University of Louisville Persistence to Graduation Committee Report April 21, 2011

Transcription

1 1 University of Louisville Persistence to Graduation Committee Report April 21, 2011 I. Summary The following is a status report of the Persistence to Graduation Committee, which was reconvened by Provost Willihnganz in As subcommittees worked on formulating recommendations to enhance undergraduate student persistence to graduation, the university s environmental climate became integral to the discussion. The committee believes their final report will need to include data-driven recommendations that are inclusive of what we do well, developed around established high impact educational practices and considered within the context of the formidable fiscal and other challenges that we identified above that lie ahead for UofL. To not acknowledge these challenges within our recommendations would, in our view, not properly contextualize the work completed to date and would limit the committee s ability to move the work forward. The final recommendations need to address: (1) establish persistence/graduation strategic goals recognizing institutional constraint, institutional culture, limited new financial resources, time availability of faculty and staffs; (2) acknowledge the limited availability of direct assessment data; (3) involve faculty in meaningful and intentional ways as identified by the results of the latest NSSE survey; and (4) create consistent messaging in and out of the classroom that support student engagement. In light of the committee s charge, higher education context and university challenges, four primary recommendations are made by the committee (Section II). The recommendations are followed by sections that describe the background (Section III), higher education climate (Section IV) and university climate (Section V) that shaped the recommendations. II. Recommendations The Persistence to Graduation Committee makes the following recommendations: 1. Develop a Strategic Enrollment Plan based on core SEM principles. 2. Identify 'what we do well' based on the impact of in and out of-classroom experiences on student learning and personal development. 3. Create consistent, intentional messaging about student engagement. 4. Develop a retention plan that: a. is based on high impact practice b. enhances student engagement The strategies suggested for accomplishing each recommendation are listed below. Appendix A contains a gantt chart with timelines for each recommendation. 1. Develop a Strategic Enrollment Plan based on core SEM principles. Strategy: Use the University of Cincinnati as a model for a SEM at UofL. It is important that UofL not only embrace the principles of SEM beyond the conceptual framework but also to the extent that it can be fully incorporated into our institutional culture. It would be critical that

2 2 the strategic enrollment plan be an integral part of UofL s 2020 strategic plan thereby ensuring that the SEM plan is not marginalized and is included in the overall institutional priorities. UofL needs a clear SEM definition and a set of core concepts that are derived from this definition. SEM can be characterized as a comprehensive process designed to help an institution achieve and maintain the optimum recruitment, retention and graduation rates of students, where optimum is defined in the academic context of the institution (Dolence, 1993). The University of Cincinnati, an urban, public, research university and a UofL benchmark, has successfully developed and implemented a comprehensive strategic enrollment management plan. Details regarding UC s plan are available at: 2. Identify 'what we do well' in- and out of-classroom based on students participation in firstyear initiatives and high impact practices and the impact these experiences have on students academic performance and retention. Strategy: Although UofL offers many first-year initiatives and high impact practices, the committee has limited data and direct assessments to evaluate which of these educational experiences at UofL make a difference to our undergraduate student persistence, learning outcomes or student success. Therefore, another challenge the committee faces is developing a persistence plan with limited ability to identify 'what we do well' based on the impact of these in and out of classroom experiences on student persistence to graduation. To that end two members from the Persistence to Graduation committee held several meetings with the directors (and their analysts) of REACH, University Advising Practices, and the Office of First Year Initiatives to determine the assessment process of the programs and services for our firstyear initiatives. Each of these units does conduct various assessments to evaluate their programs and services. However, the majority of the assessments are indirect measures and mostly evaluates student satisfaction. An outline of their assessment practices is available highlighting in detail data currently available. Based on the information shared by the directors, the Persistence to Graduation committee recommends Identify specific first-year initiatives and high impact practices to analyze. Collect data on students participation in these designated experiences by utilizing student IDs through the card swipe initiative. Track students academic performance (GPA) and retention after the first-year based on whether student participated in those specifically-identified activities. Determine what is working and make informed decisions for continuous quality improvement of first-year programs and services based on the analysis of data. Change priorities and shift limited resources from some of the first-year programs and services not working to assist with implementation and support for second-year initiatives and beyond. Continue to monitor and track students academic performance (GPA) and persistence to graduation beyond the first year. Appendix B contains the outline. 3. Create consistent, intentional messaging about student engagement. Strategy: Create a committee to recommend explicit messages and common language about the activities used in and out of the classroom that support student engagement.

