A record number of students celebrated graduation May 10 at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. But university leaders are also keenly aware of those who didn't reach the milestone.
UA's quest to improve its graduation rate has a new set of guideposts in the form of an initiative submitted in December to a Chicago-based accreditation agency for colleges and universities. Along with creation of a new director-level position focused on boosting graduation, the initiative emphasizes trying new programs and assessing which ones best serve students.
"What we're doing is building on what we're doing already," said Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Sharon Gaber.
Right now, about six out of every 10 students who enroll at UA receive a degree within six years. This year, UA graduated 4,042 students who finished degree requirements between summer 2013 and spring 2014.
A 2010 report put together by a university committee listed ways to improve graduation rates, such as increasing the use of technology to identify students at risk of dropping out.
While there is some overlap, the latest blueprint goes a step further and establishes the creation of the Office of Graduation and Retention and calls its director the "cornerstone" of the new initiative.
The university posted the job opening for the director of the new office last month, with the goal of hiring someone this summer. The director won't necessarily have additional staff, Gaber said, but will work with a "graduation analyst" that is an existing position. The job listing states that the director will supervise the generation of data that will help guide decisions about programs to raise the graduation rate.
The new unit will be grouped with areas such as admissions under the management of Suzanne McCray, UA's vice provost for enrollment and dean of admissions.
The director, while working with faculty, staff and students, will also be "looking at what's going on, if there are things that aren't working, helping to push it or helping to streamline it," Gaber said.
The new unit doesn't yet have a budget, Gaber said.
accreditation task
A UA committee developed the new initiative to improve graduation rates for submission to the Higher Learning Commission. The commission required UA to develop such an initiative as part of its process for re-accreditation, with the university able to choose an area for improvement.
"The graduation rate seemed to be a natural, because it seemed to be the highest priority for our students," Gaber said.
The university has goals to improve graduation rates to 66 percent by 2015 and 70 percent by 2021. But with students on campus now counting toward that earlier goal, reaching the 2015 goal "will be difficult, if not improbable," Gaber said.
To put together the initiative, a 16-member committee of mostly faculty members met for about 90 minutes weekly for several months last year. Some recommendations in their report have already been implemented, such as a new required course for freshmen that teaches study skills and basic information about the university. The UA's business and engineering colleges have similar courses, but this fall marked the first time such a course was required of all students.
Gaber said the university will examine whether the class is actually helping.
"We're looking at data to see what has that done for us," Gaber said, describing how retention data will be but one measurement. "Some students signed up for the class and didn't attend and didn't pass. Is that indicative of some bigger problem?"
Involving the Higher Learning Commission means that an outside group will scrutinize progress UA has made on its goals.
"In 2016-2017, a team from the Higher Learning Commission will actually be on campus for three or four days," said Ro Di Brezzo, vice provost for faculty development and enhancement. Di Brezzo helped put together the initiative submitted to the commission.
She spoke about the willingness of the UA to evaluate efforts to see if they're working, as well as the enthusiasm of people within the university to try new things.
"In four years, I could be coming back saying, 'Eeks, that didn't work,'" Di Brezzo said of the new freshman course, titled University Perspectives. The report states an evaluation of the course's effectiveness should be done in spring 2016. "We are moving ahead with it with great energy. We have gotten terrific buy-in. It has been an enormous commitment on everyone's part."
stuck at 60%
Other parts of the initiative are being phased in, such as the use of software known commercially as Starfish to better keep tabs on student academic outcomes and help ease communication between students and faculty, as well as academic advisers.
"I have had students say to me they really like the system, but not all of their instructors are using it, so it's going to take time," said Karen Hodges, executive director of UA's Academic Success Network. The goal is for all instructors to use the system, known on campus as UA Success, she said.
Gaber said the system can provide alerts based on a student's lack of class attendance, for example. It also ensures that data about a student isn't lost if they transfer from one college within UA to another.
UA Success is just one way the university is trying to improve advising, said Hodges, co-chairman of the initiative committee who was also involved with a 2009 task force looking at graduation rates. Before that, there was a similar effort in 2000, Hodges said.
UA's efforts have resulted in improvement, Hodges said, noting an increase in the graduation rate from about 45 percent in 2000 to the latest 60 percent rate. "But we seem to be stuck there, and based on the qualities of our student body, we should be graduating them at a higher rate."
Gaber said that U.S. News & World Report describes UA's graduation rate as lower than predicted based on student characteristics such as ACT scores.
Gaber said the university plans a pilot program related to mandatory attendance for classes involving mostly first- and second-year students. The pilot program will be for a biology course and sociology course in the fall that together enroll hundreds of students.
Students will be required to "click" in when they arrive for class using hand-held remote control technology, which is already used by some instructors.
Gaber said it will be up to the faculty to determine how attendance will factor into a student's grade as "either a positive incentive or a negative sanction."
The overall effort to increase graduation rates might involve a shift in thinking, Di Brezzo said. For faculty who have devoted a career to a specific academic discipline, "their passion is their discipline, and their vocation is bringing their discipline to life for the students, so they don't think about themselves as necessarily, 'How can I help a student individually?'"
Faculty members must be able to direct students to resources elsewhere on campus and also recognize their own abilities to advise students, Di Brezzo said.
"As Hillary Clinton would have said, 'It takes a village,'" Di Brezzo said. "What we're trying to talk about is, it takes a village to get a student graduated. We're all in this together, and we all have to contribute."
Metro on 05/27/2014