Serving and Retaining Non-Traditional Students: Adult, Online, and Graduate Students
NASPA 2018 • March 5th • 2:30 PM – 3:20 PM • 121 C – Convention Center
Considerations for Adult Students and Graduate Students
●Orientation
○Strongly encourage new students to attend orientation! Make orientation worth their while. Provide introductions to faculty/ advisors/ other students; give them student IDs and parking decals; offer later bookstore hours; host a successful student panel; have a campus resource fair.
○Anticipate their needs. For students who are new to town, let them know about resources for housing, roommates, public safety, commonly used schools and daycares students with children use, etc. (GilardiGuglielmetti, 2016). Also, international students appreciate information on how they can get jobs and professional experience.
●Intentional Student services
○Provide high touch advising and faculty outreach(Bradford & Wyatt, 2010).
○Provide tutoring and writing help.
●Programming
○Provide networking events and academic support- in person and virtually.
○Host social events such as trips to wineries and subsidizing tickets to plays.
Keep in mind they are all over 21 years old! Hurray!
○Invite them! If you plan it, they won’t come- but they want to be invited.
○Remember there is no perfect time for programs and events. A good time for some is a terrible time for others.
○Remember that graduate students need fewer developmental programs than undergraduates.
●Assessment
○How have we meaningfully connected this population to the campus?
○What do they need and want?
○Look at retention by level, school, and program.
Additional Considerations for Online Students
●Orientation
○Provide information on how to use technology including online classroom, online library, who to call for help with both software and hardware issues (Fish Wickersham, 2009; Tuquero, 2011).
○Provide pre-enrollment or orientation activities on what the online experience is like including how much vulnerable information is shared about students’ pasts and sociopolitical views.
●Intentional Student services
○High touch academic advising combats isolation and provides campus resources.
○Provide technical support for online classroom troubleshooting and to teach students how to use online classroom technologies (Tuquero, 2011).
●Social opportunities
○Give students opportunities to connect. This could be a discussion board used as a space to socialize or a social media group.
○Have programs on campus and invite online students who live nearby.
○Provide student organizations, opportunities to connect with professional organizations, and student leadership opportunities. (Burkhard, 2007; Kolowich, 2010).
Presenters:- Dr. Nancy Komada, Senior Director of Adult Student Life at St. Joseph’s University,
- Dr. Jacquelynn Thomas, Assistant Director for Engagement at UC Riverside,
- Kevin Wright, Area Coordinator at University of Vermont,