Tana Miller

headshot of Tana Miller

Senior Colleague Student Consultant at Ellucian

https://www.linkedin.com/in/tana-miller-48022225

Tana Miller has over 35 years of higher education experience with West Texas A&M University in Canyon, Texas and retired in April 2022 to begin a new career with Ellucian as a Senior Colleague Student Consultant. Her career began in Admissions with roles that included recruiting, transcript evaluation, orientation planning and freshman academic advising. She then served as University Registrar where she actively implemented new software initiatives to streamline processes to better serve both staff and students. She has also served as a part time instructor for freshman seminar, basic speech and business and professional communication courses. As an Assistant Vice President she oversaw Student Engagement and Leadership, the Jack B Kelley Student Center, the Education Credit Union Buff$mart Financial Literacy program, the Registrar, TRIO and College Access programs, the division marketing staff and the campus’s CliftonStrengths™ for Students initiative as well as strategic planning and assessment. In addition, she served as the campus Foster Care Liaison and oversaw the Supervised Independent Living program, Buff Haven. 

She is also a certified True Colors Facilitator and a Gallup Certified Strengths Coach. Tana has a Bachelor of Science in Social Studies-Secondary Education, a Master of Arts in Communication and is working on her EdD in Educational Leadership.

In her new career, as a Senior Colleague Student Consultant, she will work with colleges and universities throughout North America to implement the Colleague SIS or improve utilization through a variety of consulting services.

Capstone Abstract:

This study compared retention rates of students who experienced a strengths-based freshman seminar curriculum to those who did not.  Whether enrolled in a freshman seminar or not, freshmen who did not take the StrengthsFinder® assessment had a retention rate 28 percentage points below those who took the assessment and were enrolled in the strengths-based freshman seminar. This same percentage difference applied to students who took the StrengthsFinder® assessment and enrolled in a non-strengths-based freshman seminar. Students who took the StrengthsFinder assessment but were not required to enroll in a freshman seminar course per their program or admission requirements had a higher mean ACT score but were retained at a rate 20 percentage points lower than those in the strengths-based freshman seminar/learning community.