Faculty Senate Meeting Agenda

Retention Survey -

Enrollment Management:
RETENTION REPORT to Faculty Senate, November 2004
Melissa Miller Kincart, Assistant to the Vice Provost for Enrollment Management, Office of the Provost

“When it comes to higher education, Utah State University is always interested in making converts, of course. But it's just as interested in making ‘re-verts’ — getting students to return to the school after their freshman year” (Deseret News Editorial, 16 May 2004).

Introduction

President’s Hall efforts to decrease the student-to-faculty ratio with the hiring 100 new faculty members, and improve advising and the first year experience by advancing initiatives that place emphasis on “personalized attention” have greatly impacted USU’s retention rate which in 2003 which rose to 75 percent compared with 61 percent just three years ago. http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/1%2C1249%2C595063044%2C00.html

However, this is just part of the story. One of Utah State’s institutional goals is to “improve the recruitment and retention of students.” Over the past two years, the Enrollment Management team has been operating under the principle that retention begins with intentional student recruitment. The following strategies have been employed to insure that we achieved the institutional goal of increasing the average incoming ACT score to a 24 and enrolling the best-prepared freshman class in USU’s history.

o Active recruitment–-The Office of Admissions is now being very intentional about helping prospective students and families navigate the college choice process by following a detailed recruitment plan and using such strategies as Territory Management, campus programming, and yield activities.
o Integrated Marketing and Communication Plans—The Carnegie “Think” campaign, unveiled in the 2004 recruitment cycle, provides the Admissions Office as well as the whole campus with a family of publications. These publications are key in articulating the “look and feel” of Utah State University. Additionally, a communication plan was developed for recruitment target markets.
o “Find the Right Fit”— Our Admissions professionals are striving to find an effective match between the students they wish to enroll and Utah State University. They are intentionally seeking out better prepared, degree seeking students who desire to be at an institution where academics come first and priority is given to hands on learning and personalized service. (Nursing students no longer receive incoming freshman scholarships; New Research Fellowship were created to play to the university’s strengths; and Maintaining appropriate General Studies ratio.)

Intentional student recruitment will continue to underline our efforts on the retention front. However, it is important to report that we have made tremendous strides in other areas. We continually remind ourselves that we just don’t care about admitting and enrolling students, but we care about admitting and enrolling students in order to graduate them. We want students to be successful, admitting, enrolling students but by retaining them so that they succeed and graduate.

In order to fully appreciate where we have been, and how far we have come, you may want to familiarize yourself with last year’s report as it will provide essential foundational information as well as to establish a baseline for comparison. http://www.usu.edu/fsenate/Archives/fs/agendas/1Dec03.html#rs

Processes and Follow-up Practices

Cohort Uploaded SIS and Cleaned Up
This practice has enabled our retention specialist to identify, track and analyze the first year cohort with multiple data elements in a more timely and efficient manner--a noteworthy advancement. Additionally, as of Fall 2004, all Nursing, incarcerated, IELI, and special exchange students have been removed from the First-Year, Full-time, Degree-seeking cohort, due to the fact that they are not USU-degree-seeking students.

Matriculation Advisor
The institution has added a matriculation advisor to its staff, who closely tracks those who leave campus; a leave-of-absence policy has been created that makes it easier for them to return. Cultural factors – such as the tendency of USU students to marry earlier and to go on church service missions – lead many of them to take a break from their education. Krystin Deschamps in the Registrar’s Office has been instrumental in advising students as to their exit options and the ramifications that their decisions may have on time-to-degree. She has also strived to get the word out regarding the exit procedure, in addition to recruiting these students back and contracting with high-risk re-admit students.

Tracking

o 2002 First-Time, Full-Time Cohort = 2308 Total students—882 non-returning Fall 2003
LOA 170—162 Missionaries, 2 Military
(11 of these students have returned from missions and are currently enrolled. As most are scheduled to return Spring and Fall 2005, it will be important to track actually how many do return as we have never been able to report this number with any confidence.)
Withdrawals 69— 6 Missionaries
Scholarship Holds---25 Missionaries, 1 Military
Follow-up 98—35 Missionaries, 2 Military
Exclusions 233 (Historical numbers range from 350-400)
Note—Lost 23 students with 3.5 of higher and 159 with a USU GPA 2.3 or lower; the decrease of students “lost” with a 3.5 GPA or higher is tied to deliberate retention initiatives aimed at this group, initiatives that have been tested and may be expanded to other first-year students to increase retention among them. Also, the Hansen Retention Scholarship has played a significant role in retaining students who are financially challenged.

