Albany State University Campus Plan Update 2020

INSTITUTIONAL MISSION AND STUDENT BODY PROFILE 

Albany State University offers certificate programs, transfer associate degrees, career associate degrees, bachelor’s degrees, master’s degrees and the education specialist degree.  Students may take classes through online instruction while face-to-face classes are offered on two campuses located in the city of Albany, GA and three off-site locations in Cordele, Cairo and Waycross, GA.  

Albany State University was officially consolidated with Darton State College in January 2017.  The mission of the consolidated ASU, approved by the BOR in March 2016 is as follows:

Albany State University, a proud member institution of the University System of Georgia, elevates its community and region by offering a broad array of graduate, baccalaureate, associate, and certificate programs at its main campuses in Albany as well as at strategically-placed branch sites and online. 

Committed to excellence in teaching and learning, the University prepares students to be effective contributors to a globally diverse society, where knowledge and technology create opportunities for personal and professional success. ASU respects and builds on the historical roots of its institutional predecessors with its commitment to access and a strong liberal arts heritage that respects diversity in all its forms and gives all students the foundation they need to succeed. Through creative scholarship, research, and public service, the University’s faculty, staff, students, and administrators form strategic alliances internally and externally to promote community and economic development, resulting in an improved quality of life for the citizens of southwest Georgia and beyond.

ASU’s total enrollment for the fall 2020 semester was 6,509 with the majority of students (2,677) enrolled in associate and bachelor degree programs.  Approximately 72% of the total headcount are female, 78% self-identify as African American and the average student age is 23.  On-campus student housing reached capacity at 1,897 residents.  Almost 91% of ASU students are in-state residents with the majority (1,014) from Dougherty County.

FALL 2020 STUDENT PROFILE SUMMARY

*Other Undergraduates includes transient, and post-baccalaureates students

ASU First-Time Freshmen Summary Data

First-Time Full-Time Freshmen Retention Rate

Pell Grant Recipients (Fall 2020)  3,509    57.5% of Total Undergraduate Enrollment

Enrolled in Learning Support Courses (Fall 2020 710   11.6% of Total Undergraduate Enrollment

IMPROVEMENT PRACTICES

Albany State University has completed a number of Momentum Year Initiatives and is working toward scaling these opportunities to impact students from matriculation through graduation.  ASU has updated all program maps to clearly show the appropriate math course required for the program, to ensure students complete English and math in the first 30 hours and to navigate through the program in a timely manner.  Additionally, ASU initiated block scheduling in the fall 2019 semester to ensure course availability for incoming freshmen according to the program maps.  Finally, ASU completely moved to the co-requisite model for Learning Support classes in both English and mathematics.

Academic Affairs, Career Services and Advising are collaborating to provide all students who apply to ASU a link to the Holland Theory of Career Choice, Strong Inventory and Focus II – Academic Life assessment to strengthen the inform-discern-affirm process.  The results of the survey will be provided to the Advising Center so advisors can have informed conversations with students prior to their arrival on campus.

Academic Affairs, Enrollment Management and Student affairs are also creating Milestone Conversation opportunities aligned with the academic pathways to encourage regular communication between Success Coaches and students.  Additionally, ASU is implementing living-learning communities for freshmen students with co-curricular activities that support our six focus areas and correspond to academic pathways.

All incoming freshmen students were accommodated through the block scheduling process and 80.9% (1,154) of them were registered for at least 15 credit hours with an additional 10.1% (144) students registered for 12 credit hours.

MOMENTUM UPDATE: OBSERVATIONS AND NEXT STEPS

Existing Momentum Work

ASU’s Momentum Year Initiatives are aimed at providing access and opportunities for students to achieve their educational goals, including successful degree completion and on-time graduation. Purposeful choice is a significant part of the Momentum Approach/Year initiative, and the ability for students to link their learning back to their career choices is an aspect on which ASU has focused our efforts.  

