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Early Semester Success (Georgia Gwinnett College-2025)

Strategy/Project Name: 
Early Semester Success
Momentum Area: 
Data & Communications
Strategy/Project Description: 

The early alert initiative is a collaborative effort across campus. There are particularly strong established connections among Advising Programs, Academic Schools, Residence Life, and Athletics that aim to identify and support students who might be experiencing challenges that could impact their academic success. This effort includes proactive monitoring, timely interventions, and personalized support early in the semester to enhance student success and retention. Currently, GGC utilizes the Progress Report Campaign feature in Navigate 360 for early alert.low USG institutions as we develop this key 2025 ASPIRE and Momentum strategy.

Activity Status: 
Refining/Maintaining
Evaluation/Assessment plan: 
 
Key Performance Indicators include:
• Engagement metric: Percentage of faculty who respond to progress report campaigns.
• Academic performance: Percentage of flagged students who complete the course with a grade of ABC
Baseline:
• Faculty response rate: 45%
• Percentage of flagged students who complete the course with a final grade of ABC: 58%
Goals
• Faculty response rate: Yr 1 – 55% and an increase by 10% each subsequent year
• Final grade of ABC: Yr 1 - 58% and an increase by 5% each subsequent year
Progress and Adjustments: 

In fall 2025, Student Success provided additional training on progress report campaigns for the School of Science and Technology faculty, as SST wanted to expand the spring pilot.  Training covered the purpose and workflow of progress report campaigns. Campaigns were sent to ENGL and MATH co-req faculty and faculty in BIOL 1107, BIOL 1108, BIOL 2251, CHEM 1211, and ITEC 2150. For In fall 2024 we had a faculty response rate of 45% and 58% of the students who were flagged earned a grade of A, B, or C in the course. We will continue to work with the academic deans and department chairs to improve faculty participation. We had a 3% increase in faculty response during fall 2025 and are awaiting final grades to determine the percentage of students who earned a grade of A,B, or C.

Plan for the Year Ahead: 
This Momentum strategy supports Goal 1: Objective C1 of the GGC Strategic Plan: 1. Expand Academic Access, Engagement and Success: Objective C: Enhance academic and student support services to promote the academic success of all GGC students: 1) Expand early alert to identify eligible students and provide academic support earlier.
Key takeaways include:
• Communication with faculty must include clear messaging about the purpose of progress report campaigns and the importance of their role in supporting students' success through these efforts.
• Email may not be the most effective communication tool for reaching students. More personalized or alternative methods (like text messaging) may be necessary to ensure students take appropriate action.
Priority areas for continued improvement include increasing faculty engagement and refining student communication and outreach strategies. 
 
Faculty Engagement: We will improve messaging to faculty so that they have a clear understanding of the purpose and progress report campaigns and how these efforts can support student success. We will also work with faculty to refine the communications timeline, identify targeted courses, and offer training on completing progress reports. We will also train faculty on how to submit ad-hoc alerts, which will provide them with flexibility in when they submit alerts.
 
Refining student communication and outreach strategies: We will review the current workflow for progress report campaigns to identify gaps. We will improve messaging to students to ensure that they are provided clear action steps to improve their performance. We will also look to incorporate text messaging into the process, as email is not always an effective form of communication. Additionally, we will identify effective and efficient ways for staff to engage students who have been identified in the campaigns.
Challenges and Support: 

Although faculty response to progress report campaigns increased this year, there is still much room for improvement. Additionally, pass rates for students who were identified as at-risk in the corequisite courses were below the average pass rates for all students in those courses. We are working with Navigate to increase the use of automation functionality to address staff workloads. 
We plan to communicate with a few fellow USG institutions that have been identified to explore how they have addressed staffing challenges.  

Contact email: 
kjackson5@ggc.edu
Primary Contact: 
Karen Jackson, Interim Dean of Student Success