Briefly describe a strategy in your Equity Plan that you have implemented. Include a brief description of how this strategy was chosen.
The Education Advisory Board (EAB) platform was integrated into Roosevelt’s student success plan in spring 2017. The main goal with the new technology was to increase overall student retention at the University. During the fall 2018 term, Roosevelt began using the EAB platform for early alerts and the development of progress reports to improve upon student success for those who were struggling in a particular course. Additionally, Roosevelt’s initiative concentrated reporting tools to best define courses where Black and Latinx students, as well as Pell Grant recipients and first generation students tended to struggle the most. With this information, Student Success teams at Roosevelt were better able to identify what factors put a student at risk and employ pre-emptive strategies to support students.
Articulate the intended outcomes, leading indicators and KPIs.
The overall goal for this program was to enhance students’ abilities to succeed in their courses. Roosevelt initially focused on the at-risk rate of progress reports to better understand the challenges that student populations faced in select courses. Next, Student Success Research reviewed final grades for at-risk students to identify how successful the campaign had been, using a C- grade or better as an acceptable marker of success for most classes. Lastly, Student Success Research assessed closed case reasons for each at-risk student, to best assess how Roosevelt could enhance its advising strategies to best service students.
By continuing to review progress report data and offer timely assessments, Roosevelt was not only able to increase overall retention and graduation rates, but diminish equity gaps in degree completion rates. After the first full year of implementation, Roosevelt’s fall-to-fall retention rate gap between White and Black or African American first-time full-time freshmen decreased from 25% to 11% between the fall 2017 and fall 2018 starting cohorts. For the same year, the fall-to-fall retention rate gap between Pell Grant and non-Pell Grant recipients dropped from 15% to 7%, while maintaining the second highest overall freshman retention rate (since Roosevelt began to track this information).
Professors completed progress reports for both week 4 and week 8 of each semester to identify students who were at risk of failing. Students were then alerted by email and were contacted by an advisor to develop a plan to improve upon their performance in the course. This may have involved additional discussions with their instructor and/or the Learning Commons. Based on studies from Student Success Research, Black and Latinx undergraduates, as well as Pell Grant recipients and first generation undergraduates were overrepresented in at-risk progress report campaigns, when compared to overall undergraduate enrollment. This meant that early alerts were another step to improving upon student success and decreasing equity in achievement gaps.
What people, processes or resources were assigned to support this strategy?
Katrina Coakley, Vice Provost for Student Success, spearheaded this program and has continued to facilitate greater faculty engagement with early alerts. Alicia Butler, Assistant Provost for Student Progress, has been directly involved in the distribution and assessment of week 4 and week 8 progress report campaigns. Linda Davis, Director of Academic Advising, and her team of advisors have helped to strengthen connections with at-risk students, their professors, and/or the Learning Commons, increasing the rate of successful final grades. Joseph Roeges, Associate Director of Student Success Research, has provided in-depth analysis of progress reports by demographics, courses, final grades, and case reasons with a focus on student success through an equity lens to help enhance the program. Additionally, the support of the Learning Commons, professors across the university, the Registrar, and Information Technology have built upon student confidence in academic performance.