Gateway courses for English and Math continued to receive special attention as part of ASU’s Momentum Plan.  Our support of tutors and supplemental instruction continued as 20 tutors were hired through Title III funds. EAB-Navigate was utilized to provide alerts via progress reports for students who had academic problems, and they were routed directly to tutors who were tasked with providing support. Additional training for Advisors helped them to make use of our referral system to connect students with tutors. In the Spring we piloted online tutoring using our peer tutors and staff, providing access through Webex and phone for students to receive tutoring from anywhere.   

Under the Corequisite Learning Support model DFWI rates for ENGL and MATH core courses have decreased as seen in the table below comparing pass rates. Our MATH and ENGL II pass rates continue to improve while our ENGL I rates held steady compared to previous years.  

Classroom-Based Strategies

The Center for Faculty Excellence (CFE) at ASU conducts professional development workshops for faculty to share best practices in classroom instruction.  The CFE has created Global Training Modules that focus on areas such as curriculum design, providing effective feedback, designing effective learning outcomes and aligning classroom assessment to learning outcomes.  These modules are available through the distance learning platform to facilitate access for faculty.  The Chancellor Learning Scholars held four learning communities with a focus on mind set and pedagogy.  During the 2018-2019 Academic Year, the CFE held over 40 individual workshops for faculty with 468 (duplicated headcount) faculty in attendance.

Faculty participating in Gateway to Completion continue with the redesign efforts in ENGL 1101, 1102, MATH 1111 and 1001.  The faculty have moved to a common syllabus and assessments in each course to assist students who may need to transfer between sections.  Students who enroll in the learning support co-requisite courses are required to attend tutoring sessions at the ASU tutoring center.  In the spring 2019 semester, the Tutoring Center assisted 1,377 individual visitors for 7,279 visits.  Students who have a grade of D or F at midterm and who visited the Tutoring Center are more than twice as likely to pass the class with a grade of C or higher (45.4% v 20.3%) than students who did not take advantage of tutoring.

As noted in the table below, ASU has experienced an improvement in pass rates since 2016-2017 for the four courses in the G2C effort.

Table 1. DWF Rates

Activities Implemented targeting Purpose

Activities Implemented targeting Transparent Pathways 

Activities Implemented targeting Mindsets

General Overview and Observations 

Albany State students appear to benefit from “high-touch” strategies both inside and out of the classroom.  To sustain these high-touch practices, ASU will continue to augment them with software and other technologies to increase efficiency and productivity.  Covid 19 has definitely impacted the ability of our campus being as hands on as previously, but implementing the Tru-touch technologies in every classroom and moving to the virtual video camera environment has allowed for continued interaction.  

The Tutoring Center has still been successful in reaching a large number of students via Webex this year as faculty are encouraging students to take advantage of their services.  The tutoring center has an online waiting room that has an attendant during business hours that will greet each student and help the student determine which type of academic service best meets their need.  Once determined the attendant can help the student set up a virtual appointment with the tutor in the subject area of need.  Study tables are also being held in the evening in a hybrid format to meet the need of all students, those who want to attend in person and also those who prefer the virtual meeting.  

Through a continued collaboration between Enrollment Management and Academic Affairs, ASU offered its Summer Success Academy to assist new freshmen transition to college in a completely virtual format.  Students participated virtually in a combination of academic and orientation classes to develop meaningful learning habits and build a solid academic foundation.  Twenty-three students participated in the first fully virtual academy in summer 2020 and ASU is collecting data to assess the effectiveness of the program in comparison to the first summer in 2019.  

The Center for Faculty Excellence is continuing to foster the four new learning communities around the topics of Small Teaching, Mind Set, Scholarship Reconsidered and Linking Assessment to Outcomes.  The Chancellor Learning Scholars will continue their work in Transparency in Learning and Teaching (TILT), pedagogy and improving writing skills in the classroom. The Center for Faculty Excellence has held 95 unduplicated, standalone workshops this year and 1322 faculty members were in attendance.  Covid 19 seemingly increased attendance of workshops, perhaps due to the removal of needing to travel to attend.  There were 12 new faculty support sessions developed along with a new faculty handbook.  

