November's Complete College America conference brought together a dynamic group of educators, policymakers and educational advocates to strategize about higher education and workforce opportunities. With a focus on data-driven strategies, innovation and action, convening attendees engaged around what it takes to increase college completion rates across institutions, states and the country. PASS project Principal Investigator, Zoë Corwin, along with Amy Goodburn, Senior Associate Vice Chancellor and Dean of Undergraduate Education from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and Toni Hill, Professor from the University of Nebraska at Kearney had the opportunity to share research findings and practical implications from their work on Professional Learning Communities. 

This session was designed to provide audience members with tangible steps to disrupt institutional silos and collaborate for institutional culture change. Corwin shared key findings from a three-year research-practice study on cross-functional professional learning communities including:

• PLC’s increased the potential for cross-campus collaboration by familiarizing participants with each other’s roles, building shared language and understanding, and enhancing collaborative institutional agency.
• In doing so, PLCs were able to crowdsource solutions to seemingly intractable problems, strategize how to engage senior-level administrators and garner buy-in, and mobilize resources. Relatedly, PLC participants envisioned and ran professional development opportunities to support these efforts.
• A key outcome was that work led to more effective “warm hand-offs” campus-wide (i.e. where a practitioner sends a student to a different office and a new practitioner takes over care) and stronger strategic collaboration at the institutional level. The PLCs also experienced improved support at the programmatic level because PLC participants were sharing lessons learned with their units.
• An important byproduct of the PLCs–and related PDOs–was that participants expressed satisfaction over connecting with similarly committed colleagues, thus uplifting morale.

Goodburn and Hill shared practitioner-oriented reflections, describing: 

1. how to set up an effective PLC–including making sure group composition includes a cross-functional range of roles, selecting and training facilitators, and connecting with senior-level campus leaders to garner buy-in; 
2. how to socialize PLC members–including building trust, “table-setting” and establishing meaningful and manageable goals; 
3. ensuring engaging and productive learning activities (as articulated in the PASS PLC syllabus and guidebook); 
4. activating working groups to plan for an enact change; and 
5. reflecting on, assessing and sustaining the work.

The PASS website houses a wide range of research articles and practitioner-oriented materials including a suite of open access resources focused on the Professional Learning Communities. Resources include a syllabus and facilitator guide, varied articles and research briefs as well as activities and assessment tools.