Practical and Proven Strategies for Improving Transfer Student Retention

September 9, 2008

Beyond Admissions: The Role of the SSAO in Transfer Student Success

Charles Schroeder

Senior Associate Consultant

Presentation overview• Defining retention

• Key assumptions and principles

• The Role of Student Affairs : Understanding our communities of practice

• Review of transfer issues, concerns and challenges

• Major retention initiatives that substantially improve the quality of student life and learning for transfer students.

• Final Recommendation: Create a culture of evidence and continuous improvement!

• Questions, concerns and “parting shots”

Defining Retention

• Retention is an outcome of a high quality undergraduate educational experience that puts students and their learning at the center of the educational enterprise.

• Providing intellectually stimulating and satisfying learning environments are central elements in fostering student success and educational attainment.

• It is more cost effective to retain students than to recruit new ones.

Key assumptions and principles• Focus on the total student experience and create

comprehensive solutions.

• Data and mission driven… discover major barriers to transfer student success through qualitative and quantitative assessment.

• Create a collaborative improvement process that includes key stakeholders.

• Develop targeted action plans with clear, measurable goals, outcomes, strategies and tactics.

• Be prepared to invest some new / additional resources.

Exploring collaboration: Transaction continuum COLLABORATIVE

I

COOPERATIVE

I

COURTEOUS

I

CORDIAL

I

COMPLACENT

Collaboration: Bridging the great divide

“ the process of shared creation”

Schrage, 1989

Strategies to facilitate collaboration• Engage in scouting: Boundary spanning and environmental

assessment

• Identify issues of consequence at the macro and micro levels (i.e. self-interests; triggering events, etc.)

• Determine primary and ancillary stakeholders…ones with expertise, insights and motivation.

• Create a sense of team….common goals; processes that build trust, respect, openness, etc.

• Seek opportunities most likely to result in early success…”pick the low hanging fruit”.

• Maintain a long term perspective.

Understanding Our Communities of Practice• Student services

• Student development

• Student learning

Management Community of Practice: Student services

• Student metaphor: Students as customers

• SA metaphor : SA as managers

• Process : Improve quality and efficiency of services

• Outcome: Student satisfaction

• Theory: Customer service and management theory

• Models: TQM; CQI; benchmarking

• Assessment: Student satisfaction surveys

Educational Communities of Practice Student Learning

• Student as learner

• SA as educators

• Experiential, active learning

• Outcomes: knowledge, skill

development

• Models: SLI; Principles of

Good Practice; Learning

Reconsidered

• Assessment: CSEQ; NSSE;

CAAP, etc.

Student Development

• Student as client

• SA experts on development

• Individual growth / develop.

• Outcomes: Increased

psycho-social/ cognitive

• Models: THE; Student

development theory

• Assessment: SDTLA

Translating strategies for improving the transfer experience into action

• Streamline the admissions / registration process

• Improve orientation, incorporation & integration processes and promote much higher levels of involvement & engagement

• Improve business processes and promote service excellence

• Enhance curriculum planning and management

• Engage in systematic assessment and champion continuous institutional improvement / effectiveness

Practices for streamlining the admissions / registration process• Create clear and enforceable transfer articulation agreements

• Do transcript audits and pre-registration onsite

• Consider co-registration opportunities

• Place institutional representatives in major feeder schools

• Determine transfer course credit before registration

• Increase collaboration / partnerships between two year and four year faculty , especially with department chairs

• Provide systematic assessment feedback loops to feeder schools on the performance of their students achievements

Student engagement: the key nutrient in promoting student success

…the time and energy students devote to educationally sound activities, inside and outside of the classroom, and the policies and practices that institutions use to induce students to take part in these activities…

Two components of student engagement

• What students do – time and energy devoted to educationally purposeful activities

• What institutions do – using effective educational practices to induce students to do the right things

Practices that enhance academic / social integration via engagement• Transfer learning communities…TRIGS, block schedules and

departmental sponsored learning communities

• Transfer Resource / Service / Success Centers

• Clear pathways to transfer student success … pre-enrollment FAQ`s; student transfer advocates; departmental sponsored orientation and incorporation programs and process; student / faculty mentors.

• Shift from academic advising to educational planning … encourage formal connections with academic clubs, transfer student associations, etc.

• Have the Career Center facilitate CWS placement

• Early-alert / intervention for “at-risk”

Quality Service : Creating a supportive, welcoming climate

Service quality can best be described as a measure of how consistently a service is delivered when match with students` expectations

What's it like to get your driver's license?

Our Aim: Student –Centered Systems

“High friendliness” systems never subordinate student convenience and needs in favor of the convenience and needs of the people who work within the system or the institution itself.

High friendliness ???

“What part of NO don't you understand?”

Sign posted in a college's

financial aid office.

Student-Centered???

Financial Aid Office

Closed to Students

Monday-Wednesday-Friday

9:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m.

Nurturing transactions???

“To err is human, to forgive is not library policy”

Sign in College Library

Who really matters???

All faculty and staff may move directly to the front of the line.

Sign at a college cafeteria

Where's the mercy ???

Sign on the wall of a Baltimore Church:

“Trespassers will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Signed, The Sisters of Mercy”

Service to our students and

other customers will be fast,

friendly, simple , effective and

flexible.

If your institution adopted this strategy along

with measurable performance standards, how

would it affect the way you and your unit

would relate to transfer students and other

customers?

A Sample Service Strategy

Benefits of a “service strategy”

• The strategy serves as a clear aim that focuses our efforts on what matters in every transaction … fast, friendly, simple, effective, flexible.

• The strategy demonstrates our commitment to one another and our customers.

• The strategy provides common ground for teamwork and “collective effort”.

• The strategy provides the platform for continuous improvement based upon clear and measurable service standards developed and owned by each service unit.

Practices that improve business processes and the quality of service• Make quality service “Job One”

• Create a high powered “barrier buster” action team.

• Initiate quality service audits in major service units…engage in process analysis and redesign.

• Appoint customer service coordinators in high demand service areas (registrar; financial aid, etc.)

• Employ a variety of assessment tools (i.e. satisfaction surveys, comment cards, “mystery shopper programs”) to determine impact and success.

• Develop and promulgate a campus wide “service strategy”

Practices that enhance curriculum planning and management• Gain access to the institutions strategic enrollment

management team….create a comprehensive, strategic transfer recruitment and retention plan.

• Determine, through assessment, curricular disconnects (course availability / scheduling) & “flow through” problems

• Designate an institutional transfer coordinator

• Appoint transfer liaisons in academic and student affairs as well as each college and school… establish a monthly “transfer forum”

• Develop tracking mechanisms (degree audits) and individualized academic plans.

Create a “culture of evidence and continuous improvement”• Develop a comprehensive assessment program that

generates timely and relevant data on the transfer student experience.

• Pick the “low hanging fruit” … student focus groups; telephone surveys, etc.

• Focus on “proving and improving”

• Create a sense of urgency and embrace “positive restlessness” as a cultural characteristic.