Category: Blog

How Wake Technical is Taking a High-Tech, High-Touch Approach to Supporting At-Risk Students

SPOTLIGHT ON INNOVATION SERIES The US Department of Education has awarded multi-million dollar “First in the World” grants to 18 colleges, universities, and organizations that are innovating to solve critical challenges with access, recruitment, retention, and student success. At AI, we have interviewed each of the recipients to learn more about the projects these institutions are pursuing, how their approaches are unique, and what other colleges and universities can learn from these new efforts. 2015 was the second year of the First in the World grants. You can read our interviews with the 24 institutions that received 2014 grants here. by Lisa Cook, Academic Impressions At-risk students taking online coursework face greater challenges in persistence and success, but recent studies have suggested that a high-touch approach to support can make a difference. Wake Technical Community College is piloting some ways to do just that. More than 15,000 of Wake Technical’s students take at least one online course, and more than 5,700 are completing their education exclusively online. Now, with the help of a $2.7 million First in the World grant, Wake Tech is embarking on a phased redesign of its high-demand, low-success courses so that students — particularly at-risk students — […]

A Close Look at Rio Salado College’s Approach to Boosting Success for At-Risk Online Students

by Lisa Cook, Daniel Fusch

SPOTLIGHT ON INNOVATION SERIES The US Department of Education has awarded multi-million dollar “First in the World” grants to 18 colleges, universities, and organizations that are innovating to solve critical challenges with access, recruitment, retention, and student success. At AI, we have interviewed each of the recipients to learn more about the projects these institutions are pursuing, how their approaches are unique, and what other colleges and universities can learn from these new efforts. 2015 was the second year of the First in the World grants. You can read our interviews with the 24 institutions that received 2014 grants here. If you’re looking for ways to assist online students who are academically under-prepared, you may want to watch Rio Salado College’s developing research project, PLan for Undergraduate Success (PLUS). The two-year college’s latest initiative targets new students pursuing an associate degree or planning to transfer to a four-year institution, and will allow Rio Salado to route additional support and preparation to these students. Assisted by a $2.7 million First in the World grant, the college hopes to increase degree completion and persistence by personalizing learning, supporting students with a college success course and facilitator, and by offering an online boot camp […]

Gateway Math: A Close Look at Miami Dade College’s Approach

by Lisa Cook, Daniel Fusch

SPOTLIGHT ON INNOVATION SERIES The US Department of Education has awarded multi-million dollar “First in the World” grants to 18 colleges and universities that are innovating to solve critical challenges with access, recruitment, retention, and student success. At AI, we have interviewed each of the recipients to learn more about the projects these institutions are pursuing, how their approaches are unique, and what other colleges and universities can learn from these new efforts. 2015 was the second year of the First in the World grants. You can read our interviews with the 24 institutions that received 2014 grants here. When Florida passed a law making college placement tests optional for recent high school graduates, institutions were left to grapple with how to address the needs of students in college-level math who previously might have been routed to developmental courses. (Under the 2013 law, even if students do choose to take the optional placement exam, they may still enroll in regular courses even if their test results indicate the need for developmental work.) At Miami Dade College, enrollment has skyrocketed in the first college-level course in the math sequence, MAT 1033, while enrollment in developmental math courses dropped by more than 40 […]

How Jackson State University is Improving STEM for All Students

by Lisa Cook

SPOTLIGHT ON INNOVATION SERIES The US Department of Education has awarded multi-million dollar “First in the World” grants to 18 colleges, universities, and organizations that are innovating to solve critical challenges with access, recruitment, retention, and student success. At AI, we have interviewed each of the recipients to learn more about the projects these institutions are pursuing, how their approaches are unique, and what other colleges and universities can learn from these new efforts. 2015 was the second year of the First in the World grants. You can read our interviews with the 24 institutions that received 2014 grants here. Jackson State University has a holistic plan for increasing their STEM retention and graduation rates by simultaneously improving teaching and learning in STEM disciplines and increasing STEM literacy among all students. The plan is to provide students from other disciplines with opportunities to participate in collaborative projects with STEM faculty and students. JSU has received a $2.98 million First in the World grant to support the project, which will impact 160 faculty members and 1,280 students from a variety of disciplines. To learn more, we talked with Paul Tchounwou, associate dean of Graduate and International Programs in the College of Science, Engineering […]

How Georgia State University Plans to Use Predictive Analytics to Address the National Achievement Gap

by Lisa Cook

Here’s how Georgia State University is using predictive analytics to identify at-risk students and intervene quickly – and how they’re now testing the approach across other institutions. SPOTLIGHT ON INNOVATION SERIES The US Department of Education has awarded multi-million dollar “First in the World” grants to 18 colleges and universities that are innovating to solve critical challenges with access, recruitment, retention, and student success. At AI, we have interviewed each of the recipients to learn more about the projects these institutions are pursuing, how their approaches are unique, and what other colleges and universities can learn from these new efforts. This was the second year of the First in the World grants. You can read our interviews with the 24 institutions that received 2014 grants here. During the past ten years, officials at Georgia State University have tracked more than 140,000 student records and 2.5 million grades in order to identify mistakes that put a student at risk of dropping out. A decade later, they’ve identified more than 800 different mistakes, and continue tracking all 30,000 of their students so they can quickly intervene. Their next challenge? Using the same approach to track students at 11 different institutions across the country […]

Can Flipped Classrooms Transform STEM Courses?

