Turn retention data into student success.

Mike Freel & Sharon Rea · Bellevue University

Academic institutions often measure bottom-line performance using student enrollment. However, the number of students who matriculate through graduation has a significant impact on program and institutional success. In 2023, Bellevue University undertook an initiative using prior evidence-based research as the foundation for an internal, student-centered analysis of persistence and retention trends.

The assessment took a pragmatic, applied approach to identifying university best practices and analyzed targeted metrics from high-performing academic programs. Interviews with administrators represented online and face-to-face delivery at undergraduate and graduate levels, and five programs with exceptionally high retention percentages were examined.

Findings identified four categories of best practices: faculty engagement, modes of engagement, communication strategies, and practical and experiential curricula. The analysis supported six recommendations, provides examples of student-centered changes, and presents a guide institutions can use to conduct their own internal retention analysis.

Lisa Richardson & Lorena Lopez · Waubonsee Community College

In the aftermath of the “Great Resignation,” community college staffing has been disproportionately affected. When colleges must do more for students with fewer resources, two concerns arise: retaining engaged and satisfied employees while providing the support, resources, and services students need—especially through first-point-of-contact staff.

At Waubonsee Community College, employee and student feedback showed that roles and responsibilities were not clear, including how staff should work with students and campus partners. The Student Success and Retention division created an initiative to improve role clarity, employee engagement, and the quality of student support.

This presentation explores a diagnostic assessment, revised positional goals, a shared case-management plan, and professional development. The initiative produced a 10.5% increase in clarity about work priorities within the division and a 14.4% increase compared with the rest of the college’s 2021 engagement-survey responses. Waubonsee also saw a 5% increase in continuing-student enrollment above pandemic-year levels.

Robert Terry, George Bogaski & Nicole Campbell · University of Oklahoma

Since the onset of COVID-19 in 2020, many universities have eliminated standardized tests or adopted test-optional admissions. Previous analytic solutions for admissions, placement, and academic interventions relied on standardized tests, so the University of Oklahoma’s test-optional policy required a new data strategy.

The presenters investigate alternatives, including modeling test-optional and test-available applicants as separate populations. Logistic-regression analyses indicate that the same predictive model can serve both populations with little loss of predictive accuracy, in contrast to pre-COVID findings.

Additional work applying Taylor and Russell’s framework supports those conclusions based on model accuracy, admissions selectivity, and the overall base rate of success. The presentation also explains one important caveat: standardized tests remain valuable for mathematics-placement decisions.

Kim Williams, Sarah Wray Marshall, Adrienne Pollard & Alicia Caruso · University of South Florida

Graduation pipelines require attention throughout the undergraduate life cycle. Beyond first-year attrition, national data show substantial enrollment losses during the second and third years. Progression academic advocates at the University of South Florida identify and case-manage students facing barriers in order to improve graduation outcomes and reduce attrition.

The academic-advocacy model is a holistic student-success approach built on timely interventions, data-informed practice, and practitioner insight. Using an analytic platform designed by the advocates, the team monitors large student cohorts and provides individualized support based on each student’s circumstances.

The institution’s graduation rates have continued to improve, and the resulting cultural shift has elevated its undergraduate student-success profile. The session addresses common barriers, demonstrates how practitioner-informed data drives advocacy, and examines how the approach improves equity in student outcomes.

David Leasure & Kathleen Hogan · University of Maryland Global Campus

The University of Maryland Global Campus developed a straightforward model for competency development through project-based learning, competency assessment, personalization, coaching, and penalty-free revision. The model supports engagement and motivation by aligning educational work with students’ goals in a respectful environment.

Faculty receive training to provide personalized, culturally sensitive feedback that strengthens students’ belonging and confidence. A two-tier coaching system supports faculty and student development. Course research showed competency attainment rising from 81% on first submission to 98% on final submission after coaching and revision.

Additional research found a two-percentage-point increase in course completion after implementation. The results suggest that the model can improve satisfaction, learning, and completion while fitting within traditional financial-aid and accreditation structures.

Rocio Morello, Mohammed Moizuddin, Monika Rohde & Erikka Vaughan · New York Institute of Technology

Achieving Collegiate Excellence (ACE) is an evidence-informed initiative that mobilizes faculty and staff as academic coaches for students at risk of losing institutional scholarships. The holistic program combines personalized coach meetings, student-success modules, and engagement activities; students who complete the program can maintain their scholarships.

ACE implementation is associated with improved retention and graduation for the target population, particularly Pell-eligible, first-generation, and BIPOC students. The data indicate that improved retention stems from program participation above and beyond scholarship renewal alone.

