Surry Community College embraces the concept of the "learning college.¹ As a learning college, SCC will ensure that every action and decision is made from a frame of reference that first ascertains how learning is impacted. Accordingly, the College subscribes to these six key principles²:

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

¹ Terry O’Banion, Creating More Learning-Centered Community Colleges, League for Innovation in the Community College, (1997).

² Ibid.

SCC Learning Initiative

The SCC Learning Initiative seeks to engage faculty and staff throughout the college in systemic efforts to develop the learning environment’s full potential. The Initiative aims to establish structures, policies, leadership practices, professional development, and curriculum initiatives designed to improve the educational outcomes of all students.

The project, proposed as a three-year Quality Enhancement Plan, intends to more fully transform Surry Community College into a 21st Century Learning College. Project objectives are as follows:

Reform Organizational Culture. The College will cultivate an organizational culture in which policies, programs, practices, and personnel support learning as the major priority.

Improve Student Engagement. The College will develop and implement strategies for improving learning. Professional development programs that prepare all staff and faculty to become more effective facilitators of learning will be identified and planned.

Establish Learning Outcomes Assessment Model. The College will agree on learning outcomes relevant for all degree programs, on strategies to improve learning outcomes, on assessment processes to measure the acquisition of learning outcomes, and on means for documenting achievement of outcomes.