Georgia Southwestern State University Campus Plan Update 2022

Section 1: Your Institutional Mission & Student Body Profile

Georgia Southwestern State University’s (GSW) institutional mission is,

Georgia Southwestern State University is a state university serving a diverse population of students, offering a range of strong undergraduate and graduate programs in a vibrant learning environment. The University is a collegial community that values collaboration and community engagement with an emphasis on faculty, staff, and student interactions. An active student body and state‐of‐the‐art amenities enhance the learning experience on a visually appealing campus located in historic Americus, Georgia.

GSW’s total enrollment in fall 2021 was 3158 down by four students from fall 2020. At that time, the gender distribution of the student population was 67.3% women and 32.7% men. The ethnicity of the fall 2021 student population was 58.8% White, 24.8% African American, 7.3% Asian and Pacific Islander, 6.4% Hispanic, 2.3% Multiracial and less than 1.0% were Native American or Unknown. Approximately 38% of GSW undergraduates receive Pell Grants; 53% are First-Generation college students (no parent/guardian with bachelor degree or higher); 16% began college for the first-time as adults (25 years old or older); and 22% are age 25 or older. The majority of our undergraduates (62%) are classified as full-time (taking 12 or more hours); 25% live on campus; 61% are enrolled in one or more online classes; and 33% are enrolled exclusively in online classes. These populations are also representative of our recent graduates. Out of the undergraduates who were awarded bachelor’s degrees in FY22, 50% had received the Pell grant while enrolled at GSW, 51% were first-generation students, and 19% were 29 or older at the time of graduation.

We noted in our March 2022 Momentum Plan that the performance of our male students is significantly lower than that for our female students. The large percentage of Pell eligible and First-Generation students among our populations has led us to concentrate on two areas of the Momentum Approach: clear pathways and social belonging. While we are concerned about and concentrating upon the performance of our male students, we choose not to specifically target them, but rather to use strategies that are beneficial to all students and monitor the progress of our male students.

Section 2: Your Student Success Inventory

GSW’s Big Idea

GSW has made great strides in planning and implementing programming surrounding our Momentum Big Idea, transparency in learning and teaching, or TILT. The Momentum planning committee charged the Office of Teaching and Learning and Office of Experiential Learning with identifying six key faculty members across campus to serve as a steering committee to orchestrate TILT activities, including faculty development programming and faculty learning communities focused on TILT.

As a recap, we introduced TILT to our faculty and staff across campus in April 2021 through a virtual workshop led by TILT Higher Ed founder and director, Dr. Mary-Ann Winkelmes. Following this event, faculty were invited to participate in a summer-long faculty learning community (FLC) under the direction the TILT steering committee, who underwent training by Dr. Winkelmes to serve as TILT FLC facilitators. Faculty participants a follow-up workshop about TILT led by Dr. Denise Domizi (USG) and Dr. Jesse Bishop (Georgia Highlands College) to learn more about TILT. A total of 30 faculty, which is approximately one-quarter of GSW’s faculty body, representing all four colleges participated in the FLC summer series and provided generally positive feedback in their final reflections, including their positive experience of having meaningful conversations about teaching and learning with faculty from different departments and their appreciation for being able to transform a part of their course to provide a more student-centered learning opportunity. In Fall 2022, several faculty participants led a panel titled “Tales of TiLTing: From the Syllabus to the Final” in Fall 2021 during our faculty planning week, Southwestern Week.

In summer 2022, we held a second FLC TILT series, led by a generally different group of facilitators, who conducted a very similar type of program. A total of 15 faculty participated in the summer 2022 FLC series under the direction of five facilitators. Most of the facilitators were faculty participants in the FLC series the previous year. 

Also during the 2022-2023 academic year, we held a series of TILT Brown Bag sessions, where faculty and staff were invited to attend a professional development session over lunch. These events were generally well-attended (between 10-20 faculty at each session), and the discussions during the events were rich. A total of three sessions were held in Fall 2021: 1) "Teaching Students How to Study," which covered evidence-based study strategies that faculty can share with their students; 2) "The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SOTL) of TILT," where Grissett and one TILT steering committee member discussed how to turn TILT activities into a scholarship of teaching and learning (SOTL) project; and 3) "Integrating TILT into Co-Curricular Campus Activities," which was aimed toward staff members in Student Engagement and Success to help them integrate more transparency into their everyday activities with students. In Spring 2022, Dr. Susan Hrach from Columbus State held a session titled “Minding Bodies” based on her recent book by the same name, and Dr. Mark Grimes and Dr. John LeJeune led an information session on Group Instructional Feedback Technique, or GIFT.

An important point worth highlighting is that GSW’s “Big Idea” includes not only faculty, but also staff, since we believe that informed and engaged student-staff interactions are an important dimension to the GSW experience. When staff understand what is unclear for students, they can work toward making those things, whether it be website structure, forms, processes, or terms, clearer so that students can succeed. Our Brown Bag session, “Integrating TILT into Co-Curricular Campus Activities” was aimed at SES staff specifically. During the workshop component, participants were led through brainstorming what things in their areas were sometimes unclear to students and to work in small groups to identify how those things more transparent. It generated a lot of necessary and healthy discussion among participants during the session. In fact, Jeremy Wicker, Assistant Director of Campus Life, participated in a USG Momentum virtual session highlighting how he has implemented TILT into his work, and Judy Grissett participated in a USG Momentum virtual panel, where she talked about the ongoing and future directions of implementing the TILT framework into student engagement and success in and out of the classroom.

Overall, the TILT initiative has had a positive impact on teaching and learning across GSW, including helping faculty understand the importance of transparency when communicating with students through assignment instructions. Still there is much room for growth to ensure that more faculty and especially staff are aware of TILT. To work toward addressing the gap in TILT awareness, in Fall 2022 Judy Grissett spoke with new faculty about TILT during the New Faculty Orientation and in the New Faculty Teaching Circle. Moving forward, GSW hopes to offer more professional development trainings with GSW faculty, and particularly staff about TILT, including concrete examples for how TILT can be implemented. Challenges exist, such as negative perceptions about transparency (e.g., making things too “easy” for students) or faculty feeling like they must choose between pedagogical interventions (e.g., “TILT vs. small-teaching”). Another challenge is the lack of faculty to implement future TILT workshops and faculty learning communities, as faculty become increasingly fatigued for being the ones always called to lead TILT activities.