Sept. 5, 2006 issue
Retention report recommends ways to keep students at EMU

By Ron Podell

 

Eastern Michigan University does a good job of providing various programs and opportunities to enhance the first-year experience of new students. However, the institution does not do so well at continuing that early momentum, nor does it have any empirical data to determine the impact of these programs on student success, which should translate to persistence and graduation. There also is not enough collaboration to maximize the potential advantage of these programs.

These are the main findings of a 23-member University Student Retention Task Force which, for the last nine months, has explored why the University has trouble retaining students and graduating a larger percentage in six years.

Nelson

"If students don't know why they're here, they're more likely to leave. If they have no goal, there's no motivation to succeed," said Gersham Nelson, executive assistant to the provost and chair of the Student Retention Task Force. "Academic engagement in college requires performance at a high level, but it should be highly stimulating. The extent to which we get students to experience the excitement of learning is the extent to which we will retain them."

Eastern Michigan's six-year graduation rate for FTIACS (students first time in any college system) has improved from 34 percent to 41 percent between 1998 and 2004. However, it is still well below the national average of 54 percent.

Eastern Michigan loses 28 percent of its students between their freshman and sophomore years, Nelson said. That figure drops to 12 percent for EMU students between their junior and senior years, he said.

By 2015, the task force believes EMU's six-year graduation rate can exceed the national average. To embark on this goal, the Task Force recommends the following initiatives:

• Establish an administrative/support structure that will more effectively bridge the gap between high schools and EMU. This should include: communicating college expectations to these high schools, gathering relevant data and analyzing the Admissions Predictive Index Guide for improvement. The guide predicts future college student success based on the student's high school GPA and ACT test scores.

The demands and expectations of higher education are different from those of high school.

"Often, the curriculum does not provide for continuity in ways that one would expect," Nelson said. Although we have long relied on standardized tests, such as the ACT and SAT for college admission, the overwhelming results of studies concerned with students' transition from high school to college indicates that the results of these tests are not the most reliable predictors of student success in college. By far the most reliable predictor is the rigor of the high school curriculum."

The challenge for states, such as Michigan, is that there is no jurisdictional tie between the high schools and colleges, Nelson said. The issue of jurisdiction in Michigan is further complicated by the autonomy of each of Michgan's 15 public universities. 

ACTS OF ATTRITION: (above) The graphs above show attrition rates of FTIACs at EMU for the years 2001-2002 through 2003- 2004. During those three years, student attrition rates were between 25.21 percent and 27.37 percent.

But Nelson does see hope. Michigan is among the states that recognizes a need for a more rigorous high school curriculum, one that includes a particular number of years of English, science, social studies and math. The Michigan Legislature recently passed a bill with the future educational requirements, which will be phased in over time.

"That should help," Nelson said.

• Restore a full-time administrative position in the Office of Academic Involvement. This administrator, with the support of an advisory board, will collaborate with other divisions regarding retention-related programs, especially as they relate to a student's first-year experience. These programs include First-Year Orientation, First-Year Mentor Program, New Beginnings, Common Reading Program, Summer Incentive Programs (SIP), and Promote Academic Survival and Success (PASS).

"We seem to do a very good job at introducing students to this institution. But, there is a lack of continuation," Nelson said. "For example, the spirit of FUSION (new student orientation) is not carried over into the school year."

The task force concluded, for example, that there was no collaboration between FUSION and Freshman Interest Groups (FIGs) and/or PASS. This represents an example of a missed opportunity to create synergy in purposefully creating learning communities, the task force said.

• Revamp FIGs to more closely model best practice that emphasizes teaching, learning and student engagement inside and outside of the classroom.

"The thrust of learning communities is to bring about cohesion in scheduling and satisfying student interests so that a group of students would be registered for similar classes," Nelson said. "The intent is for students to do more than take a group of classes together. They would participate in cooperative learning and participate in co-curricular and extra-curricular activities."

Nelson stressed that it was important faculty play a key role in this venture by organizing courses and themes that take advantage of campus events to complement themes dealt with in the classroom.

For example, students whose program focus is 19th-century music could take a 19th-century literature or 19th-century colonialism course as a common experience

"A student could see how literature, history and music reflect the human interest and experience," Nelson said.

• Establish a standing University committee on academic advising (seven to nine members). The committee's charge would include oversight and support for University-wide advising initiatives aimed at creating a more effective academic advising process. This will include assessing advising groups across campus; updating the advising manual; ongoing training for advisers; and oversight of recommendations listed under "advising" in the task force report.

Nelson said there is student advising at the college, department and professional advising office levels. However, there is often a lack of coordination between and among these entities.

"Too often, these operate as disparate pieces. At times, this has been quite confounding to students," Nelson said. "A number of students experience frustration because they receive different information on the same issue at different places, or they discover late that they have not satisfied requirements for their degree and must stay at the institution longer."

Nelson expects more challenges concerning academic advising to surface since it is one of the University's four Academic Quality Improvement or AQIP action projects.

• Develop an academic probation advising program for select advisers from each college and one that is aimed at ensuring that students, whose GPA falls below a 2.0, are afforded the best possible chance for recovery and success.

"One of the most startling findings of the committee is recognizing how many students are placed on academic probation — without any discreet program to identify their weaknesses and bring them academic recovery," Nelson said.

After winter term 2006, there were more than 1,660 EMU students on academic probation, Nelson said.

"The committee is convinced that, if special effort is made to help those students recover academically, we will see more students staying at and graduating from EMU," Nelson said.

There are many resources, such as advising, career counseling, and tutoring that can aid students in getting back on track academically. However, the current structure requires students to take the initiative. Nelson said the task force would like to see the University be more forceful in shepherding students on academic probation back to good standing.

For example, the PASS program, which enrolls approximately 200 "at-risk" students per year and helps them gain the skills they need to thrive in college, no longer requires participation by all eligible students.

The rationale for this move was that some students felt stigmatized by placement in the program, Nelson said. The task force learned that the move to voluntary participation was not accompanied by ongoing tracking to determine any possible difference between the performance of PASS-eligible students who opt out of the program and those that take advantage of it.

"If we develop a program to help students in specific ways and it is not achieving its objectives, we need to change it," Nelson said. "If the program is effective, students for which it is designed should all receive its benefits."

• Introduce registration procedures that require students to confirm or declare their major/minor status each semester. In turn, students would receive relevant, personalized advising information and updates on progress toward a degree.

This, it is hoped, would get students to do a number of things, including: declare a major or consult Career Services and other resources to explore career and program options; update out-of-date major declarations; pursue official plans of study; seek appropriate advising; and seek help rather than drop out.

"Students with more than 58 credit hours who have not declared a major will receive a message encouraging them seek advisng and outlining the process for declaring a major," Nelson said. "We also will provide departments with a list of all of the students who've declared that (department's) major(s)."

• Strengthen collaboration between the Holman Learning Center and department heads/school directors in monitoring class attendance. The intent is to identify students with academic difficulty and allow for early intervention.

The task force believes that it is important to develop an early warning system that will identify at-risk students in the classroom before they fall too far behind. Attendance problems and poor performance are initial indicators faculty should look for in identifying students who could benefit from university resources to help at-risk students, Nelson said

"If a student breezed through high school and comes to the university expecting to do the same, there could be a few surprises," he said. "If we identify challenges early, we can often prevent them from falling irretrievably into academic deficit."

• Appoint a retention/data management coordinator to work with administrators of all retention-related activities. This appointee will gather and analyze data for assessment and improvement of programs.

"We have to confront the issue of attrition at the University on several fronts," Nelson said. "We have the report, but now the the real work of implementation must begin."