GSW participated in the first year of a three-year engagement with the National Institute for Student Success in the 2024-25 academic year that culminated in the delivery of a Campus Playbook. The playbook included four recommendations: Coordinated Communication with Students, Proactive Academic Advising, Use of Student Financial Data, and Use of Academic Outcome Data. This academic year, GSW begins implementation of these recommendations which we anticipate will have significant impact on our success strategies going forward, especially the recommendations on Advising and Academic Outcome Data. We expect all the recommendations to affect our ASPIRE and Momentum planning in the spring.
Observations and Next Steps
While our efforts to increase the completion of ENGL 1101 and Major Appropriate Math courses have seen increases in the percentage of both within the first thirty credit hours earned, additional gains need to be made, especially for students with co-requisite support requirements. During the rest of the 2025-26 academic year, we will continue our efforts to strengthen the supports in ENGL 0999 and MATH 0999. We will add embedded reading tutors to section of ENGL 0999 during spring semester to give these co-requisite students support for both reading and writing. We will also monitor the progress of the USG STEM Initiative Supplemental Funding Grant with an eye to expanding this support to more sections of MATH 1111, and to sections of MATH 1001 and MATH 1401.
We have seen increased retention and progression numbers for students with an academic plan in the Student Educational Planner (SEP), although the numbers of students with a plan are not as high as we would like. During fall 2025, the training in the use of SEP in UNIV 1000 has been incorporated into a three-part project required in all sections of the course. In addition, all UNIV 1000 instructors, both faculty and peer mentors, have received additional training in the use of SEP. To continue the planning process beyond the first semester, the Office of the Registrar is offering SEP training to any advisors or departments that request it. Since developing a training program for academic advisors is an essential step in implementing GSW’s NISS Recommendation on Proactive Advising, SEP training will become a part of that training program.
GSW has made significant progress towards the implementation goals its High-Impact Approach to Integrative Learning (HAIL), but there is still work to do. Specifically, more progress needs to be made in developing and implementing HAIL Station Courses. HAIL Stations are intended to help students bridge the gap between their general education experiences and their major curriculum and to help start their professional journey. Most HAIL Stations will be a 2000-level courses designed to initiate students into their degree programs. As part of the effort to develop more HAIL Stations, GSW will also develop degree-specific HAIL pathways that intentionally make a seamless move from general education curriculum to major curriculum possible. Training faculty advisors to facilitate students following and staying on course with these pathways will be considered as a part of the training program to be developed by the Academic Advising Council that is part of GSW’s NISS Recommendation on Proactive Advising.
The strategies we have been using to increase attempted credit hours and completed credit hours have not increased these metrics substantially. The question of how to increase these progression metrics through advising will be one of the prime questions considered by GSW Academic Advising Council during the first year of NISS implementation and we will continue to work on this problem beyond the end of GSW’s NISS engagement as necessary. What data needs to be provided to advisors to help them track advisees and advise them on their degree progression will require collaboration between the Academic Advising Council, the Financial Aid Data Recommendation Working Group, and the Academic Outcome Data Working Group. For instance, the Financial Aid Data Working Group will consider how to provide advisors with data on hours attempted and hours completed, as well as percentage of hours completed to help them advise students considering withdrawing from a class. The Proactive Advising Working Group will then incorporate training for advisors on the use of these data into the advising training plan. Since our NISS cohort concentrates on proactive advising this year, we will also learn about successful strategies for improving these metrics from our cohort partners, other USG Institutions and a group of Public Institutions from Maine.
