room H-218.