3 3 4. Develop a retention plan that: a. enhances student engagement Strategy 1: The Persistence to Graduation Committee recommends the administration of the Faculty Survey of Student Engagement (FSSE) in spring The FSSE was designed to complement the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) which was administered to our first-year students and seniors in spring FSSE is a web-based survey administered to the university s selected sample from faculty who teach at least one undergraduate course in the current academic year. The faculty version focuses on: Faculty perceptions of how often students engage in different activities The importance faculty place on various areas of learning and development. The nature and frequency of faculty-student interactions. How faculty members organize their time, both in and out of the classroom. The cost for administering the FSSE is estimated to be $2,000 based on approximately 700 faculty invited to participate. The actual FSSE Administration Fees will be determined in spring 2011 upon confirmation of our institution s list of invited FSSE faculty. An additional $1,000 is estimated for a marketing campaign to inform faculty about the FSSE. The data from both the NSSE and FSSE are critical to determine where students and faculty s perceptions on engagement align and differ. The information can be used to identify areas of strength, as well as aspects that our campus may decide warrant attention. The results are intended to be a catalyst for productive discussions related to teaching, learning and the quality of our undergraduates educational experience. Funding has been identified and the project is scheduled for spring Strategy 2: Develop a Student Engagement Record Keeping System. Implement a student engagement recording system that will facilitate the collection of a variety of data including: leadership development, community service & citizenship, service learning, campus involvement, honors & awards, and employment. The system will also collect student involvement in high impact practices. The data will be utilized to more clearly understand the impact student engagement has on retention and graduation of students. The Strategic Technology Executive Committee (STEC) approved the first phase of this project that will include developing a project scope, determining effort of staff time and a commitment of IT staff resources. The IT staff will use the existing PeopleSoft system to try and capture as much data as possible, utilizing a self service web portal and administrative user access. The second phase would include integrating other systems that currently capture student data (ID card system, Simplicity, and Digital Measures). Once data exists regarding impact of student engagement, the data would be used to make appropriate program modifications and resource allocation decisions to enhance student success. Students would gain the added value of being able to record their involvement and produce a document for their collegiate career. b. is based on high impact practice

4 4 Strategy: Send a team of 5 to the AAC&U 2012 Institute on High-Impact Practices and Student Success, during the summer of The Institute is organized around the areas we are suggesting should be included in our retention plan. There are four tracks offered at the Institute, which are High Impact Practices, Leadership Development, Designs for Learning, and Useful Evidence. One of the tracks at the Institute focuses on high-impact practices. We should be able to craft a retention plan focusing on high-impact practices. The committee members understand that in order for our retention plan to be successful, both academic and student affairs must work cooperatively to achieve success. The track on design for learning will address comprehensive and collaborative work across the campus, which can speak to the need for intentional connectedness and intentional messaging. We have little direct assessment data regarding student impact. Most of the data collected, particularly during the first year, is indirect. The track dealing with useful evidence will assist us in determining the kind of data we need to collect to determine what we do well based on in and out of the classroom activities. The Institute costs is ~7000 per fivemember team from AAC&U member institutions with applications usually due in March. Recommendations for team members are representatives from faculty, student affairs, academic support services and assessment. III. Introduction/Process This report represents the second phase of a process that originated in 2008 with Provost Willihnganz charge to establish a standing committee on undergraduate persistence that will advise the undergraduate deans and provost. Specifically, the initial Persistence to Graduation (P-G) committee was charged to address the following concerns: 1. To serve as a collaborative body for the discussion, development and support of retention and persistence efforts in the undergraduate units. 2. To provide a forum for discussion and implementation of intentional, integrated, continuous and collaborative programs and services that promotes undergraduate student retention and persistence to graduation. 3. In concert with the Undergraduate Council, to review and recommend policy and procedural changes to promote improvement in the quality of undergraduate student experiences and to eliminate barriers to student success. 4. To identify specific strategies and create high-quality programs that focus on promoting student success and are consistent with best practices. The undertaking of the initial P-G committee was to outline a university-wide plan that would address our institutional goal of increasing graduation rates and increasing the number of baccalaureate degrees awarded. This plan took into account current and proposed unit-specific goals and strategies to increase our students persistence to graduation. It also needed to provide for a campus-wide approach to student intra-university transfers (IUTs), especially those made involuntarily, and to provide both the support and services needed for the academic success of the IUT students. To that end, an original report dated December 16, 2008 was forwarded to Dr. Dale Billingsley, Vice Provost for Undergraduate Affairs, and then forwarded with his comments to Provost Willihnghanz. In late 2009, the P-G committee was reconvened to address feedback provided from the original report as well as to initiate a comprehensive review of the 2009 NSSE results. A memorandum