Follow up from Momentum Summit III - “Campus-Wide” Momentum Approach Activities (Beyond the Classroom) 

Purpose

Improve Handoff between Career Services and Advising/Tutoring

Purposeful choice is a significant part of the Momentum Approach/Year initiative, and the ability for students to link their learning back to their career choices is an aspect on which ASU has focused our energies.  This is not to the exclusion of other important aspects of the purpose of education such as the ability to be meaningfully civically engaged or to provide intrinsic value in the life of the student.  We currently use EAB-Navigate to help facilitate handoffs of students between faculty, advisors, and tutoring.  Navigate allows us to create cases that will notify the various departments of challenges, let them know they need to communicate with the student, and to track the case as it develops.  Navigate the provides the ability to track cases as well as provide important data along the way.  We have also added locations for Honors and now Career services. This gives career services the ability to add their availability, track their students purpose for coming, but more importantly receive alerts and cases from students as well as campaigns to match them with career services.  We believe this will enhance the student’s purposeful choice of a major and aid completion of the degree.

Health Checks 

An important component in the retention, progression, and graduation schemata is the health of our students.  Students who are not physically well have a harder time being academically healthy as well.  To that end, we have been fortunate to have a robust Health and Human Performance unit within the institution whose focus is on the physical health of the students.  Dr. Ken Kirsch has developed expertise in the production of fitness regimes as well as nutritional information.  Kirsch has numerous certifications in health and wellness as well as nutrition that enable him to provide helpful information and plans to the students. Kirsch offers informational seminars open to students in addition to his individualized plans of performance.  Kirsch could have much greater reach with an investment of time and resources from the institution to provide overarching support.  In addition, Dr. Jolley provides resources for mental well-being to the students.  A room has been dedicated to destress for faculty, staff, and students that incorporates best practices for stress relief.  The institution also has a hotline dedicated to mental health.  Another key component is the use of Advising Coaches to check in with students through the use of Navigate.  Students often exhibit warning signs seen by faculty and staff prior to critical events.  The alert system allows faculty to alert the responsible staff that an outreach is required so that a non-intrusive intervention can take place.  A big rollout that took place this summer in this area was the use of mental and physical wellness checks of faculty, staff, and students by the office of Enrollment Management, spearheaded by Octavia Parker.  Ms. Parker’s unit called 5020 individuals during the time we were sheltering at home in Spring 2020 to be sure that any mental or physical needs were appropriately addressed.  Services were offered as necessary through the institution to help with this process. 

Mindset & Pathways

Learning Communities, Chancellor Scholar Workshops

The Center for Faculty Excellence focused on training for faculty on pedagogies related to the Momentum Year/Approach as well as Mindset training.  Of special emphasis were the use of Learning Communities of faculty and Chancellor Scholar Workshop.  These centered on the use of small teaching, Transparency in Learning and Teaching (TILT), research in the classroom, experiential learning, meaningful assessments, student presentation as assessments, emotional wellness, and flipped classrooms.  Each of these are part of what are considered High Impact Practices to help educate students for the betterment of their retention progression, and graduation.  Learning communities utilize similar methods to those they are attempting to teach, including the use of a centralized reading format of shared literature and vivacious discussion of relevant topics to aid in the process. 

Beyond the Classroom

QEP

QEPs are institution-wide initiatives that are developed in conjunction with the accreditation process to help to address focus areas of development for the institution.  Our desire for our QEP development was for it to address similar concerns as outlined in the Momentum Approach Plan. The QEP is best described in the words chosen by the committee: “Guiding Persistence to Success (GPS)’, is designed to strengthen progression to completion rates. The QEP is a five-year, university-wide quality improvement plan focusing on student success. We will accomplish this through five strategies progress reports, advising model, study tables, peer mentoring, and course redesign.”  The gist of the QEP is to provide a roadmap for students to work through support services.  The QEP committee selected four outcomes as follows:  decrease D/F/W rates in 11 high enrollment courses, decrease number of students on probation, suspension and dismissal, increase fall-to-fall first-year retention rates, and increase student awareness of academic policies and resources that are relevant to student progression and degree completion.

