Student Success Committee Report to the UHH Congress

April 10, 2006

Active members: Kainoa Ariola, Karla Hayashi, Raina Ivanova, Gail Makuakane-Lundin, Craig Severance, Kenith Simmons (Chair), Michael Wery (student member)

As charged by the Congress, the Student Success Committee has met regularly during AY 2005-2006 in order to review past reports from the Retention and Academic Advising Committees and to make recommendations as to how the University should respond to these reports.

Retention

The UH System’s planning documents specify that increasing retention and the 6-year graduation rates in East Hawaii will be a priority for the 2007-2009 biennium budget. It does appear that student retention is viewed as a high priority goal among faculty, staff and the Administration at UHH and at the UH-System.

In the past year, there has been progress in a number of areas related to retention. These areas were noted as in need of implementation in prior reports by the UHH Congress Retention Committee, in student focus groups conducted in 2004, or in the UHH Strategic Plan 2002-2010:

1)Student Services has agreed to have cyber advising for incoming General students in place for Summer 2006.

2)The advising center has expanded its on-line advising through its newly designed website.

3)UHH Housing is piloting a first year curriculum for a cohort entering in Fall 2006.

4)A Math-Physics cohort program for freshmen Physics/Science majors will be piloted in Fall 2006.

5)Advising/mentoring award selection activities are being coordinated by Karla Hayashi through the Student Success committee.

6)A new institutional analyst has been hired.

7)The interim director of Service Learning recently gave a presentation to the VCAA’s academic council, which was intended to broaden the awareness of service learning opportunities; a new permanent director is expected on board in April.

8)Academic Affairs and Student Affairs are exploring ways to improve transfer and graduation evaluations.

9)The Admissions Committee of the UH Congress has recommended to Congress that a standing Admissions Committee comprising faculty and administrators be created and charged with reviewing admissions policies with reference to student retention.

10)The new student life center and will improve the opportunities for on-campus recreation.

11)Additional housing is being pursued actively, through new construction and rental agreements with local hotels and apartment buildings.

12)Residence halls are addressing issues related to substance abuse and excessive noise.

There is, of course, much more that needs to be done. To continue the quest toward higher retention, the committee recommends the following:

1)Enrollment and academic planning must be coordinated;

a)A standing University Admissions Committee should be constituted with membership from faculty and administration to review admission policies as these impact student academic needs and the University’s capacity.

b)Academic units must make a more systematic effort to match course/ seat offerings in high demand and bottle-neck courses to carefully predicted demand.

Predictive data should be provided to the academic units by admissions/records in coordination with the Institutional Analyst as the schedule for the following semester is being created.

Data from early registration should be analyzed during the last weeks of the preceding semester so that adjustments to course offerings can be made prior to registration week for the following semester.

While faculty preference for teaching assignments should be honored when possible, these preferences should not over ride the needs of students as departments plan their course schedules.

Amechanism for accountability of Colleges/Departments in meeting student demand needs to be created; this might include a statement to the VCAA from each Dean as to predicted need in identified high demand courses and the College’s plans for meeting these needs.

2)A full fledged UHH LearningCenter should be created to strengthen and coordinate tutorial services on campus as well as to deliver appropriate training to tutors.

While departments would still be responsible for content in subject areas and for selecting tutors in those areas, the LearningCenter would provide training in student interface, the ethics of tutoring, and other general elements of the tutorial process.

The LearningCenter would be responsible for directing students to departmentally based tutorial services and for providing tutorial service where appropriate, such as in Writing.

It would also serve as the administrative center for tutors on campus, in that it would coordinate (with the CareerCenter) advertising, hiring, and payment of peer tutors.

The LearningCenter should be staffed by peer tutors and by a professional Director.

It should be administratively housed in Academic Affairs.

Advising

The Student Success Committee joins with other voices on the campus to recommend that our advising model be revised.

It has been well established that advising on the campus is not functioning at an optimum level. The demands on the AdvisingCenter are far too great for the size of the staff or of the physical space. Faculty advising is uneven across the campus. Faculty including those who do Graduation Evaluations and Records Office personnel report that many students who expect to graduate find that they are deficient in graduation requirements. In part, this is caused by the unwillingness on the part of students to seek out their advisors throughout their academic careers. It also appears to be the case that while many faculty are devoted to excellence in advising, others do not have the expertise or the time to offer the kind of advising students need. . Data from the UH Hilo NSSE survey and from focus groups on retention suggest that there is widespread student dissatisfaction with the advising system now in place.