5 5 from Dr. Dale Billingsley to Dr. Shirley Willihnganz, dated October 2, 2009, revised the P-G committee charge. The revised charge was to develop and implement an undergraduate persistence plan for implementation over the next three years. Specifically, the plan should include the following: 1. To examine the implications of the 2009 NSSE results in the context of our institutional history with that instrument; 2. To reorder the December 2008 recommendations using recommendation (1)(b)(iii) as the central recommendation: Create awareness among faculty and administrators of the relationships between instruction and retention ; and 3. In the light of that ordering, to review progress on the December 2008 recommendations as indicated in the following update, to propose new initiatives that will further the persistence targets, and to work with the academic units, the budget office and my office [the Office of Undergraduate Affairs] to develop a workable budget to implement the priority proposals over the next three years. Associate Provosts Gale Rhodes and Bob Goldstein co-chair the committee and the committee members represent a multi-disciplinary group with full and part-time faculty, administrators, professional staff and students. Extensive analyses and review was conducted of the 2009 NSSE data by Institutional Effectiveness staff which served as the underpinning for the committee s work and is available on Sharepoint. Sub-committees were developed based upon the three priority areas identified by the 2009 NSSE data and they were: (1) Student/Faculty Interaction, chaired by Dr. Marie Brown; (2) Enriching Educational Experiences, co-chaired Drs. Michael Mardis and Nisha Gupta; and (3) Active and Collaborative Learning, chaired by the Dr. Cathy Bays. Each sub-committee was charged with thoroughly examining the relevant NSSE data and developing recommendations consistent within their assigned theme as defined by the Benchmarks of Effective Educational Practice ( An additional committee, called the CORE, was created and comprised of the subcommittee chairs, Gale, Bob and Cheryl Gilchrist. The purpose of the CORE group was to review the subcommittee reports and proposed recommendations and draft the committee s final report. Appendix D contains the initial recommendations from each subcommittee. As the subcommittees, core group and P-G committee discussed the data and possible recommendations, the higher education environment and recurring university challenges kept simultaneously emerging/resurfacing in the discussion. Sections III and IV summarize these issues. IV. Higher Education Environment Strategic Enrollment Management In recent years, the principles of strategic enrollment management (SEM) have provided needed guidance within the organization and practice of higher education. With increasingly limited resources for financial aid and a greater identified student need, the benefits of a well developed and thoughtful SEM plan have never been greater. UofL has acknowledged the importance of attracting and admitting a freshman class that fits well within the institution while at the same time providing the necessary financial support to ensure the demographic profile and academic preparedness of our students to reach established performance metrics. Because of these competing directives, UofL will need to focus on implementing established enrollment management strategies to maximize our resources within the context of our institutional mission.

