Transcript Student Affairs Division Meeting October 18, 2011 Lori Varlotta, VPSA Graduation Initiative (GI) Overview As part of a national and systemwide endeavor, Sacramento State’s.

Student Affairs Division Meeting
October 18, 2011
Lori Varlotta, VPSA
Graduation Initiative (GI) Overview
As part of a national and systemwide endeavor,
Sacramento State’s Graduation Initiative aims to:
 Increase the overall number of degrees awarded
 Decrease the achievement gap between
underrepresented minority (URM) students, and
non-URM students
CSU-Specific Goals
By 2015-2016, the CSU Chancellor has charged all
23 campuses to:
 Attain graduation targets for freshmen and
transfer students that put them in the top
quartile of peer institutions
 Reduce—by half—the achievement gap between
URM and non-URM students
Sacramento State-Specific Goals
1. Increase the six-year graduation rate of first
time freshmen by 8%
2. Increase the four-year graduation rate of
transfer students by 5%
3. Close the URM/non-URM FTF achievement
gap by 5% (current gap is ~10%)
4. Close the URM/non-URM TFR achievement
gap by ~2.5% (current gap is ~5%)
What Makes Our Approach
Unique in the System?
1. Its thematic organization
2. A truly joint venture between Student Affairs
and Academic Affairs
3. The use of URM programs and services as a
prototype for more general programs and
services
Our Five Themes:
1. Services that Support
2. Learning that Counts
3. Defining and Developing Faculty Roles that
Promote Retention and Graduation
4. Incentives that Motivate
5. Recruit-Back Strategies that Re-Engage
Students Who Stopped Out
A Comprehensive, Integrated
Approach
These themes, jointly formulated and operationalized
by Student Affairs and Academic Affairs, identify,
organize, and prioritize programs and services that
facilitate progress to degree.
An important aspect of the Graduation Initiative is to
communicate to all community members—the
faculty in particular—that the University’s retention
and graduation efforts involve everyone.
Broadening the Programs that Work
Campus-level data show that particular groups of
students (e.g., freshmen, EOP participants, athletes,
veterans, and probation students) who receive
targeted advising, support, tutoring, and mentoring
do better than the overall student population in
terms of continuation and/or graduation.
Therefore, we are interested in expanding many of
these “special programs” to a more general student
population.
The Involvement Plan
1. Hold a series of activities and trainings to
foster campus involvement around degree
completion
2. Charge a cross-divisional group of Student
Affairs/Academic Affairs administrators,
faculty, and staff to examine advising systems
and structures
The Involvement Plan
3. Grow and expand the usage of a retention
tracking tool to assess retention, advising, and
tutorial support programs
4. Formulate a research team to assist with special
projects and to aid in publication development
Current and Future Programs and Services
Many programs and services are currently in place;
others are “on the horizon” pending the
identification of additional resources.
The following slides delineate some of our most
successful programs as well as those we hope to
implement.
Services That Support—Current
 “One Stop” Success Centers:
 Student-Athlete Resource Center (SARC)
 Veterans Success Center
 Educational Opportunity Program (EOP)
 Mandatory Freshman/Transfer Advising
 Intrusive advising for “at-risk” students on
academic probation
Student-Athlete Resource Center
The SARC has contributed to the success of Sac State
student athletes, whose first-year retention rate (86%) and
four-class average graduation rate are higher than the
overall student population.
Veterans Success Center
The Veterans Success Center has contributed to
the success of Sac State veterans whose average
first-year retention rates (85%) and term GPAs
(3.11) are higher than the overall student
population.
Educational Opportunity Program (EOP)
EOP students are
individuals who have the
potential to succeed at
Sacramento State, but have
not been able to realize
their goal for a higher
education because of their
economic and/or
educational background.