G2C

Since 2018, ASU has participated in Gateway to Completion (G2C) offered by the Gardner Institute.  The purpose of G2C is to reduce DFW rates in courses with high enrollment paired with high rates of failure. G2C Committee working in conjunction with the Garner institute identified high-risk courses (specifically at mid-term) including the freshman ENGL and MATH courses and then took steps to change the delivery of the course through the use of standardization etc. To supplement this approach, we utilize tutors, supplemental instructors and study table techniques for students in these courses. A summary of the efforts from study table in Spring of 2020 is presented in Appendix A.  

Assessment will continue based on G2C guidelines.  In an effort to mitigate DFW rate increases due to the shift to the hybrid classroom model in Spring 2020 through today, appointment campaigns are sent following the 4^th week, midterm, and 12^th week alert to students who have been issued an at-risk status to promote the usage of support services.  Data from these efforts is being monitored to determine the effectiveness of this strategy.  

Wrap-Around Strategies

Albany State University created a “one-stop shop” for students to provide support with Financial Aid, Registration, Admissions and Student Accounts.  Students can visit “Ram Central” in person or get help through the Call Center.  Ram Central has assisted with 21,000 student face-to-face visits and 32,200 phone calls.  ASU also implemented an Artificial Intelligence Chatbot to assist with questions during times the center is closed. Feedback from a student satisfaction survey indicated 92% satisfaction rates with the Ram Central.

A new Student Success Model was instituted during the 2018_2019 Academic Year which included retraining academic advisors to be Success Coaches and to split student advising between the coaches and the faculty.  The Advising Center assists students with fewer than 60 earned credit hours and faculty advise students with 60 earned hours and above.  Students in career associate degrees are still advised by faculty.  The Success Coaches provide more in-depth assistance to ASU’s students and meet with students more frequently.  New scheduling software allows students to enter preferences for class times and generates class schedule options automatically.  This has reduced the burden on the Success Coach and improved the efficiency and effectiveness of advising sessions.

New Student Reference Tool “Playbook”

With all that we have accomplished, our biggest challenge seems to be a lack of a single “playbook” that demonstrates a clear articulation of all of the ways to navigate t through these processes for the students and for the faculty/staff. Despite the fact that all of the units necessary for these items have been at Momentum Summits each year and have executed their portion of the above plan, we do not possess a single repository of information that covers all of these areas. When the team is assembled, everyone only knows about what’s going on in their units, and none of us could communicate effectively how the entire plan works together or what it should look like within other units. We have determined that this type of fragmentation is preventing us from seeing fuller results, and that we must bridge this informational and communicational gap between units.

With the onset of COVID-19, our plans actually were accelerated rather than diminished.  We developed a fully integrated playbook for the following programs along with supporting videos from the various directors that will help to explain our various programs which support the approved Momentum Year Sustainability, and then were distributed to both the constituencies necessary in a video presentation.  Both the presentation and the video were recorded in formats that allow for periodic adjustments without disrupting the overall product. Production of the materials were overseen by James McClinton III of Institutional Advancement at ASU and Corey B. Morgan from Admissions and Recruitment at ASU.  The information included was piloted during Virtual NSO meetings, but has also been viewed and distributed to the representative sections in addition to being shown to students. The Playbook includes more than 100 pages of information directly relevant to student retention, progression, and graduation including information beyond the scope of the academics listed above.  Such information includes ways to stay financially solvent, the use of support services such as tutoring, and various student organizations that support the mission of the institution along with many other topics.  This information is arranged topically by unit and readily accessible as a reference tool.  See Appendix B for a representative example of the Playbook.

Table 2.  Strategies employed during 2020 to address Momentum Year goals and preliminary data from implementation.