Georgia State University continues to ask the question, “Are we the problem” to identify and remove administrative and academic obstacles to student success. The new initiatives described above that are focused on academic recovery, academic support, college to career, student engagement and outcomes in math are part of out commitment to review all aspects of the student experience and redesign them as necessary. GSU’s approach to student success is to implement changes at scale, changing University processes for the benefit of our students. We have not created programs targeted at students by their race, ethnicity, first-generation status, or income level. Rather, we have used data to identity problems impacting large numbers of Georgia State students, and we have changed the institution for all students. In the process, the University has redesigned outreach and onboarding, 1st-year support, guided student pathways, career readiness, academic support, academic advising, financial wellness and cohort resources, in a manner that significantly lowers bureaucratic barriers to college completion for students. Though well intentioned, institutions inadvertently hinder student success. Changing these practices has resulted in significant, positive results at Georgia State. One of GSU’s successful high impact strategies, the Panther Retention Grant, was recently used as a model to expand a completion grant program to all the school in the University System of Georgia and the Technical College System of Georgia. In May 2022, Governor Brian Kemp signed House Bill 1435, to remove the financial aid gaps that impede degree completion for senior students.
Another notable example is the way that Georgia State University continues to innovate and develop strategies to increase student success in academic advising. These strategies are producing long-term benefits. This year, the results of a large-scale randomizedcontrolled trial designed to validate the effectiveness of intensive, proactive, technologyenhanced advisement in increasing achievement, persistence, and completion of historically underserved students were released. The Department of Education funded, Monitoring Advising Analytics to Promote Success (MAAPS) project found that at Georgia State University, students who were randomly assigned to the treatment group and received proactive outreach, degree-planning activities, and targeted interventions from their assigned MAAPS advisors in addition to business-as-usual advisement at GSU, after 6 years had a graduation rate that was seven percentage points higher than control group students and 15 points higher for Black students, though GSU advisement interventions do not use race as a factor in its models. The work demonstrates that redesigning systems to support benefits all students and may disproportionately benefit undeserved communities not because like all students, they are served better.[1]
Conclusion
Georgia State University is testimony to the fact that students from all backgrounds can succeed at high rates. Moreover, our efforts over the past decade demonstrate that dramatic gains are possible not through changing the nature of the students served but through changing the nature of the institution that serves them. How has Georgia State University made the gains outlined above? How do we propose to reach our ambitious future targets? In one sense, the answer is simple. We employ a consistent, evidenced-based strategy. Our general approach can be summarized as follows:
- Use data systematically and daily in order to identify and to understand the most pervasive obstacles to our students’ progressions and completion.
- Be willing to address the problems by becoming an early adopter. This means piloting new strategies and experimenting with new technologies. After all, we will not solve decades-old problems by the same old means.
- Track the impacts of the new interventions via data and make adjustments as necessary to improve results.
- Scale the initiatives that prove effective to have maximal impact. In fact, almost all of the initiatives outlined benefit thousands of students annually.
Our work to promote student success at Georgia State has steadily increased graduation rates among students from all backgrounds, but it has also served to foster a culture of student success among faculty, staff, and administration. As the story of Georgia State University demonstrates, institutional transformation in the service of student success does not come about from a single program or office but grows from a series of changes throughout the university that undergo continual evaluation and refinement. It also shows how a series of initially small initiatives, when scaled over time, can significantly transform an institution’s culture. Student-success planning must be flexible since the removal of each impediment to student progress reveals a new challenge that was previously invisible. When retention rates improved and thousands of additional students began progressing through their academic programs, for instance, we faced a growing problem of students running out of financial aid just short of the finish line, prompting the creation of the Panther Retention Grant program. It also led to a new analytics-based initiative to better predict and address student demand in upper-level courses. Problems we faced with Summer Melt, seniors stopping out for financial reasons, and pandemic-related struggles for incoming students have each led to significant, new innovations—all of which have been adopted by other universities nationally. For a timeline of where we have been and where we are going next, please see Chart 13.
Georgia State still has much work to do, but our progress in recent years demonstrates that significant improvements in student success outcomes can come through embracing inclusion rather than exclusion, and that such gains can be made even amid a context of constrained resources. It shows that, even at very large public universities, we can provide students with systematic, personalized supports that have transformative impacts. Perhaps most importantly, the example of Georgia State shows that, despite the conventional wisdom, demographics are not destiny and equity gaps are not inevitable. Low-income and underrepresented students can succeed at the same levels as their peers—if we support students by systemic and proven approaches. We owe our students no less.