o 2003 First Time, Full time Cohort = 2358 Total students—987 Non-returning Fall 2004
LOA/W 547—338 LOA Missionaries, 2 W Missionaries, 4 LOA Military
Follow-up –158 students contacted, 16 Missionaries, 12 Athletes (Transfers—to warm location, wrong majors-Radiology, Marine Bio, Dance, “follow a boy,” married, financial, ELED)
Exclusions 360 (Numbers still coming in but with what we have recorded the Fall 2003 retention rate will come in at 70% or higher)
Non-Returnees Make up—376 students, 160 USU GPA 2.3 or lower—43 Undeclared,
14 UBUS, 12 GREG (2 17 ACT) 217 Students 2.3-3.5 USU GPA—77 Undeclared, 16 UBUS, 3 IELI Total Undeclared Leavers 150 students—40% of Non-Returning Population

Disney Internship
It appears that USU loses around 15-20 students of the first time, full-time cohort because students elect to participate in the Disney World internship program. This program stipulates that students must be registered for classes at their institution of higher education. It appears we may have some students who actually participate without being enrolled for credits at USU. Thus they show as a non-returnee although they intend to return the spring of their sophomore year. We are still investigating this situation, and trying to determine if it is a problem. Currently a student may sign up for this opportunity through various advisors, and it appears no one is checking to make sure the students is registered. We might explore centralizing this process to insure a stopgap and to try to deter students to explore this opportunity later in their academic career rather than after their first or second semester.

Follow up
The follow up process that were outlined in last year’s report continues to be practiced in a effort to be more proactive and advise students to their exit and re-entry options. Students and parents truly are amazed that we identify who they are and take the time to follow-up to answer questions and provide advice.

Reporting
Due to the MOU between the Provost Office and Athletics and the liaison relationship that has been fostered, we are no able to identify our non-returning athletes and follow up where needed. Furthermore, the cohort, LOA, and withdrawal designations on the system paired with our strategic cohort follow-up information, allowed us to identify 22 additional cohort exclusions for the AAA Office national reports for 2002. They were able to pull this information--in addition to obtaining it as in past years--but the additional data increased our rate by almost 2%.

At-Risk Population: Undeclared
Cope and Hannah (1975) state,” Personal commitment to either an academic or occupational goal is the single most important determinant of persistence in college.’’ Over the past two years, USU has added 12 new advisors to its staff and opened a University Advising and Transfer Services Center. The conveniently located center is open to high school students as well as USU students. We believe this approach will not only allow student to one-stop shop with needed resources but also move to a major in a more timely and intentional manner.

At-Risk Population: High Ability
In an effort to provide a meaningful experience for our scholarship students while at the same time appealing to their “no risk” nature, we have been intentional about setting the scholarship GPA renewal at a 3.5, offering 4-year awards, and offering students an opportunity to sample Honors risk-fee. The Honors 2000 class is one credit course offered on-line. During the semester, interested students will apply to continue taking part in the Honors pathway, which offers a myriad of choices from compiling a portfolio, earning a prestigious fellowship, working with a faculty mentor and much, much more

FYE Initiatives
The FYE committee has been extremely intentional about bringing together all offices and departments that could potentially impact a student during their first year. This group has assessed current First years practices, and identified future initiatives. By offering students a menu of first year offerings from Freshman Interest groups tied to their Housing, Connections, or Fall leadership each of these offerings now have common core elements in addition to the Freshman Literature experience. Connections has been greatly revised and will reflect the “Whole Person Development” in its curriculum for 2005 and will be more tied to “Move-in” and “Welcome Activities”. We hope to reach 60% of our new students with this medium. Special honors sections were extremely successful, and this type of “target audience” format may be expanded to undeclared students.
Additionally, this year the A-Team members have functioned as Peer Mentors for the classes and have been instrumental with follow-up during the first six weeks (At risk period) with intrusive e-mails.
Obstacles

Obtaining Data
As of present, we rely on our colleagues in computer services to run our reports in order to obtain data. Currently there is no scheduled retention reporting other than what is prompted by the Retention Specialist or by the national reports. Additionally, these receive a low priority due to lack of resources in the technology unit and the Banner conversion. The Registrar’s Office is currently advertising to fill a programmer/reports position, which will be instrumental in insuring accurate and timely data reporting.

Changing Student Behavior
Although we have made significant strides in one year regarding tracking students who exit the University, this is a constant area of concern. Students need to understand upon admission to USU they have been accepted into a degree program. We enter into a contract with them that we not only plan to honor their admission, but also plan to graduate them from their degree program. There are valid reasons why a student may need to interrupt their degree program. However, students must begin to understand that they need to take the appropriate course of action to do so. Leaving without contacting the University is not advisable. Through our outreach efforts and word of mouth, we hope to connect with more students prior to their departure. We know it was helpful to have this information in the Connections textbook as well as the Policy and Procedure assignment for this course.

