Collaboration will be key for the new Office of Retention and Graduation at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, said Suzanne McCray, UA’s dean of admissions and vice provost for enrollment management.
“We’re going to be looking at assessing across the campus what our retention efforts are, how we can coordinate some of those and maybe be more collaborative as we move forward,” said McCray, whose department includes the newly created office.
Trevor Francis will direct the office, moving from his current duties as director of the advising center in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences. He starts today in his new role and will have the title of associate vice provost.
About six of every 10 incoming full-time, first-time freshmen at UA earn degrees within six years, according to the most recent information on graduation rates. The largest public university in the state also has the highest graduation rate, but UA leaders have said they want to increase the graduation rate to 70 percent by 2021.
A shorter-term goal has been to raise the graduation rate to 66 percent by 2015.
“Given what I know, it’s going to be very difficult,” said Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Sharon Gaber, referring to the 2015 goal.
UA’s graduation rate has been almost unchanged for years: 59 percent for students entering in the fall of 2003, 58 percent for fall 2004, 59 percent for the fall 2005, 60.4 percent for fall 2006, and 60 percent for fall 2007.
But Gaber said soon to-be-released data may show improvement.
“I believe we’ll have positive news in another week or two,” Gaber said.
The university celebrated growth in enrollment during a Sept. 3 news conference, touting how the campus had surpassed 26,000 students for the first time. A week later, the university submitted a head count of 26,237 students to the Arkansas Department of Higher Education, which tracks enrollment for universities in the state.
UA ranked seventh on a national list of rapidly growing universities that was compiled this year by the Chronicle of Higher Education.
McCray said conventional wisdom suggests that such growth “does make it tougher” to boost graduation rates.
“But we have really worked hard to go after students who are going to succeed,” McCray said. Data collected by the university shows how incoming freshmen have higher test scores than in years past.
For example, in the first-time, full-time freshman class entering UA in 2009, 67.9 percent reported scores of 24 or higher on the ACT, a college entrance exam. In 2013, the percentage had increased to 72.4 percent.
Gaber emphasized, however, that UA has kept its admissions standards unchanged.
“We view ourselves as the state’s university, so we don’t want to say that we’re trying to ratchet up the ACT score because we don’t want anybody to think we’re excluding anyone,” Gaber said.
Students are admitted automatically if their high school grade point averages are at least 3.0 on a 4.0 scale, they have completed 16 core academic units specified by UA and if they have ACT scores of 20 or higher.
Gaber said $200,000 has been allocated for the new Office of Graduation and Retention, with the amount including Francis’ $88,000 salary.
While many at UA are working to boost graduation rates, Francis’ position is narrowly focused on graduation and retention, Gaber said.
“This is somebody who’s focused on it day in and day out. I’m focusing in on it day in and day out, but I’m focused on 500 things as well,” Gaber said.
The university understands that many factors can influence student success, including financial issues and advising for students, Gaber said. The university must “think about what we are doing, how do we do it better.”
Some recent initiatives to improve the graduation rate have included a new course for freshmen called University Perspectives: Destination Graduation, a course taught for the first time in the fall of 2013. Gaber listed UA’s decision to host a December graduation ceremony as another effort aimed at increasing student success.
“That actually helped our graduation rate because they saw the prize,” Gaber said. Also under consideration is a mandatory attendance policy being tested this semester in two large, lower-level courses. Gaber called attending class the “No. 1 predictor” of whether a student will pass a course.
The university also has mathematical models used to predict student outcomes, employing a graduation analyst to work with such data. McCray said Francis “has a big team of people he’ll be working with.”
“We want to look very hard at data in maybe ways we haven’t looked at before,” McCray said, adding that a new computer program now used to help with student advising “has a huge amount of data in it.” Such information could help identify red flags when a student is in trouble, McCray said.
“I don’t think any one office can work a miracle,” McCray said.
She described the progress in the university’s effort to boost graduation rates.
“Since 1997, we’ve come a long way, from in the 40s to hitting 60 [percent],” McCray said. “It’s just that next 10 [percent] is going to be tough, so it’s going to take everybody on board with that.”