SPOTLIGHT ON INNOVATION SERIES The US Department of Education has awarded multi-million dollar “First in the World” grants to 18 colleges and universities that are innovating to solve critical challenges with access, recruitment, retention, and student success. At AI, we have interviewed each of the recipients to learn more about the projects these institutions are pursuing, how their approaches are unique, and what other colleges and universities can learn from these new efforts. This is the second year of the First in the World grants. You can read our interviews with the 24 institutions that received 2014 grants here. by Lisa Cook, Academic Impressions Active learning strategies like flipped classrooms have attracted a lot of attention in recent years, but how well do they really work? Researchers at San José State University intend to find out. With the help of a $3 million First in the World grant, Laura Sullivan-Green, co-project director and associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, will measure the effect of the flipped classroom model on the academic performance of freshmen and sophomore STEM majors, along with provost and project co-director Andy Feinstein; Brian Jersky, dean of the College of Science at California Polytechnic University, Pomona; and Jianyu […]

Prepare Your Faculty, Staff, and Students for an Active Shooter Situation

by Lisa Cook

Efforts to prepare higher education faculty, staff, and students for an active shooter situation have lagged behind those in K-12. Often, institutions think they can’t train thousands of faculty and students because the logistics are too difficult or drills are time-consuming and unnecessary. But in a school shooting everything changes. In the minutes before law enforcement arrives: The answer frequently is no, leaving everyone on campus under-prepared if the worst happens — and opening your institution to legal ramifications. “‘It can’t happen here’ is happening someplace everyday.”John McDonald, Jefferson County Public Schools Nearly all campuses train campus security and police officers for active shooter situations on a regular basis, but that creates a false sense of security. To be adequately prepared, institutions must include everyone — administrators, faculty, staff, and students — in training and drills. We talked with John McDonald, a security expert who has worked to address security weaknesses and conduct lockdown drills at 35 colleges and universities nationwide. McDonald currently serves as the executive director of safety, security and emergency planning at Jefferson County Public Schools in Colorado, where one of the largest school shootings in the US took place in 1999 at Columbine High School. During […]

5 Ways You Can Bridge the Communications / Development Chasm

by Luanne Lawrence

At many institutions, the limited resources for external relations have been redirected to grow the office’s fund-raising capacity. Communications professionals, with jobs lost and budgets cut, watch two dynamics: the growth of decentralized communications and the growth of a sister office, development – both occurring at their perceived expense. And yet both demand more public relations and marketing support than ever as campaigns commonly reach the hundreds of thousands to billions of dollars. When not driven by an integrated strategy, decentralized communicators often message independently and can leave the central office scrambling to provide back-up support or clean up confusion. This is not a small issue. It is monumental and a problem that can be made better, if everyone understands that they are not silos, but integral agents in making their universities more successful and their students’ experiences more valuable. The successful advancement offices that are rebuilding, refocusing and recalibrating, are following five steps to deepen the relationships between development, alumni relations, and marcom. 1. Define the mission of public relations and marketing. Marketing’s sister offices have defined missions. Alumni relations serves alumni. Development raises private funds. But what is the mission of communications? Communications offices get pulled in multiple […]

What Red Bull Can Teach You About Engaging Alumni through Video

by Tim Ponisciak (University of Notre Dame) Red Bull is a company whose primary business is energy drinks; that is the company’s main source of revenue, that is what they are known worldwide for creating. Yet, you may have seen one of Red Bull’s many extreme sports videos. The company sponsors the Air Race World Championships, Formula 1, cliff diving, ice climbing, rugby, snowboarding and even break dancing. All of these sponsorships drive the content Red Bull creates and pushes out through its Youtube channel and on its website. Red Bull wants to establish and maintain an image of its company in the eyes of its potential consumers. It wants to exude an aura of confidence and risk-taking. It also wants to stay top of mind with its customers. The company’s hope is that its content strategy of focusing on extreme sports athletes will prompt these individuals to become brand ambassadors, as they are also likely to be trend setters among a younger age demographic. Content marketing can serve a similar purpose — developing brand ambassadors — in higher education, too. Typically, annual giving and alumni relations departments are focused on immediate goals (raising attendance at reunion, obtaining a certain […]

The 21st Century Academic Advisor: 3 Critical Skill Sets

by Daniel Fusch

This article is an excerpt from Sue Ohrablo’s acclaimed book High-Impact Advising: A Guide for Academic Advisors, which you can find here. Being an effective academic advisor is like being an expert juggler. It is easy to drop a ball now and then. In this article, I examine strategies to keep all the balls in the air in order to effectively support our students and help them persist toward graduation. The role of the academic advisor is complex, requiring advisors to effectively communicate with students, understand and interpret policies and procedures, follow institutional protocols, maintain student records, utilize technology, and engage in problem-solving. These activities can be categorized into three distinct skill sets: interpersonal, operational, and analytical. To deliver comprehensive advising assistance, an advisor needs to blend all of these skills. Here are some strategies for developing these essential skill sets and maximizing your effectiveness as an advisor. Interpersonal Skills I have had the privilege of interviewing numerous advisor candidates over the years, some who are aspiring to this new role, others who are experienced in the field. Most often, when asked what is the most important skill an advisor can bring to the position, prospective advisor candidates respond, “working with people.” […]