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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
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