6 6 The Practical Guide to Strategic Enrollment Management Planning in Higher Education, as developed by the Educational Policy Institute, suggests a set of core SEM principles that should be included in an effective strategic enrollment management plan. They are: Establishing clear enrollment goals; Promoting student success; Determining, achieving and maintaining optimum enrollment; Enabling the delivery of effective academic programs; Generating tuition; Enabling financial planning; Increasing organizational efficiency and; Improving service levels The outlined core SEM principles serve as the rubric to which the university s strategic enrollment management plan is developed. However, these principles do not address the institutional barriers that are often noted during a plan s implementation. For example, most institutions develop their strategic enrollment management plan with an emphasis of increasing enrollment so as to increase or stabilize institutional revenues. This issue, although important, will not be the primary objective of an enrollment management plan developed for UofL. We will likely experience different barriers. One such barrier that UofL will face is how best to achieve institutional consensus regarding what is meant by student success as stated within our mission. Student success can be defined as the institution s retention and graduation rates which, by themselves, do not fully illustrate the other reasons students may attend UofL. Student success on an institutional level is based on their probability of graduating as determined by the profile of the incoming class. By utilizing extensive institutional specific research, UofL would be able to develop a profile of the successful student (academic and non- academic characteristics) and then recruit students that fit that profile with an eye towards the student s probability of graduating. High Impact Practices Another area that needs consideration is high impact practices. A significant body of higher education research has documented that certain high-impact educational practices (HIP s) promote college student development, learning, engagement, and persistence(aac&u, 2008). This extensive research documents increased rates of student retention and student engagement across over 100 institutions. HIPs are specific curricular and pedagogical practices that by their nature require students to be actively involved in their own learning. These high-impact practices, when done well, engage students by helping them to make their own discoveries and connections, grapple with big questions whose importance they can see, and address complex problems. (Kuh, et al 2008). Among the 10 practices detailed and documented in this research, those which are most clearly and significantly in place and in practice at the University of Louisville include: first year seminars and experiences, common intellectual experiences (Gen Ed requirements & i2a), undergraduate research, community-based learning, and capstone courses and projects (CUE/ i2a). The nationally recognized experts in HIP research go on to argue however, that while assessment of student involvement in these practices has made it possible to assess the practices contribution to students cumulative learning, impact is disjointed, inconsistent, and ineffective. On almost all

7 7 campuses, utilization of active learning practices is unsystematic in its application; to the detriment of student learning. Concurrently the AAC & U research (Greater Expectations, 2005, 2006), which proceeded and led to the HIP study, found that a critical part of the argument behind HIPs is in the importance of institutions stressing the interconnection between intentionality and coherence. Given these conditions, the importance of intentionality and coherence in how we connect and scaffold U of L s HIPs will be a critical part of our persistence work. Predictive Model As mentioned in the SEM section, universities must develop a profile of the successful student at their respective institution. Through the use of data mining, UofL can begin to explore and model relationships within our student recruitment, enrollment and graduation data. Data mining has been used by universities in a number of areas, including but not limited to enrollment management, retention and graduation analysis, and faculty retention (Bohannon 2007). A major indicator of effectiveness for an institution of higher education remains grounded in the rate of student persistence and departure. While UofL has existing resources dedicated to issues of student persistence and departure, we are investigating data-driven, strategic approaches in identifying high risk students to ensure they are given the best opportunity and support needed to succeed. Through the use of predictive modeling, we began by identifying variables that were reproducible year after year and reflective of the student population. We utilized the literature to provide us with the framework in understanding the prevalent discussions on student retention. Our goal is to arrive at the best possible outcome in predicting student attrition prior to the student s entering second semester. The following variables were chosen from the independent factors to use in the regression equation: (1) distance from home; (2) first generation status; (3) number of days from application to admission; (4) university cumulative first-semester GPA. The accuracy rate for predicting those students who were retained was 83.4%. This rate is greater than our institution s first year retention rate and thus we are gaining information from the model. The accuracy rate for predicting those students who were not retained was 70.7%; the overall accuracy rate for the model was 80.8%. Below is the classification table for these results: Classification Table a Observed Predicted Retained 0 1 Percentage Correct Step 1 Retained Overall Percentage 80.7 Step 2 Retained Overall Percentage 80.8 a. The cut value is.780 Results from both inferential statistical tests and descriptive statistics are available upon request. Although the model has been validated, it is important that all models employed be rebuilt or at least validated each year to ensure ongoing predictive accuracy.

