“Over the past decade, state college and university systems have been prioritizing retention and graduation rates in order to be eligible for performance-based funding as well as to maintain, or improve, their place in college rankings. As a result, campuses have increased collaborative, cross-campus efforts to support student success,” wrote Paul Marthers and David Rosowsky in a recent C&U article.
“At many institutions, especially those with an access mission and large numbers of first-generation students, the work of student success is fundamentally everyone’s job,” Marthers and Rosowsky wrote. “When institutions recognize the central importance of student success, they organize processes and structures in ways that best serve student needs.”
The authors highlight several efforts at campuses across the country to integrate student success work, including State University of New York’s SUNY Completes, The Titans Deserve Better initiative at California State University, Fullerton, and the University of Vermont’s first-year learning communities, among many others. They explore issues such as structure and alignment, academic versus student affairs culture, faculty involvement, student pathways, and risk points.
“It is important for institutions to make sure that there are shared objectives and persuasive data justifying student success efforts,” wrote Marthers and Rosowsky. “It is equally important to pay attention to whether those shared objectives and data are widely known and internalized.”
Other articles in this issue include:
Features
Competencies Wanted: An Analysis of Enrollment Management Job Advertisements
By Joan Giblin and Mounira Morris
One Enrollment Management Team's Response to Covid-19: An Interview with James Martin, Debbie Green, Nicole Joseph, and Brooke Barber
By Staci Phelan
Responding to COVID-19 Series
Impact and Opportunities: COVID-19’s Effect on Higher Education
By Marguerite J. Dennis
Room Scheduling: A Dependent Variable to Reduce the Spread of COVID-19
By Rodney Parks, Haya Ajjan, Annica Gaebel, and Alexander Taylor
Research in Brief
AACRAO Research: A Year in Review 2020
By Wendy Kilgore
The College Choice Criteria of African American Students
By Todd Audyatis
Campus Viewpoint
Registrar Strategies to Boost Summer Enrollment
By Casey Hayes, Rodney Parks, and Alexander Taylor
International
Receiving Digital Documents
By Peggy Bell Hendrickson
Book Reviews
Review of: Pre-College Programming in Higher Education: The Evolution of a Movement
By Stacy Maestas
Review of: Higher Expectations: Can Colleges Teach Students What They Need to Know in the 21st Century?
By Stephen Handel
For more information on submitting an article to C&U, please contact Managing Editor Heather Zimar.