Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) Overview
A-B Tech Community College is accredited through SACSCOC (Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges). Each institution seeking reaffirmation of accreditation through SACSCOC is required to develop a Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP), which is a campus-wide project that addresses a specific topic related to enhancing student learning. General information about QEP requirements can be found on the SACSCOC Accrediting Standards webpage. The College's QEP is the PEAK Performance Success Coaching.
PEAK Performance: A-B Tech Success Coaching
Quality Enhancement Plan | 2025–2030:
The PEAK Success Coaching program at A-B Tech is a college initiative aimed at empowering students for academic success and beyond. Professional success coaches embedded within academic divisions provide personalized support, guidance, and resources to students. Coaches work with students from pre-enrollment to graduation, assisting with goal setting, engagement, connecting to resources, and career guidance, facilitating the acquisition of institutional and life-skills knowledge required to establish resiliency and empowerment to achieve long and short-term goals.
The PEAK Success Coaching Program focuses on enhancing students' academic performance, confidence, and skills through a collaborative relationship between students and coaches. Through the program, students will experience increased satisfaction with the college and their educational experience, success rates, retention, and credential completion, along with decreased gaps in academic performance and graduation rates. This initiative aligns with the strategic goals of RISE Above and foundational focus areas such as learner focus and barrier removal.
Learn About Success Coaching: PEAK Performance Success Coaching
A-B Tech developed PEAK Performance in response to institutional assessment, student feedback, and broad-based campus input, identifying opportunities to strengthen student persistence, completion, and the student experience.
- 31% (Three-year average IPEDS 150% completion rate)
- 45% vs. 58% (Completion rate for part-time vs. full-time students)
- 74% (Students reporting difficulty balancing academics with other responsibilities)
- 63.5% (Fall 2023 survey respondents interested in Success Coaching)
These findings highlighted the need for a proactive approach that helps students navigate academic, personal, financial, and career-related challenges while building the skills, connections, and confidence needed to persist.
PEAK Success Coaching focuses on students with 20 or fewer earned credit hours who need ACA (Academic Success) and are not participating in an existing cohort-based student support program.
This approach intentionally concentrates Success Coaching resources on students who are early in their college experience and may benefit from additional proactive, personalized support. PEAK complements existing cohort-based programs rather than duplicating the structured support those programs already provide.
Through Success Coaching, eligible students receive individualized guidance designed to strengthen academic planning, goal setting, resource navigation, help-seeking, organization, and other skills that support persistence and student success.
The PEAK model also recognizes that students often encounter academic, financial, personal, and career-related challenges simultaneously and that timely, coordinated support can make the difference between stopping out and continuing toward completion.
- Academic & Success Planning
Helping students establish goals and strategies for success. - Career & Graduation Planning
Connecting academic decisions to longer-term goals. - Resource Navigation
Connecting students with campus and community resources. - Proactive Outreach
Identifying concerns early and encouraging timely action. - Holistic Support
Addressing academic and non-academic barriers to success.
PEAK is designed to strengthen four areas of student success:
- Resource Utilization
Students will utilize resources that support their academic and personal success. - Personalized Planning
Students will develop and implement a personalized action plan to guide their path to graduation. - Persistence
Students who participate in Success Coaching will demonstrate higher semester-to-semester persistence than their peers. - Academic Success
Students who participate in Success Coaching will demonstrate higher success rates than their peers.
| Measure | Target QEP |
|---|---|
| Success Rate | ≥ 5% higher than peers |
| Retention | ≥ 5% higher than peers |
| Student Satisfaction | 80% |
| Personalized Action Plans | 80% |
A-B Tech uses ongoing assessment to understand both how PEAK is implemented and whether it is producing the intended student outcomes. Assessment includes student participation and engagement, resource utilization, personalized action-plan development and progress, student satisfaction, academic success, and semester-to-semester persistence.
Data Sources
- Institutional student success data
- Watermark Student Success & Engagement
- Student surveys
- Coaching participation data
- Cohort comparisons
- External evaluation
Assess → Learn → Adjust → Improve
PEAK Performance is supported by dedicated Success Coaching personnel, Watermark technology, professional development, assessment infrastructure, and collaboration across the College. The QEP is designed to complement existing student-success efforts while strengthening A-B Tech's capacity to provide proactive, coordinated support during students' early college experience.
People | Technology | Professional Development | Assessment | Collaboration