ASCEND Podcast

For years we have lost students after a semester or two because they said that our campus, or living in our community, was not what they expected. It was either too large for them and they felt overwhelmed, or it was too small and they would rather live in a bigger city. We found this issue to be particularly prevalent among our international and out-of-state students who may not have been able to visit campus as part of their application process.

To combat this issue, we created a bunch of short videos to introduce students to life on our campus and in our community; these work to dispel myths and establish appropriate expectations about the community that students are moving to. We have found that these videos have helped calibrate appropriate expectations about living in our community among our incoming students. The reality is that a few students have self-selected out of enrolling as a result of these videos, but for the rest, they now understand the culture on campus and what it is really like to be part of our community.

In addition to helping shift the culture on campus in the eyes of our staff and faculty, we also found it important to shift the campus culture in the eyes of the students. Students need to know we care about them and their success. Students need to feel needed, appreciated, and wanted. Students need to feel at home on our campuses.

One of the things we have done on our campus to improve student perceptions of our campus was to do a complete facelift and rebranding within our student center. We moved student-facing and student services offices (e.g. Multicultural Center, International Student Services Office, Outdoors Office, Health & Wellness Office, Financial Aid, etc.) into more prominent locations so students would be more likely to interact and engage in their services. We also created more places for students to relax, hang out, and study. Finally, we changed the paint color throughout the student center, added fun student-centered branding elements, changed out the flooring tile and carpet, and added more lighting to areas of the building that needed to be brightened up. The result of this effort has been fantastic. The amount of student (and staff and faculty) traffic on a daily basis has increased exponentially and students often tell us that the student center is their favorite place on campus to hang out. They also tell us how much they love to show the building to their family and friends who come to campus for a visit.

In this episode, Dr. Jared Tippets and Dr. Eric Kirby talk about the importance of creating a culture of accountability.

Happy holidays from Jared and Eric.  Thanks for your support of the ASCEND Podcast.  We're going to take a break for a few weeks and then we'll be back with another episode on January 14.

Students often get the runaround, being bounced from office to office and center to center until they find what they actually need. To stop this nightmare, we created a one-stop shop on campus to better serve our students. This center (The Nest) does not have representatives from all the offices housed within. Instead, it is staffed by peer mentors who know campus inside and out. These peer mentors know where to take students to get the help they need and which offices provide specific information and assistance. Now students know they just have to visit one office to get the information and help they need. Additionally, staff and faculty also know they can visit The Nest or bring a student to The Nest and our peer mentors will take care of them. The creation of The Nest has been one of the most important and effective things we have done to better serve our students. 

Dr. Steven Girardot from Georgia Institute of Technology joins co-hosts Jared Tippets and Eric Kirby to share his deep knowledge, wisdom, and insights on how campuses can increase their retention and student success efforts!

Dr. Steven P. Girardot is the vice provost for undergraduate education at Georgia Tech and has over twenty years of higher education experience and is a proud Tech alumnus, having earned both a B.S. in Chemical Engineering and an M.S. in Chemistry from Georgia Tech. He completed his doctorate in Chemistry at Emory University and a Master of Public Health (MPH) degree in Epidemiology from Emory University. His research was at the interface of chemistry and environmental health. As vice provost, Girardot is responsible for overseeing and executing programs that support and advance the quality and relevance of undergraduate education and the academic success of undergraduate students. 

A key to creating a campus culture around student success, retention, and completion is making sure that everyone knows these are priorities for campus. From experience we have learned that organizations fund those things they value most. Therefore, it is important that we also measure those things we want to fund. 

Within higher education, faculty know why they exist. However, student affairs units do not always know why they exist or in many cases have forgotten why they exist on campus. Far too many student affairs units believe their purpose on campus is to house students, plan fun events, and keep students safe. These are all important, but are often seen as “fluff” by administrators and our academic affairs colleagues.

In order for student affairs units to become more relevant on campus, they must be able to show how they connect to the core components (teaching and learning) and bottom line (budget) of the institution. 

To do this, we have every unit within the division of student affairs create a Unit Effectiveness Plan (UEP). UEPs guide units through the process of mapping their purpose to the institution’s mission and help them think through how they complement the academic mission of the institution as well as contribute to the overall budget on campus.

In the end, these UEPs become 5-10 page living documents that are updated each summer before the beginning of the academic year. Once written, the updates become much easier and less time-consuming. But, most importantly, this process helps each unit pause for an afternoon as a team and all get on the same page before embarking on a new school year.

Dr. Jim Spain from the University of Missouri-Columbia joins co-hosts Jared Tippets and Eric Kirby to share his deep knowledge, wisdom, and insights on how campuses can increase their retention and student success efforts!

Dr. Jim Spain earned a BS in Animal Sciences from North Carolina State University and completed his Master of Science and Doctorate in Dairy Science with an emphasis in dairy cattle nutrition at Virginia Tech.  He joined the University of Missouri as an Extension Dairy Specialist in 1990. He has given 300+ invited talks on dairy cattle nutrition/management (MO, 35 states, 12 countries). He has been Principal or Co-investigator on grants of 6.5 million dollars. He has co-authored 26 peer reviewed articles, two book chapters and numerous abstracts, trade and extension publications.  Spain co-edited a book on teaching, The Pursuit of Teaching Excellence.  He was honored for teaching/advising with MU’s top honors: Kemper Fellowship; Missouri Governor’s Award for Teaching Excellence; MU’s Excellence in Advising Award. In August 2007, he began serving as the MU’s Vice Provost for Undergraduate Studies – a position he describes as MU’s “advocate for undergraduate teaching and learning”.  In December 2010, he was named Vice Provost for eLearning and led MU’s distance education program (Mizzou Online) through September 2019, including a reorganization that was launched in 2010.  In February 2020, Spain was named a 2020 Ingram’s Icon of Education by Ingram’s Magazine.

There are two broad groups of individuals that can often serve as the ‘canaries in the coal mine’ when it comes to a student’s well-being: faculty and community members (parents, alumni, religious leaders, etc.). In this episode we talk about how it is important to involve these two groups in the retention efforts. Two simple ways to have them help are through early alerts and a Report a Student Concern website. 

For this expert session co-hosts Jared Tippets and Eric Kirby sat down with leaders from National University to capture their knowledge, wisdom, and insights on how campuses can increase their retention and student success efforts!

In this episode you'll hear from Dr. Mark Milliron (President & CEO), Dr. Angela Baldasare (Deputy Chief of Staff and VP for Strategic Institutional Research & Planning), and Sarah Ball (AVP, Learner Experience).