The First-Year

Experience….

College Success

Strategies:

John N. Gardner

Conference on the First-Year Experience

and College Success Strategies

Bristol Community College

Fall River, MA.

March 27, 2013

“What’s it all about?”

Let me tell you mine…

Each of us has a story, including and especially your students

Many of them love to tell their stories but are rarely asked

Once upon a time… I came to Fall River, 1981, to honor

my first mentor in higher education.

Let me tell you his story

because his story becomes

my story.

Sto

ry T

ime

Sto

ry T

ime

This is where it all began…

The USC Horseshoe

And the wall

surrounding

the Horseshoe

Big

Pic

ture

Backgro

und

Civil Rights Act (1964)

Voting Rights Act (1965)

Higher Education Act (1965)

Presidential Leadership

USC’s 21st President, Thomas F. Jones, 1962-1974 – an electrical engineer who became a human social engineer

Formation of University Associates as town/gown network to lay basis for peaceful integration

First TRIO grant:1966, Upward Bound Backgro

und S

tory

Student Social Activism

February 1968: The “Orangeburg Massacre”---

-Congress adopts Omnibus Crime Control Act

US invasion of Cambodia as a trigger for

campus demonstrations

Backgro

und S

tory

Student Social Activism

The shootings/deaths at Kent State and

Jackson State

May 1970 protest at USC dispersed by SC

National Guard—no students shot at USC

Backgro

und S

tory

Occupation of the President’s

office building leads to:

Moving the University Treasurer’s office

to an impregnable fortress

Doing what presidents do when faced

with a crisis…

Form a committee! Backgro

und S

tory

Form a Committee

The Committee crawls along and “While

Congress debated I took Panama”

President comes with a proposal

The University 101 proposal adopted by the

USC Faculty Senate: July 1972—one year

trial, 3 credits, pass/fail; plus a mandatory

faculty development preparation program

Backgro

und S

tory

The public agenda

Reengineer the beginning college experience

Teach students to love the University

Therefore, prevent riots

Do you teach your students to love being in

college and at your institution?

Backgro

und S

tory

The hidden agenda

Use the course to mandate faculty “training”,

using pedagogies from NTL, and the Human

Potential Movement

Change the faculty culture and therefore the

campus: make more student-centered

Get faculty and Student Affairs to work

together

Backgro

und S

tory

Are any of these your objectives today?

University 101 ran as a presidential initiative until

President Jones “resigned” in 1974

University 101 restructured as an

academic department, directed by

a faculty member, John Gardner,

reporting to the Provost

Backgro

und S

tory

On the morning of the same day I last came to Fall River my then current President and I met with David Riesman at Harvard, the founder of Harvard’s first-year seminar in 1959.

So if Harvard’s students need to

be taught “student success”,

what about yours?

What is student

success?

Backgro

und S

tory

Whatever you say it is

Something that can be taught

Something that can be learned

A body of knowledge, skills, attitudes,

behaviors

Learned in groups (especially peer groups)

Multi-dimensional, holistic Stu

dent

Success I

s:

Start with your institutional

mission statement…

…then the needs of your students,

the community, state, region, and country.

So the question then becomes,

“How do you teach student success

at your college?”

Implicitly

Explicitly

Intentionally

Serendipitously

Through sink or swim

Let’s look at my definition of

first-year student success

Academic Success/GPA

Relationships

Identity Development

Career Decision Making

Health & Wellness

Faith & Spirituality

Multicultural Awareness

Civic Responsibility

Retention – the baseline

The totality of all experiences

our students have

A specific program

(most commonly a first-year seminar)

An educational philosophy about the

first year

A registered trademark owned by USC

Whatever you want it to be

What

is t

he F

irst-

Year

Experience?

So this is all about the

purposes of the first year.

Make money

Weed out

Allow the most senior people to

avoid the lowest status students

HIS

TO

RIC

P

UR

PO

SE

S

What are

your

purposes

for the

first year?

The first year in the community college

is particularly unique because:

It often isn’t a “year”

It often is multiple first-year experiences

(ESL, DE, +matriculated first 30 credits)

It may also be a transfer experience

(in or outward bound)

Focus on the first year now has

different labels:

First-Year

Experience

College Success

Student Success

Retention

The College Completion

Agenda

Some basic assumptions underlying

focus on student success

Students can be taught to be successful

Many of them will want to learn this

Institutions have to take more responsibility

for student learning

Stop blaming the victim

Focus on what we, the institution, control

Have to reduce tolerance for failure

Some basic assumptions underlying

focus on student success

The first year matters

The first year needs to be reengineered

Developmental education needs to be reengineered

Have to rethink when the first year begins (and hence connections with the pipeline)

Student success efforts require a partnership (of faculty, academic and student affairs professionals)

The greatest influence

on student learning…

…is that of other students.