EOP provides:
 Admissions assistance
 A special orientation to the university
 Academic advising, personal counseling, and tutoring
 Financial aid advising and information
 An EOP grant award for eligible EOP students
 Course placement and planning
 Learning and study strategies
 Participation in a required EOP Learning Community
 Referrals to other university special programs and services
 Enrollment in a second-semester transition program to aid
with adjustment to university life
Orientation and Advising
 Mandatory first year orientation and advising
program has helped to bolster first-year
continuation rates by 8.5%
 The mandatory second year advising program for
probation students has helped to double the “good
standing” rates for students in the program
Services That Support—Future
 Create a Learning Resource Center as a campus
hub for tutoring/mentoring programs
 Design and implement an early-warning alert
system for at-risk students, and link that system
to tutoring and advising services
Learning that Counts—Current
 Emerging four-year and two-year Roadmaps to
Degree for each major
Roadmaps to Degree
 Each department is currently developing one
page, easy to follow “roadmaps” to degree
 These roadmaps help students simultaneously
navigate GE and “Major” policies and avoid
roadblocks
Example Degree Roadmap—Ethnic Studies
Learning that Counts—Future
 Develop a Sophomore Success Curriculum that
is prominent and broadly accessible to all
second-year students
 Provide a credit-bearing option for students in
math remediation modeled after the English
Stretch option
Defining and Developing the Faculty
Role—Current
 Faculty-led Living Communities in the
Residence Halls:
 Fitness and Wellness
 Leadership and Community Engagement
 Social Justice and Global Community
Defining and Developing the Faculty
Role—Current
 Campus-wide training sessions are in place for
Fall 2011 and Spring 2012 to help faculty get
involved in the advising process and use the
new roadmaps
Defining and Developing the Faculty
Role—Future
 Secure “buy-out” time for faculty involved in
Residential Hall Living Communities
 Expand opportunities for faculty to rotate through
Academic Advising
 Increase the amount of advising interaction between
faculty and students
 Increase the number of faculty with advising
experience
 Develop structured and purposeful advising
programs in every academic department
Incentives that Motivate—Current
 Leadership Initiative (LI)
 Provide a credit-bearing “Experiential Leadership”
course that is connected directly to the Leadership
Initiative
 Class was approved three weeks ago!
 Host an annual “Degrees to Dreams” reception for
scholarship recipients and donors
Leadership Initiative (LI)
 The LI engages students in co-curricular
activities which tie into their academic studies
and helps them develop their leadership skills.
 Students progress through a series of certificates,
earning one after another at their own pace
depending on their goals.
 Students advance through the program by
becoming increasingly engaged in programs and
activities.
Leadership Initiative (LI)
 Student participation in the LI has rapidly increased in its
second year, from 70 to 700 students.
 The LI was designed using local and national data, which
suggests a positive relationship between student cocurricular engagement and persistence and graduation of
URM students.
Leadership Initiative (LI)
Participation in the Leadership Initiative provides
many incentives for students:
 A semester-end ceremony that recognizes all
student participants who have earned cocurricular leadership certificates
 An e-Portfolio that allows students to track and
showcase (for use in resumes, graduate school
applications, etc.) all of the academic, cocurricular and work experiences they logged in
during their time at Sacramento State
Leadership Initiative (LI)
 The LI will be supported long-term in part by
the Full Circle grant just awarded to
Sacramento State’s Ethnic Studies and College
of Social Sciences.
 The grant is meant to bolster recruitment,
retention, and graduation rates among Asian
American and Pacific Islanders in particular.
 Grant funds will support a full-time program
advisor for the Leadership Initiative.
Incentives that Motivate—Future
 Financially support faculty/student research that
fosters innovations in retention and persistence
practices
 Better and more routinely publicize this research
through media outlets such as:
 Publications, social networks, webinars, and
live media coverage
Outreach and Recruit-Back
Strategies—Current
 Reach out to students who were eligible to
enroll for Fall 2010 but had not done so by June
2011
 Messages were sent in June, July and August
 Of ~2,500 students in this category, roughly
500 re-enrolled
 Many had registration or financial aid issues
that Student Affairs was able to address
Outreach and Recruit-Back
Strategies—Future
 Develop mechanisms to track the reasons
students depart
 Engage in retention and recruit-back
promotional campaigns to keep students
enrolled
 Reach out to student groups most likely to
return (i.e. students in good standing, nontraditional students, etc.)
GI Steering Committee
Executive Team Leaders
 Joseph Sheley Provost and Vice President for
Academic Affairs
 Lori Varlotta Vice President for Student Affairs
GI Steering Committee
Committee Co-chairs
 Marcellene Watson-Derbigny Associate Vice
President, Student Retention and Academic
Success
 Kathryn Palmieri Associate Director, Academic
Advising Center
GI Steering Committee
Student Affairs Committee Members
 Brigitte Clark Associate Director, Career Center
 Jasmine Murphy Scholarship & Customer
Service, Financial Aid Office
 Ed Jones Associate VP, Campus Life/GI Team
Leader Emeritus (Theme #1)
GI Steering Committee
 Dena Lemus Assistant Director of Admissions
and Outreach/GI Team Leader (Theme #5)
 Karlos Santos-Coy Leadership Programs
Coordinator, Student Organizations &
Leadership/GI Team Leader (Theme #4)