The Committee reviewed a number of advising models. We recommend a system which combines the strengths of a fully professional advising model with those of a faculty centered model.

In this plan, all advising related to General Education and Graduation requirements would be handled through a more fully staffed AdvisingCenter. All advising related to Major/ Minor/Certificate requirementsand GraduateSchool and career exploration related to an academic field would be handled by Departments.

Advising would be mandatory at two points in the students’ careers: when they enter UHH and when they declare (and change) their majors. The first of these required advising contacts would be the responsibility of the AdvisingCenter and conducted via cyber advising or during orientation,, as is now the practice. The second contact would be with the major department.

Students should be urged to meet with the AdvisingCenter and their major department during the junior year to make sure they are on track for timely graduation.

The Advising Center:

The primary functions of the AdvisingCenter would include:

  • Advising students without academic majors
  • Advising all students on matters unrelated to their academic major/minor/certificate programs, such as General Education and Graduation Requirements
  • Issuing appropriate Modifications to Academic Requirements in areas outside of the major/minor/certificate programs
  • Entering these modificationsdirectly into students’ records at the time the modification is authorized
  • Maintaining accurate records for each student

As is now the case, the AdvisingCenter would maintain a web-site as a resource to students and would continue to refine and expand its on-line advising services. The AdvisingCenter would, as it does now, provide a Bachelor’s Degree Planbook to incoming students and would develop advising checklists; these could be available in hard copy and on the expanded web-site.

Staffing for the AdvisingCenter would include:

  • a faculty-level Director whose position would be permanent
  • a full time clerk
  • A faculty level dedicated transfer and graduation evaluator
  • four faculty-level professional advisors

These advisors would be cross trained so that they could advise any student with issues related to academic requirements outside the major, but each would also be a specialist with primary responsibility for advising and record keeping for 775 students (data from Fall 2005 MAPS Report):

  • Advisor #1 – CAFNRM (146 students); CoBE (368 students); Ka Haka Ula (73 students), Pre-professional students (148) = 754 total students
  • Advisor #2 – CAS Social Sciences 753 students
  • Advisor #3 – CAS Natural Science 782 students
  • Advisor #4 – CAS Humanities (417), General (390) = 807 students

The director, advisors, and clerk would be housed in a centrally located AdvisingCenter; where the transfer/graduation evaluator would be housed physically and administratively would depend on a number of factors including the location for the AdvisingCenter itself and the configuration of the new Student Services building.

Administratively, the AdvisingCenter should be associated with the Academic Affairs unit of the university; it could be administered directly by Academic Affairs, or if the campus were to adopt a Provost model of organization, it could be administratively housed in Student Affairs.

Departmental advising

All advising related to major/minor/certificate programs, including issuing Modifications to major requirements and entering these into the student’s record, would be the responsibility of the appropriate academic department. Each Department would be required to offer some form of advising to students when they declare the major and at the students’ request throughout their tenure in the department. Students would be urged to see their faculty advisor during their junior year to be sure they are on track for graduation.

In consultation with each College’s Dean, each department would be responsible for devising advising strategies that suit their particular majors. At the discretion of the Dean, these might include:

  • Assigning each student to a particular faculty and requiring all faculty in the department to advise
  • Having the Department Chair serve as the advisor to all students in the major
  • Assigning one faculty member to be the Department’s advisor
  • Permitting faculty to choose among service tasks including advising and service on committees or faculty governance organizations
  • Holding group advising for all majors each semester
  • Incorporating peer advisors into a faculty driven advising model
  • For larger advising loads, release time for designated faculty advisors could be offered.

Models would be approved by the Dean and reported in each Department’s program review. Assistance in developing an appropriate model and development for faculty could be provided by the Director of the AdvisingCenter.Each Dean would be responsible for maintaining a record of each Department’s advising model.

Assessment

Data should routinely be collected as to the number of advising contacts in the Advising Center and in each Department. Data should also be collected as to students who receive deficiency notices after applying for graduation. These data could be made useful if the actual application for graduation were separate from students’ ability to access up to date records through Banner. Data related to student satisfaction with advising should be collected by the Institutional Research Analyst using the NSSE survey and the Graduation survey.

Results of all of these efforts should be summarized by the Institutional Research Analyst and reported via the websites of the VCAA, the IRA, and the Congress Assessment Committee. Summaries of the data should be included in Program Reviews and should be used in determining program effectiveness.

Deans should be responsible for monitoring the effectiveness of each Department’s advising model and for providing training and other supports through the Director of Advising when Departments need help. Reviews of College effectiveness by the VCAA should include a review of the effectiveness of each Department’s advising model.

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