In her solo presentation at the 2013 AACRAO annual meeting, Jody Gordon, Vice President, Students, University of the Fraser Valley in British Columbia, Canada, spoke about early intervention programs and services at several Canadian institutions. As background, she described barriers to student success, principles of student success, a relationship between hope and student success, and early intervention programs and principles.
In the book Piecing Together the Student Success Puzzle: Research, Propositions, and Recommendations (2007), authors George Kuh, Jillian Kinzie, Jennifer Buckley, Brian Bridges and John Hayek listed the most significant barriers to students”that is, traditional-aged┬" students. Difficulties include being a first-generation student, being academically underprepared, and working while in college. Warning signs include a student not actively seeking academic advising support and the lack of a sense of belonging or of a sense of direction with a student's program selection. Students who are not involved in co-curricular activities are potentially at academic risk. So, too, are those who lack a sense of hope.
This sense of hope was the subject of a 3-year longitudinal study by Liz Day, Katie Hanson, John Maltby, Carmel Proctor and Alex Wood, all from the U.K., whose research was described in the Journal of Research in Personality in 2010 (Volume 44, pp. 550-553). Hope uniquely predicts objective academic achievement above intelligence, personality, and previous academic achievement,┬" they found. (Hope was studied in terms of two orientations: agency,┬" or an individual's determination to achieve chosen goals; and pathways,┬" reflecting an individual's belief that successful plans and strategies can be generated to achieve them.)
Early intervention programs to foster retention involve early identification and intensive, continuous contact with students. Gordon highlighted a program at her own institution, in Abbotsford, BC, known as SLG or Supportive Learning Groups and at Saint Mary's University, Nova Scotia, known as LEAP for Learning, Engagement, Achievement, Peer Mentors.
Readers interested in learning more about early intervention services might want to look into Kwantlen Polytechnic University's, (Surrey, BC) Early Alert Referral System, or EARS; the University of the Fraser Valley's (Abbotsford, BC) Priority Access to Student Support, or PASS; and the University of Windsor's (Windsor, Ontario) Assessment and Care Team or ACT.