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Sacramento State Graduation Initiative

Sacramento State Graduation Initiative. Student Affairs Division Meeting October 18, 2011 Lori Varlotta, VPSA. Graduation Initiative (GI) Overview. As part of a national and systemwide endeavor, Sacramento State’s Graduation Initiative aims to: Increase the overall number of degrees awarded

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Sacramento State Graduation Initiative

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  1. Sacramento State Graduation Initiative Student Affairs Division Meeting October 18, 2011 Lori Varlotta, VPSA

  2. Graduation Initiative (GI) Overview As part of a national and systemwide endeavor, Sacramento State’s Graduation Initiative aims to: • Increase the overall number of degrees awarded • Decrease the achievement gap between underrepresented minority (URM) students, and non-URM students

  3. CSU-Specific Goals By 2015-2016, the CSU Chancellor has charged all 23 campuses to: • Attain graduation targets for freshmen and transfer students that put them in the top quartile of peer institutions • Reduce—by half—the achievement gap between URM and non-URM students

  4. Sacramento State-Specific Goals • Increase the six-year graduation rate of first time freshmen by 8% • Increase the four-year graduation rate of transfer students by 5% • Close the URM/non-URM FTF achievement gap by 5% (current gap is ~10%) • Close the URM/non-URM TFR achievement gap by ~2.5% (current gap is ~5%)

  5. What Makes Our Approach Unique in the System? • Its thematic organization • A truly joint venture between Student Affairs and Academic Affairs • The use of URM programs and services as a prototype for more general programs and services

  6. Our Five Themes: • Services that Support • Learning that Counts • Defining and Developing Faculty Roles that Promote Retention and Graduation • Incentives that Motivate • Recruit-Back Strategies that Re-Engage Students Who Stopped Out

  7. A Comprehensive, Integrated Approach These themes, jointly formulated and operationalized by Student Affairs and Academic Affairs, identify, organize, and prioritize programs and services that facilitate progress to degree. An important aspect of the Graduation Initiative is to communicate to all community members—the faculty in particular—that the University’s retention and graduation efforts involve everyone.

  8. Broadening the Programs that Work Campus-level data show that particular groups of students (e.g., freshmen, EOP participants, athletes, veterans, and probation students) who receive targeted advising, support, tutoring, and mentoring do better than the overall student population in terms of continuation and/or graduation. Therefore, we are interested in expanding many of these “special programs” to a more general student population.

  9. The Involvement Plan • Hold a series of activities and trainings to foster campus involvement around degree completion • Charge a cross-divisional group of Student Affairs/Academic Affairs administrators, faculty, and staff to examine advising systems and structures

  10. The Involvement Plan • Grow and expand the usage of a retention tracking tool to assess retention, advising, and tutorial support programs • Formulate a research team to assist with special projects and to aid in publication development

  11. Current and Future Programs and Services Many programs and services are currently in place; others are “on the horizon” pending the identification of additional resources. The following slides delineate some of our most successful programs as well as those we hope to implement.

  12. Services That Support—Current • “One Stop” Success Centers: • Student-Athlete Resource Center (SARC) • Veterans Success Center • Educational Opportunity Program (EOP) • Mandatory Freshman/Transfer Advising • Intrusive advising for “at-risk” students on academic probation

  13. Student-Athlete Resource Center The SARC has contributed to the success of Sac State student athletes, whose first-year retention rate (86%) and four-class average graduation rate are higher than the overall student population.

  14. Veterans Success Center The Veterans Success Center has contributed to the success of Sac State veterans whose average first-year retention rates (85%) and term GPAs (3.11) are higher than the overall student population.

  15. Educational Opportunity Program (EOP) EOP students are individuals who have the potential to succeed at Sacramento State, but have not been able to realize their goal for a higher education because of their economic and/or educational background.

  16. EOP provides: • Admissions assistance • A special orientation to the university • Academic advising, personal counseling, and tutoring • Financial aid advising and information • An EOP grant award for eligible EOP students • Course placement and planning • Learning and study strategies • Participation in a required EOP Learning Community • Referrals to other university special programs and services • Enrollment in a second-semester transition program to aid with adjustment to university life

  17. Orientation and Advising • Mandatory first year orientation and advising program has helped to bolster first-year continuation rates by 8.5% • The mandatory second year advising program for probation students has helped to double the “good standing” rates for students in the program

  18. Services That Support—Future • Create a Learning Resource Center as a campus hub for tutoring/mentoring programs • Design and implement an early-warning alert system for at-risk students, and link that system to tutoring and advising services

