Observations and Next Steps
The three projects identified above have resulted in greater collaboration across divisions and units, promoting more consistent communication and information sharing. Collaborative teams have also been tasked with specific projects to advance each of the activities listed above. This approach has proven purposeful and progressive because work groups are able to accomplish and mark off specific tasks that advance broader institutional goals.
For this academic year, UNG’s student success efforts are being aligned with the university strategic plan as well as the priorities set by the president. To that end, a workgroup is engaged in a student success deep dive examining systems and structures to determine appropriate organizational structures. The task force conducting the student success deep dive is also engaged with Georgia State University’s National Institute for Student Success (NISS). Additionally, the working group is developing a student success framework that includes shared vocabulary and definitions faculty, staff, and administrators can use to organize student success efforts.
Not all the work has generated the success anticipated given the range of students served by the institution and the existence of multiple systems that do not easily connect with one another. As a result, professional staff have had to adapt existing systems, frequently manipulate reports and data to provide timely information necessary for interventions with students. For example, academic alerts are submitted using one system that requires a case manager to create and assign cases to student-facing staff who can then connect with students. This requires significant manual input to get the alert to the right person before any action can be taken. The data from that system is manually merged with the SIS to determine progression and success rates for students served through the alerts system. As a result, fully assessing the effectiveness of the program is challenging. The other obvious limitation is that the demand on services exceeds existing capacity. Four academic coaches are insufficient to serve the 1300 students reported through academic alerts, for example.
