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Sometimes you don’t just need to change advising procedures; you need to change the culture of academic advising on campus. A few years ago at Ramapo College of New Jersey, our enrollment management division surveyed faculty, first-year students, and upper-class students to learn where students turned for help in making academic decisions as they progressed through the curriculum. What we learned was striking: Further, over 57% of first-year and 47% of upper-class students did not even know who their academic advisor was. What this survey told us was that we didn’t just need to improve our advising procedures; we needed to create a culture of advisement on campus. 3 Keys to Changing the Culture Knowing that a culture of advisement is as dependent (if not more so) on buy-in and commitment from faculty than buy-in from administrative units, we embarked on the creation of an overall academic advisement plan for our campus, which included a series of action plans that hinged on three key change management strategies: Engaging faculty in academic advisement is essential to advancing Ramapo’s work — or any college’s work — in student success. Here’s what we did to engage our faculty: 1. Modeling the Change We […]

SPOTLIGHT ON INNOVATION SERIES The US Department of Education has awarded multi-million dollar “First in the World” grants to 24 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. Percentages of first-generation students are rising at many institutions, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is taking an especially comprehensive approach to academic support for this growing and often challenged demographic. At AI, we’re looking forward to watching their FITW-funded project develop over the next four years; if successful, it will provide other institutions with one possible model for a holistic and effective approach to supporting and retaining first-generation students. Here’s a first look at the challenge UNC-Chapel Hill is up against and how they’re innovating to address it. The Challenge At UNC-Chapel Hill, 20 percent of undergraduates are first-generation students who are half as likely to graduate college as their peers. First-generation students who transfer from a community college or major in a […]

At many institutions, service learning programs are pursued in an ad hoc manner. Here’s how to realize the full potential of a service learning initiative. Service learning programs have proliferated on college and university campuses over the past decade, leading in the best cases to measurable gains in student learning and engagement; yet at many institutions, these programs are still pursued in an ad hoc manner. Among the obstacles to realizing the full potential of a service learning initiative: To learn from the success of one of the more effective programs, we turned this week to Drew Stelljes, director of community engagement at the College of William and Mary. That institution has effectively scaled its interests in service learning up to a comprehensive civic engagement initiative with defined outcomes and structured collaboration across both the academic affairs and student affairs division. Here is Stelljes’ advice for colleagues at other institutions who may be looking to achieve more with their service learning efforts. Defining Your Outcomes First, Stelljes advises establishing clarity around the purpose of the initiative: “Tease out the objectives that are important to your school,” Stelljes advises, “and then articulate those to the faculty you hope to involve.” “We […]