Task force targets retention

By Luke Nozicka

Nearly 40 percent of students who attended their first year in 2012 didn’t return for a second year, according to the university fact book.

As retention remains a continual issue on campus, a task force is implementing new initiatives in the hopes to improve those numbers.

Laurie Achenbach, dean of the College of Science, said a retention task force of about 65 faculty, staff, students and administrators that was formed last year is executing a plan to keep students at the university.

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Less than 25 percent of students graduated within four years in 2007, and less than 45 percent graduated within six years.

The group is instituting several ideas to its plan, such as arranging blocked schedules and expanding early alert systems.

This semester, the task force initiated the block schedule for three majors on campus, biological sciences, psychology and criminal justice, so students can take three of their four required courses together. She said the three majors were chosen because students in these majors must all take a certain number of the same classes to graduate.

“They see each other almost everyday. It really builds a community right from the start,” Achenbach said. “It’s not only addressing their curricular needs, but also their social needs.”

For example, all students majoring in biological sciences are required to take an intro to biology and chemistry, so assigning them to the same class is “almost like a group of friends going to class together,” she said.

The task force is also expanding the early alert system from entry-level math courses to UCOL and speech communication. The system allows professors and advisers to see how students are doing in specific courses by week three, grading them by colors of green, orange, yellow or red.

“This is an initiative that I think is going to change the way that instructors and students will see how they’re doing very early in a semester,” Achenbach said. “If a student is in red for all their courses, they may need some more intensive mentoring.”

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Gregory Budzban, chair of the mathematics department, said the warning system allows professors to direct students in specific support systems needed. He said students also are tested through the system in week eight and 12 of the course.

“It’s got to be late enough so you have reliable data but it’s got to be early enough so you actually have a chance to improve student success,” Budzban said.

The warning system, tested for the first time in fall 2013, compiles grades from a test taken at the beginning of a course, analyses how well a student is doing throughout the semester and evaluates homework grades and attendance.

Achenbach, who was appointed head of the task force after Allan Karnes, then-associate dean of the College of Business, retired, said block scheduling may expand to other majors depending on the results.

Teresa Farnum, who owns a consulting company, will meet with task force members in September to access retention actions on campus.

“The goal obviously is to increase our retention rates immediately,” Achenbach said. “By December, we hope to see an increase in retention, especially in some of the core freshman courses.”

Luke Nozicka can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @lukenozicka.

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