Short Window of Opportunity
There is such a short window of opportunity to follow up on students who have not registered or enrolled in the next term. The key is to catch them while they are still on campus. However, the reporting lag is prohibitive. Additionally, because not all students have chosen to activate their CC e-mail account, communication by e-mail has proven ineffective because the personal e-mail address on record has changed since time of admission. Additionally, phone numbers change frequently. Not to mention the ability to influence a high ability student to stay is much more negotiable if they haven’t already enrolled in another institution.

Action Items for 2005 and Beyond

USU E-mail Assigned at Admission
It is the recommendation of the Enrollment Management Team that USU should assign prospective students a USU email account upon acceptance to the university instead of at SOAR or later.

Earlier Assignment
Currently students can initiate an email account when they attend SOAR.
This is too late for much of the communication we do with incoming
Students, and not all students attend SOAR, which delays their getting an
Account until they pay their fall fees. Ideally, a student should be
assigned an email account with the acceptance letter. A paragraph of
That letter would read something like the following:

Welcome to USU. This is your email address. Please check your email as
soon as possible. We have already sent you a message with important
information regarding your acceptance. We will send you official
notices about your financial aid, your classes, and activities through your USU
account. If you prefer to use another email account, we can help you
forward your USU email there.

We suggest assigning each student a pin number that they activate by going to a designated website. By encouraging students to activate this account while they are in the college choice cycle, we believe we will be able to communicate with them more cost effectively about important information to help them decide if USU is the right place for them. In the 2004 recruitment cycle, the Admissions Office spent over $40,000 in postage, communicating with students in a direct mail plan. We believe this direct mail plan would be more effective and help us better allocate precious resources to other need recruitment initiatives, if our yield efforts were supplemented by an e-mail communication plan. By encouraging students early to use this USU account, we believe we have the ability to better connect them to their advisors, faculty members, and peer mentors that will be crucial in helping them decide to attend USU. Additionally, it will be crucial in allowing us to communicate to incoming students information and deadlines on the enrollment deposit, SOAR, registration, tuition payment, Connections and parking.

Policy Considerations
Some students will be assigned an email account that will never attend; however, the savings in postage and printing should far outweigh the Costs of those accounts. Admissions tracks and monitors all students who apply, are accepted and then enroll. They could easily provide a list of students who do not attend so that their accounts could be canceled after the third week of classes. Since it so easy to get free email accounts with yahoo, etc., the prospect of students misusing their USU account is small, but the ease of communicating with prospective students will dramatically increase.

Track Intention in Banner/ Cross Check with Leavers
Intention regarding participation in higher education is an important predictor in degree completion.”(Tinto, 1987) The 2001 CIRP Survey, which was administered to 1,848 first- time, full-time freshman that attended SOAR reported the following intention data.
• 10.3% of the students seek either no degree, a vocational certificate or an associate’s degree, which is 3.5-4.5 times greater proportion of freshman as compared with their peers at other schools.
• 8.9% of the students estimate they will transfer to another college before graduating. Nearly twice as large a proportion found at our peer instiituions.

Who Persisted/ and Who Left Data
We haven’t been able to obtain the historically in-depth data on who persisted at USU and look at time to graduation, major areas, and entry qualifications. This information could be outlined in recruitment publications and assist students in making wise major choices.

At one time the State was going to cover the cost of using the enrollment search query of the National Clearinghouse database. If this is not going to come to pass, it would be interesting to see if the data obtain from this membership was useful in discovering more information on the educational experience of USU’s drop-outs and graduates. The benefit may outweigh the cost in that in some cases, additional performance funding may be obtained when leavers are correctly reclassified as transfers and graduates.

Early Alert Intervention Program
The data show we lose about 150 students each year to low academic performance. Had these students been invited (via a Registration Hold) to visit with an advisor/staff member/peer mentor who would have provided them a USU connection and additional resources—could USU help increase their chances of persistence. We are exploring a possible pilot program with the undeclared population. In addition, to follow-up with students who appear to be in jeopardy of losing their scholarship, is planned.

Undeclared Intrusive Advising
The primary mission of University Advising & Transfer Services (UATS) is to advise undeclared and general studies (formerly known as “general registration”) students. Advisors will focus on a combination of career exploration and course selection designed to help the student find an appropriate major while making progress toward completing University Studies and lower-division or prerequisite requirements for their potential major(s).