8 8 Flight Plan Collaboration and cooperation across campus is critical as we create a plan for student success at UofL. The P-G Committee must work collaboratively with other committees charged with implementing university-wide initiatives that may impact persistence to graduation and align our recommendations to the provost with these efforts. Recently, a committee was established to implement a program, now identified as the Flight Plan, that creates a culture of expectations that students will graduate in 4 years and they will be encouraged to be on the 4-year degree completion plan whenever feasible. To that end, the Flight Plan committee recommended to the provost an awareness campaign, the need to educate and inform students about what they need to do to graduate in four years, incentives for students, staff and faculty to support the program, the importance of student planning, commitment from the administration to provide the course offerings needed, the need for the university to review its policies for the acceptance of Advanced Placement courses, CLEP and dual credit, the monitoring of first time/full-time cohorts, and assigning students to advisors so that students can be tracked and have the continuity and support they need to persist and graduate. The Flight Plan committee recognized that not all students can complete a degree in four years due to personal, financial or academic reasons. However the recommendations for the implementation of the Flight Plan would also help the university in improving its six-year first-time, full-time graduation rates. V. University Challenges/Climate The core group identified a set of critical challenges which they feel need to drive the recommendations to be proposed in the final report. The identified challenges are as follows: 1. UofL is committed to help Kentucky increase its number of residents with college degrees by the year Specifically, UofL must increase its graduation rate to 52.4% in 2014 and to 60% by UofL, however, continues to face state budget cuts that create a difficult fiscal environment in which to meet this mandate. The challenge our committee faces during these fiscally difficult times is in developing a comprehensive enrollment management and persistence to graduation plan with very limited monetary resources. The committee, therefore, must be intentional in our efforts to increase the retention of our undergraduate students to reach the 2020 goal for our 6-year graduation rate. 2. Although UofL offers many first-year initiatives and high impact practices, the committee has limited data and direct assessments to evaluate which of these educational experiences at UofL make a difference to our undergraduate student persistence, learning outcomes or student success. Therefore, another challenge the committee faces is developing a persistence plan with limited ability to identify 'what we do well' based on the impact of these in and out of classroom experiences on student persistence and graduation. Although we have data from the NSSE on students' perception of engagement, we do not have any data on faculty's perception on student engagement especially in the classroom. Such data are critical to determine where the perceptions between students and faculty on engagement align and differ. The plan realizes the need to collect such data and utilize these results in the overall plan to assist in closing any gap in perceptions. 3. The committee must address the issue of lack of intentionality and explicit messaging about student engagement. As the committee makes recommendations, we need to remain

9 9 committed to educationally purposeful activities that must be intentionally designed and named both in and out of the classroom in order to achieve the desired outcomes for student engagement. Faculty and staff must be encouraged to provide students with explicit messages and common language about the activities used in and out of the classroom that support student engagement. After acknowledging these challenges, the core group consulted with Dr. Jillian Kinzie (NSSE) who strongly stated institutions that are most successful in affecting change within student engagement are those that focus on 'what they do well' rather than creating new initiatives.

10 10 Appendix A: Persistence to Graduation Timeline 1. Develop a Strategic Enrollment Plan based on core SEM principles. 2. Identify 'what we do well' based on the impact of in and out of-classroom experiences on student learning and personal development. 3. Create consistent, intentional messaging about student engagement. 4a. Develop a retention plan that enhances student engagement via: Administration of the FSSE A Student Engagement Record Keeping System Spring 2011 Fall 2011 Spring 2012 Fall 2012 Spring 2013 Fall 2013 Spring b. Develop a retention plan that is based on high impact practices.