Two Main Prongs of Attack!

What can the

institution do? What can I do?

Practices

The operationalizing of policies

Rituals

Pedagogies Behaviors that support or detract from success

What

can t

he institu

tion

do?

Policies

Application for admissions including

policies for late admissions?

Who performs advising?

Is academic advising required for initial

and/or continuing registration?

Is placement testing required and are the

results enforced?

Is Orientation required?

What

can t

he institu

tion

do?

Policies

How “late” is “late registration”?

How late into the term may students start

classes?

Are certain students required to participate in

certain interventions? E.g. first-year seminars?

How late in the term may students drop a course

without a penalty?

Do you permit the use of “peer leaders” in

instructional settings?

What

can t

he institu

tion

do?

Policies

Do you enforce an attendance policy?

How do you integrate adjunct instructors into

departmental cultures and support their

professional development?

How do you evaluate and reward employee

practices that promote student success?

May new students take their first college

courses on line?

What

can t

he institu

tion

do?

Programs: What’s the status of

these initiatives?

First-year seminars

Learning communities

Supplemental Instruction (SI)

Early alert

Orientation (and other welcoming

ceremonial rituals)

What

can t

he institu

tion

do?

Programs: What’s the status of

these initiatives?

Summer bridge

Financial aid counseling and early awarding

Teaching financial literacy

Intrusive and developmental advising

Counseling

Career planning

What

can t

he institu

tion

do?

Programs: What’s the status of

these initiatives?

Redesigning developmental education

Academic support/tutoring

On-campus employment

Student activities

Athletics

Child care

Initiatives to include families

What

can t

he institu

tion

do?

A few guiding questions about the

institution’s first year…

What would you have to do to have an excellent first year?

How do you define success for your new students?

Do you have a plan for new student success?

If so, how is the implementation coming?

Retention

Rete

nti

on

Re

ten

tio

n:

Pri

vate

In

sti

tuti

on

s

-4

-3

-2

-1

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

ImplementYear

1yr post 2yr post 3yr post 4yr post 5yr post

Private Institutions’ Change in 1-yr Retention Rates Post FoE Plan Implementation by Level of Implementation

high degree

medium degree

limited degree

Retention: Two-Year Institutions

0

0.25

0.5

0.75

1

1.25

1.5

1.75

2

2.25

1-year post 2-years post 3-years post 4-years post

Institutions’ Change in Part-Time 1-yr Retention Rates by Length of Time Post Self-Study

Retention: 2-Year Institutions

-2-1.5

-1-0.5

00.5

11.5

22.5

33.5

4

1-year post 2-years post 3-years post 4-years post

Institutions’ Change in Full-Time 1-yr Retention Rates by Length of Time Post Self-Study

Is the first year in your institution’s strategic plan?

Do you have an advisory/stakeholder/advocacy group for

the first year?

What are your high enrollment courses and what are your

efforts to improve student performance therein?

What are your high failure rate courses and what are your

efforts to improve student performance therein?

What is the current status of academic and student affairs

administrators/faculty partnerships?

What is current level of faculty ownership

for the first year?

A few guiding questions…

Your locus of control

Translate the institutional mission to your

campus, unit, and individual role.

Focus on your individual locus of control and

what you can do to influence student success.

Focus specifically on: - Your interactions with students

- Your influence on others who interact

with students

-Your ability to leverage institutional policy

and practice

What

can y

ou d

o?

Your locus of control

Have a personal philosophy of education. Start with your core values/beliefs.

These are the basis of everything you do.

Translate that philosophy into a definition

of student success and a philosophy

about how to achieve that.

What

can y

ou d

o?

I suggest each of us needs a

personal philosophy of education.

Here is mine…

1. Successful access to and attainment in higher education is the principal channel of upward social mobility in the United States.

2. Rates of failure and attrition are unacceptable and represent an enormous waste of human resources and capital. The largest amounts of failure and attrition during the college experience take place during or at the completion of the first year (or the equivalent thereof).

3. Necessary changes in pedagogies, policies, and curriculum must be based on sound assessment practices and findings, but this assessment must be mission-related and must pay appropriate respect to the vast diversity of American postsecondary institutional types. Institutions want and need to be able to compare their performance in the first college year with peer institutions and/or with aspirational groups in terms of learning outcomes vis a vis recognized, desirable standards.

4. The public demand for accountability is increasing and will continue to do so. In order to satisfy this demand, campuses must have more data on their student characteristics, what those students experience in college, how and what they are learning, and whether they are improving and receiving value-added knowledge and experiences.