• Current intrusive advising practices
Individual registration holds have been placed on 420 students. These holds ensure that students who are at-risk of failing or of having too many credits receive accurate information and create an action plan that will increase their chances of success. As we move 60+ credit students into majors, more emphasis will be placed on 45+ students.
• UATS placed registration holds on 203 students who have 60+ earned hours. Before these students can register for Spring 2005, they must meet one of three options. 1. Declare a major 2. Meet with a major advisor to establish a realistic degree plan so they can declare a major. The contract includes courses the student is required to register for, the GPA requirement for each course, and an overall strategy to attain that GPA. 3. Make an appointment with career exploration to determine potential career/major options.
• All General Studies students (169) have registration holds for the upcoming semester. These students were required to meet with their instructors to have them fill out a form listing their mid-term grades. The advisors will check each student’s GPA at the end of the term. If their GPA is 2.0 or above, then they will be placed into Undeclared/Undecided and admitted in good standing
• Forty-eight students with 45+ credits also received registration holds. These students are required to meet with a UATS advisor to discuss career and major options.

• Intrusive advising initiatives: [future?]
A Checklist of requirements for first-year undeclared students to be handed out at SOAR and during appropriate advising sessions. This checklist will include a logical and reasonable plan of action for undeclared students to take to determine a major.
• Organize and sponsor a Majors Fair, which would be modeled on Preview and Scholars Day, but would reach current students. Advisors from all majors on campus would meet for one day in the Ball Room to talk to students. Students would have access to unofficial transcripts and a representative from the Registrar’s Office would collect Change of Matriculation forms.
• Pilot an intrusive advising program for academic actions student that would require them to meet with a UATS advisor early in the semester to make short-term goals, better manage their time, to complete progress reports, and to ensure that they do not self-advise and waste their time and money on unnecessary credits.
• Internal GPA policy: While a student may remain in good standing at the university with a 2.0 GPA, most majors require a higher admittance and graduation GPA. In order to prepare students to qualify for a greater number of majors, and for them to be in good standing within the Undeclared program, they will have to maintain a minimum 2.25 GPA after earning 30 credits, and a 2.5 GPA after earning 60 credits.
• Undeclared students with 45 or more credits will be required to complete a
contract. A staff member within the Career Services Office will assist students in career or major exploration activity, and after it is completed will release the hold on their registration until the student obtains a signature. Undeclared students with 60 or more credits must decide on a major and meet with an advisor for that major. In the meeting, the advisor and students will set up a plan of entry into the major.

Institutional Commitment
Student departure is a complex issue. There is no simple answer or institutional path in understanding it. USU can be more intentional about seeking better-prepared and committed students to our degree programs. We can be more intentional about following up on students who have chosen to drop out. But according to Tinto (1987) “properly understood, institutional commitment is the part of each and every member of the institution.” Continued assessment does take a substantial time and resources. [a note of commendation to the faculty as being known for going out of their way to help students, to provide them with quality classroom, lab, studio, and field experiences, and to demonstrate an ethic of caring?]

The average total revenue gained by retaining one full-time student who would have dropped out after their freshman year for a 4-year public institution is$17, 225. We are doing better, but we are still losing a good chunk of students who leave in good academic standing. We assume they are making the academic integration -–but the literature suggests they may be failing to develop the non- academic factors that have the ability to impact persistence—self-confidence, academic goals, institutional commitment and social support and involvement.

Personal commitment to an academic or occupational goal is the single most important determinant of persistence in college (Cope and Hannah, 1975) How can we within the University community shape a student’s self confidence, academic road, and institutional commitment in so much our efforts strengthen their personal commitment to their education and student experience. People can make a difference. Faculty and staff are crucial not only in the college choice process but play an essential role in a student’s decision to persist. Our personal, unsung efforts exemplify Utah State’s University commitment to whole person development by not only attracting, admitting, enrolling students but by retaining them so that they succeed and graduate.

.
Melissa Miller Kincart
Assistant to the Vice Provost for Enrollment Management, Office of the Provost

Filed November 2004

AGENDA PACKET
3:00	Call to order Approval of Minutes - October 4, 2004	Janis Boettinger
	Announcements Academic History Committee - Faculty Volunteer	Janis Boettinger
3:05	University Business	Administration
3:15	Introductions and Short Presentations Scott Mietchen, Vice Pres. for University Advancement Randall Spetman, Athletic Director
3:35	Information Items Social Security Numbers Memo December Commencement	Janis Boettinger Janis Boettinger
3:40	Consent Agenda EPC Business Transfer Credit Flow Chart Retention Report Parking Report Cultural Activities Report	Joyce Kinkead Melissa Miller Kincart Lisa Leishman Gary Kiger
	Key Issues & Action Items Proposed Tuition Increase Bar Graph on Family Income Proposed Resolution 1)Faculty Support of Tuition Increase 2)Faculty Involvment in Distribution of Merit Faculty and Student Collaboration Proposed Resolution Committees Honorary Awards and Degrees - Kim Openshaw Bookstore Committee - Handbook Committee - Janice Hall Department Teaching Excellence Award - Tom Schroeder	Janis Boettinger Janis Boettinger Janis Boettinger
4:25	New Business
4:30	Adjourn