The program has also fostered continuous improvement through conversations about mental health, financial literacy, and other emerging needs. It has prompted institutional policy and practice changes, including simpler GPA criteria for scholarship renewal, and has influenced student success, well-being, faculty and staff involvement, alumni engagement, and institutional development.

Grant J. Matthews · Lane Community College; Michael Morsches, John Halliwell & Laura Hernandez Corkrey · Moraine Valley Community College

For more than a decade, Moraine Valley Community College’s developmental-education program has used longitudinal assessment to evaluate course changes in terms of retention and progression. The work began when the department redesigned coursework and course sequences and looked beyond basic success and failure rates to establish a meaningful baseline.

The team examined grade distributions, the percentage of non-withdrawing students who passed, withdrawal-to-passing ratios, and the likelihood that students passing one course would also pass the next course in sequence. Those data became a proactive tool that generated new questions and programming.

Two major disruptions—the COVID-19 pandemic and Illinois’s Developmental Education Reform Act, which limited students to one developmental course per subject—complicated the longitudinal comparisons. This session explains how the team answered both “How are we doing?” and “How are we doing despite these changes?”

George Bogaski, Nicole Campbell, Cassandra Negron & Robert Terry · University of Oklahoma

University College created a five-question survey that students complete before academic advising. It captures students’ self-assessments of confidence in their major, academic performance, financial circumstances, connectedness, and mental and physical wellness. The survey was initially designed to identify concerns that advisers might address during appointments.

Subsequent analyses revealed a single underlying factor across the five items. The combined “Thrive Index” offers a holistic snapshot of student well-being and predicts retention. The presentation traces the index’s development, implementation, and statistical analysis so other institutions can consider replicating the approach.

Jennifer A. Wade-Berg, Rachel E. Myers, Kandice Porter, Janeen Amason, Brian Etheridge & Rebecca Shabo · Kennesaw State University

In 2019, Kennesaw State University adopted “It’s About Engagement” as its Quality Enhancement Plan, centered on three high-impact practices: internships, undergraduate research, and service learning.

The plan gives students engaged-learning opportunities that strengthen critical thinking and communication while increasing connection and belonging within and beyond campus. In the Wellstar College of Health and Human Services, internships and clinical field experiences became signature practices because of the college’s programs and accreditation standards; service learning and undergraduate research were also integrated more deeply into curricula.

The presentation examines high-impact practices as a retention strategy and shares student-perspective data to demonstrate how learning occurs and identify opportunities for improvement.

Lisa Richardson & Lorena Lopez · Waubonsee Community College

Community-college support services have historically relied on a transactional walk-in model: students recognize a need, seek help, receive a response, and leave—often without follow-up. That approach is neither proactive nor effective at reaching students who do not recognize that they need assistance or who have several interconnected needs.

Waubonsee Community College used Title V grant funding to pilot a success-coaching program offering targeted, timely student support. Gains in success and retention from the pilot informed a broader redesign of advising into a case-management model.

The session presents the coaching and advising structures, evidence of their effect on success and retention, and the transition from walk-in advising to case management. It also explains how staff roles were deployed to support subpopulations and compares enrollment patterns, continuing and readmitted enrollment, and outcomes for focused student groups.

Rebekah Welch, Danielle Clarke & Wendy McMillian · University of Alabama

COVID-19 transformed higher education, forcing student-services and advising offices to move from primarily in-person service to fully virtual operations within days. Mass virtual advising created new challenges, and the return to in-person advising took months or years depending on the institution.

During that period, advising appointments often narrowed to course selection and registration, leaving less time for goal setting, long-term academic planning, and habits that support student success. Student expectations have also changed because of virtual advising and the needs and preferences of Generation Z.

The presenters explain how to return to the fundamentals of academic advising for retention using NACADA Core Competencies and data-informed best practices, with particular attention to persistence and graduation among students at risk.

Ashley Dees, Melissa Dennis & Racheal Durham · University of Mississippi

This presentation examines the decade-long collaboration between the University of Mississippi Libraries and the Center for Student Success and First-Year Experience through the First-Year Instruction Initiative. The partnership advances library goals while supporting learning outcomes in first-year seminar courses.

By aligning course objectives with initiative goals, the partners have integrated information-literacy instruction into first-year courses so students develop critical-thinking skills essential to academic success. The session focuses on recent data comparing library teaching models, goals, and the library’s relationship to retention in EDHE 105.

The assessment offers evidence about a long-term partnership that other institutions may be able to replicate and identifies opportunities to strengthen the collaboration further.