5. Any efforts to improve the beginning college experience must be more connected to the K-12 pipeline than they are today. Although there are many notable efforts, the pre-college and college experiences are still largely unconnected.

6. Any effort to more seriously improve academic success during the first college year must involve more of the faculty and must be legitimized by the disciplinary cultures and bodies which measure and determine the criteria for success and advancement of faculty in their subcultures. A central issue is faculty resistance to change and the resulting need to vastly increase faculty buy-in to these proposed first-year initiatives.

7. The roles of campus chief executive, chief academic and chief financial officers, and trustees are also critical for mobilizing institutional change, for determining priorities, and for finding and allocating necessary personnel and fiscal resources; more attention must be paid to the knowledge of the first college year possessed by these four leadership categories and how they act upon this knowledge. In addition all important campus middle managers—deans and department heads—who either promote or inhibit change, must also be addressed in like fashion. Another key cohort is the institutional research professionals and other colleagues who are responsible for assessment and reaccreditation self-studies.

8. The most dominant perception held by the public and its elected

representatives in terms of where responsibility for college student

learning/failure rests is that the problems we face in higher

education attainment are most fundamentally due to the failure of

college students to take sufficient responsibility for their own

learning.

9. The first college year should be transformational; pedagogies

of engagement are known, necessary, and desirable, and student

learning in the first year also must be tied to issues of civic

concern.

10. The foundation of all the outcomes we desire from American

higher education, for better or worse, is laid in the first college

year. Unfortunately, most campuses have very little research-based data on

the effectiveness of their first college year, and thus more assessment of that

year (and the tools to do so) is in order.

So What Can I Do Directly With Students?

Think globally, act locally.

This means incorporating into your

practices the research based

knowledge we have accumulated

about what practices lead to student

success in your setting.

Be approachable, practice appropriate self-

disclosure (builds trust)*

Come to class early/stay afterwards to be available

to talk to students

Use your syllabus as a teaching tool

Demystify what it takes to be successful in

your course

Require attendance

Teach your students how to study in your course

Success s

trate

gie

s f

or

faculty

* For staff, too

Learn and use student names**

Test early/test often

Implement your own “early alert” system

Encourage students to participate in Supplemental

Instruction (SI) (if applicable), first-year seminars,

learning communities, and other high impact

interventions*

Give prompt and explicit feedback to students on

tests, assigned work

Inform students of helping resources*

Success s

trate

gie

s f

or

faculty

* For staff, too

Solicit regular feedback from students and share

with them (e.g. one minute paper)*

Use multiple teaching modalities to accommodate

different learning styles

If you require a text, then actually use it.

(Teach your students how to use the text.)

Create/facilitate study groups

Encourage faculty/student and student/student

interaction outside of class*

Suggest requiring early term out-of-class

office visits

Success s

trate

gie

s f

or

faculty

* For staff, too

Encourage/require/reward students for using

helping services – especially your Learning

Centers*

Encourage/reward students for joining co-curricular

groups*

Leverage peer influence; if possible use peer

leaders

Give students opportunity/reward for taking initiative

Explain where your course fits in to the

Core Curriculum

Success s

trate

gie

s f

or

faculty

* For staff, too

Additional success strategies for staff

1. Maximize teachable

opportunities from your

role as supervisor of

student employees

2. Practice developmental

academic advising –

informally or formally

3. It’s all about

relationships

4. Adopt some mentees

5. Make your unit’s space

inviting

6. Advise a student

organization

7. Teach a college success

course

8. Lead the horse to water

9. Be available to students;

invite them to your office

Indirect ways to increase impact

on students…

Pass the good “intelligence” you get from them up the line

Review the rules and policies that you either control or can

influence in your own unit’s “sphere of influence”

Be an advocate for policies, practices, and people that

influence student success

Volunteer to serve on College committees, tack forces that

may influence student success

Impact strategies

Open doors for people less powerful than you and give

them feedback and opportunities

Consider going over to the “dark side” (for a while!)

Be active in campus governance activities – if you don’t self

govern, you will be governed: power abhors a vacuum!

Take assessment seriously; it’s not a flash in the pan: use

the results of assessment for planning and decision making

Impact strategies

So many ideas, so little time…

…Discussion anyone?

John N. Gardner, President

828-233-5874

gardner@jngi.org

www.jngi.org

Contact

FIRST YEAR EXPERIENCE & COLLEGE

SUCCESS STRATEGIES

Town Meeting with John N. Gardner

• What was your learning today?

• What affective or gut reactions did you

experience?

• What will you do in your work settings as

a result of this day?

• What are your hopes for future discussion?