Theater Arts
2024-2025 Program Review
1 ) In 3-5 sentences, describe your unit to an audience of potential students. Many units take this information from their website. If it has been awhile since your unit has updated its website, take this opportunity to design a brief description of your unit for today’s students.
The Department of Theatre and Film at American River College offers a wide range of classes in all areas of Theatre, along with an expanding Film Studies program. We also maintain a busy production schedule in a variety of performance spaces in our recently modernized and expanded facility. In addition to our season of full-scale department productions, we feature touring children's theatre productions, student-produced performances featuring scenes, improvisation and one-act plays, and an on-going partnership with the Broadway at Music Circus program. This schedule provides broad opportunities for theoretical and practical training for our students, and an exciting and varied menu of theatrical fare for our audiences.
2 ) Who is disproportionately impacted in your unit?
There are two primary disproportionately impacted groups within the Theatre Arts and Film Department. They are African American Males and Below the Poverty Level individuals. The other disproportionately impacted groups are African Americans, Multi Racial, Hispanic/Latino, and Pacific Islanders.
African American and Multi Race are the main groups disproportionately impacted in Course Success
African American and Multi Race are the main groups disproportionately impacted in A-B Success
Multi Race and Low But Above Poverty Level are the main groups disproportionately impacted in Course Completion
Hispanic/Latino and Pacific Islander, and African American are the main groups disproportionately impacted in Intersectional Course Success.
Use the Disproportionate Impact* reports below to answer question #2. These reports show how student achievement outcomes vary by gender, race/ethnicity, veteran, foster youth, disability, and income/poverty level status to enable users to engage in more advanced student-centered and equity-centered analysis, reflection, and planning. These reports are integrated with ARC's Data on Demand system to provide users with more sophisticated and nuanced ways of exploring their unit's data. To access the reports, you may be prompted to log in to ARC's Data on Demand system. If so, click on "Log in with ARC Portal" and enter your Los Rios single sign-on credentials (same as Canvas or Intranet).
*This link provides the California Community College Chancellor's Office's definition of disproportionate impact.
Disproportionate Impact
The disproportionate impact (DI) links now direct you to your unit’s DI data in ARC Data on Demand. The DI data will show which student groups are experiencing disproportionate impact for course success rates (A, B, C, Cr, P), A-B rates, and course completion rates (students who did not withdraw) at the course level.
In addition, a new report on intersectional DI (e.g., ethnicity/race by gender) is available for assessing intersectional Di for course success rates. The intersection DI report defaults to the subject code level (e.g., all ENGWR courses). Use the org tree in the side bar to filter to individual courses (click on the right arrow next to American River College, right arrow next to your division, right arrow next to your department/discipline, then select the specific course to view).
If prompted to log in, click on “Log in with ARC Portal” and enter your Los Rios single-sign on credentials (same as Canvas or Intranet).
3 ) What equity advancing actions have your programs already taken?
Since the last program review the TA/Film faculty have placed an emphasis on closing the gaps of our DI students. Our faculty have participated in various professional development activities and personal research related to improving success rates for DI populations. Faculty have met several time a semester to discuss specific actions and assignments designed to improve success DI rates.
We have updated our curriculum, text books and films to be more culturally relevant.
We have produced plays by African American and Latinx authors ( The Wiz, Skeleton Stories, North Star, By the Way Meet Vera Starks, etc.).
We produced the musical "Spring Awakening" to provide real life examples relatable to students.
We have created original dramatic productions to encourage all students to share their unique strengths and differences in skills and talents on stage.
We have been in contact with counselors as well as the Home Base with more regularity.
4 ) What will be your unit’s strategies for eliminating disproportionate impact (DI)?
Here are some of the strategies we will implement for eliminating disproportionate impact:
We will increase the implementation of soft deadlines.
We will increase the implementation of equity grading.
We will increase the use of no cost textbooks and production supplies for students.
We will increase the implementation of student directed plays, films, and musical variety productions.
We will increase equity casting, color blind casting, and gender blind casting.
We will continue to involve students for their input into the selection of plays for the Main Stage Theatre production season.
5 ) What support do you need to eliminate disproportionate impact (DI)?
Our TA/Film Department has had several retirements over the past two years, We have a crucial need to replace these retired faculty members with new hired faculty.
We need to hire diverse instructors/directors with skills and life experience to provide coaching which is appropriate and culturally competent to direct diversity play productions.
We need more "smart rooms" to support current technology
We need upgrade of our 20 year old lighting and sound equipment.
6 ) What other issues or concerns have affected your unit and are important for you to bring up?
We do have some concerns in our quest to eliminate disproportionate impact:
Large enrollment makes it more challenging to give the attention and support to individual students in courses.
Our department faculty members desire to have more access to updating the official campus department website software.
We desire more support for DSP&S interfacing.
The current social climate seems to discourage faculty members from selecting a play written by playwright who's ethnic group is different from the faculty members.
Our department must balance the the student choices with the playwright's requirements.
The Enrollment, Department Set Standards, and SLO Data Set may be additional considerations and helpful for answering this optional question, but not required. To access the reports, you may be prompted to log in to ARC's Data on Demand system. If so, click on "Log in with ARC Portal" and enter your Los Rios single sign-on credentials (same as Canvas or Intranet).
Enrollment
The enrollment links now direct you to your unit’s enrollment data in ARC Data on Demand (5 years of duplicated enrollment for Fall or Spring terms). Using the filters available along the left side navigation in ARC Data on Demand, enrollment data can now be disaggregated or filtered on a number of course or student characteristics to provide more fine-tuned exploration and analysis of enrollment data. Examples include disaggregating by course, ethnicity/race, gender, and age.
If prompted to log in, click on “Log in with ARC Portal” and enter your Los Rios single-sign on credentials (same as Canvas or Intranet).
Department Set Standards
Shows course success rates (# of A, B, C, Cr, and P grades expressed as a % of total grade notations) compared to lower and upper thresholds. Thresholds are derived using a 95% confidence interval (click the report link for details). The lower threshold is referred to as the Department Set Standard. The upper threshold is referred to as the Stretch Goal.
- Green
- Most recent academic year exceeds the upper threshold
- Yellow
- Most recent academic year falls between the lower and upper threshold
- Red
- Most recent academic year falls below the lower threshold
The faculty's continuous review of student achievement of course SLOs is documented using the Authentic Assessment Review Record (AARR), which involves a review of student work demonstrating achievement of the course SLO. Faculty record student achievement for a randomly assigned course SLO based on one or more authentic assessments that they regularly perform in their classes. The aggregated results are then reviewed annually as part of Annual Unit Planning, in which the results may serve as the basis for actions and, if applicable, resource allocation, and are aligned with college goals and objectives.
The AARR summary link provides an aggregate of the results of the most recent AARR implementation. The AARR results by SLO link provides a more detailed view, including the specific ratings assigned by faculty to each randomly assigned course SLO, and what, if any, actions were taken.
Note: Established thresholds (i.e., green/yellow/red indicators) have yet to be developed for SLO data.
In your program review process, you may want to refer to the goals and actions in your Annual Unit Plans since your last Program Review. Follow this this link to access your previous AUP submissions. For Faculty support, please contact Veronica Lopez at lopezv@arc.losrios.edu.