Provide a seamless and supportive pathway from admission to graduation focused on personal and academic success to help ensure that students are career ready and positioned to be leaders and citizens in the community.
- Develop an exemplary first-year experience program designed to both support student success and attain first year to second year retention rates that surpass the national average for peer institutions.
- Develop a comprehensive Academic Advising model to transition students from high-touch general education advising to quality program based advising.
- Provide and assess a broad range of tutoring and academic support services for both general education and upper-division course work, which nurtures the highest levels of academic success.
- Expand, enhance and promote the Dual Degree Program (DDP), including the Men of Color Initiative, as a model pathway to the baccalaureate degree for transfer students from our partner community colleges.
- Develop, implement and assess comprehensive and progressive mentoring systems, internships, leadership programs and student engagement initiatives at the undergraduate and graduate levels focused on the development and enhancement of transferable real-world skills associated with exemplary leaders and citizens, and career ready professionals.
- Create, promote and navigate students through a Four-Year Career Development Plan and provide expanded, strategic on-campus employment, which focuses on increasing responsibility from freshman to senior year with an emphasis on fully preparing students to define their career goals and ensuring they are career ready professionals by graduation.
- Establish and implement the Center for the Junior Year to provide an exemplary physical and virtual resource center for native and transfer students to come together for information, support and guidance as they transition to their chosen major.
- Establish a model residential program defined by a supportive, caring and inclusive living and learning community with high levels of engagement by resident students both on campus and in the community.
Sounds great! Please provide technology support to aid with this. Like training or upgrades to degree audit and starfish. In addition please hire more staff so advisers are not stretched thin and they can collaborate with admissions and faculty. You need more student facing professionals as opposed to administrators.
This goal mentions the role of assessment in a few different places. While the institution has made an investment in creating an assessment infrastructure, there has not been a similar investment made in the execution of assessment at the programmatic and general education levels. It’s assumed that this work is part of faculty’s primary duties (and I agree that it should be). However, the work of assessing is typically completed as service outside of the official system of providing academic credit for those who work on assessment. An investment in the execution of assessment will increase the time and energy available for faculty to participate in this important task.
It’s clear that we are not meeting to goal to surpass retention rates for first and second year students when compared to peer institutions. More attention to the myriad problems associated with why students are not being retained should be a priority and should be resourced. In my opinion, this includes providing more opportunities to create real learning communities with lasting and meaningful faculty collaborations (supported by internal grant funding and faculty incentives), rather than one-off conversations a week before the semester begins. Also, the institution should do more to help students work through barriers to success that have to do with problems outside of the curriculum: poverty, hunger, institutionalized and systemic racism, academic enculturation, etc.
I see this goal, and as a graduate, working, commuter student it does not speak to me. Does GSU want me to succeed as a graduate student? I think so. GSU has some of the best graduate programs in the region and the state, let us build upon this excellence to make ourselves known nationwide.
This goal should be broader, and not just focus on who we are ‘chasing’ as the new population. Let us not forget the students that are here now. Look closely at this goal. The word ‘graduate’ appears only once. Everything else is for undergraduate students.
How do we ensure success for graduate students? Let’s take this further. How do we promote success for our commuter students? Our part-time students? Students who are part of underserved or underrepresented groups? Students who have economic hardship? Students who face mental health or disability challenges?
On another note, please try to simplify these statements. Many of them are trying to do three or four things in one. These double and triple barrel statements often lead to confusion and missed opportunities when it comes down to executing. Each bullet point should have one clear and specific item.
This is a critical goal as admitting students and not focusing on supporting their persistence and graduation is both ethically problematic and not a sound business approach. If we were able to improve our retention numbers by 5% (although it should be 15-20% higher) not only would we be serving our mission and students better, but our reputation would improve, budgets and overall enrollment would increase. As a whole, student success (including improved customer service) must be central to our decisions above all else. Given the competitive enrollment landscape and demographics downturn, this is central to our sustainability as an institution.
The centralization of advising has been a problem for many students. Advisors have had their specializations switched and decisions about these assignments don’t seem to be connected with what is best for students. The connection between faculty and undergraduate advisors has been hindered — we used to talk with advisors regularly and have opportunities to work together.
I’m not sure why there is so much of a push for ‘efficiency’ when it comes to functions that involve positions that directly interact with students while the ranks of senior administrators (who don’t directly interact with students) seems to expand endlessly.