  19. Learning that Counts—Current • Emerging four-year and two-year Roadmaps to Degree for each major

  20. Roadmaps to Degree • Each department is currently developing one page, easy to follow “roadmaps” to degree • These roadmaps help students simultaneously navigate GE and “Major” policies and avoid roadblocks

  21. Example Degree Roadmap—Ethnic Studies

  22. Learning that Counts—Future • Develop a Sophomore Success Curriculum that is prominent and broadly accessible to all second-year students • Provide a credit-bearing option for students in math remediation modeled after the English Stretch option

  23. Defining and Developing the Faculty Role—Current • Faculty-led Living Communities in the Residence Halls: • Fitness and Wellness • Leadership and Community Engagement • Social Justice and Global Community

  24. Defining and Developing the Faculty Role—Current • Campus-wide training sessions are in place for Fall 2011 and Spring 2012 to help faculty get involved in the advising process and use the new roadmaps

  25. Defining and Developing the Faculty Role—Future • Secure “buy-out” time for faculty involved in Residential Hall Living Communities • Expand opportunities for faculty to rotate through Academic Advising • Increase the amount of advising interaction between faculty and students • Increase the number of faculty with advising experience • Develop structured and purposeful advising programs in every academic department

  26. Incentives that Motivate—Current • Leadership Initiative (LI) • Provide a credit-bearing “Experiential Leadership” course that is connected directly to the Leadership Initiative • Class was approved three weeks ago! • Host an annual “Degrees to Dreams” reception for scholarship recipients and donors

  27. Leadership Initiative (LI) • The LI engages students in co-curricular activities which tie into their academic studies and helps them develop their leadership skills. • Students progress through a series of certificates, earning one after another at their own pace depending on their goals. • Students advance through the program by becoming increasingly engaged in programs and activities.

  28. Leadership Initiative (LI) • Student participation in the LI has rapidly increased in its second year, from 70 to 700 students. • The LI was designed using local and national data, which suggests a positive relationship between student co-curricular engagement and persistence and graduation of URM students.

  29. Leadership Initiative (LI) Participation in the Leadership Initiative provides many incentives for students: • A semester-end ceremony that recognizes all student participants who have earned co-curricular leadership certificates • An e-Portfolio that allows students to track and showcase (for use in resumes, graduate school applications, etc.) all of the academic, co-curricular and work experiences they logged in during their time at Sacramento State

  30. Leadership Initiative (LI) • The LI will be supported long-term in part by the Full Circle grant just awarded to Sacramento State’s Ethnic Studies and College of Social Sciences. • The grant is meant to bolster recruitment, retention, and graduation rates among Asian American and Pacific Islanders in particular. • Grant funds will support a full-time program advisor for the Leadership Initiative.

  31. Incentives that Motivate—Future • Financially support faculty/student research that fosters innovations in retention and persistence practices • Better and more routinely publicize this research through media outlets such as: • Publications, social networks, webinars, and live media coverage

  32. Outreach and Recruit-Back Strategies—Current • Reach out to students who were eligible to enroll for Fall 2010 but had not done so by June 2011 • Messages were sent in June, July and August • Of ~2,500 students in this category, roughly 500 re-enrolled • Many had registration or financial aid issues that Student Affairs was able to address

  33. Outreach and Recruit-Back Strategies—Future • Develop mechanisms to track the reasons students depart • Engage in retention and recruit-back promotional campaigns to keep students enrolled • Reach out to student groups most likely to return (i.e. students in good standing, non-traditional students, etc.)

  34. GI Steering Committee Executive Team Leaders • Joseph SheleyProvost and Vice President for Academic Affairs • Lori Varlotta Vice President for Student Affairs

  35. GI Steering Committee Committee Co-chairs • Marcellene Watson-DerbignyAssociate Vice President, Student Retention and Academic Success • Kathryn Palmieri Associate Director, Academic Advising Center

  36. GI Steering Committee Student Affairs Committee Members • Brigitte Clark Associate Director, Career Center • Jasmine Murphy Scholarship & Customer Service, Financial Aid Office • Ed Jones Associate VP, Campus Life/GI Team Leader Emeritus (Theme #1)

  37. GI Steering Committee • Dena LemusAssistant Director of Admissions and Outreach/GI Team Leader (Theme #5) • Karlos Santos-Coy Leadership Programs Coordinator, Student Organizations & Leadership/GI Team Leader (Theme #4)

  38. Thank you.

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