GOAL 2: RETENTION

Invest in strategies and High-Impact Practice programs and services that foster exceptional persistence, superior achievement and timely graduation for all students, with a particular focus on narrowing the gap between underrepresented students and the overall student body.

This goal aligns to the following strategies in the second goal of the University Strategic Plan: 2a ). Identify and expand programs that have a documented impact on increasing student achievement in bottleneck, gateway and low success rate academic courses. 2b). Identify and increase participation in new and ongoing efforts that support underrepresented student persistence and achievement. 2c. Identify, track and integrate curricular and co-curricular High-Impact Practices and ensure participation in one HIP in the first year and one subsequent HIP in student's major field. 2d. Establish accountability metrics at the division, college, department, and program levels to ensure progress on retention and graduation rate strategies..

Strategies

  1. Radically and invasively review/enhance policies and procedures to positively impact student persistence to graduation:
    1. Use a student-centered lens to review policies and procedures that may cause potential barriers to graduation, and enhance policies to benefit student persistence.
    2. Transition to student centered-processing of forms, including implementation of electronic processing for changes of majors, and grade changes and approval of academic petitions.
  2. Promote and institutionalize activities and services to ensure nationally recognized increases in graduation rates:
    1. Expand and enhance transition programs for targeted students the summer prior to their first term of enrollment, building upon the success of efforts such as the Student Academic Services Summer Bridge Program, for example.
    2. Expand first-year experiences for freshman and transfer students associated with success such as learning communities, first-year seminars, and cohort-based efforts. Evaluate making participation in such a program mandatory for some or all students.
    3. Create phenomenal professional development opportunities to ensure that student employment in the Division is truly a High Impact Practice. Provide resources to hire, train and mentor undergraduate students and Graduate Assistants. Enhancing the student experience also entails supporting the professional growth of the student staff that we work with on a daily basis.
  3. Create a cutting edge centralized academic support services center to provide tutoring, writing support and research support for students.
  4. Create invasive efforts to enhance retention, progress towards degree completion, and graduation rate aimed at decreasing achievement gaps among students from first-generation, low-income, underrepresented, and educationally disadvantaged backgrounds:
    1. Establish the Male Success Initiative focusing on supporting students from underrepresented backgrounds.
    2. Establish a support center and support for AB540 and undocumented students.
    3. Strengthen and adequately provide resources for the Diversity Education Initiatives and cultural centers.
    4. Establish a center that provides comprehensive programming for students participating in select scholarship programs.
    5. Create a centralized process for students to apply to internal and external scholarship opportunities through a student-centered approach.