ASCEND Podcast

Getting students to do the right thing at the right time can often be a challenge.  Therefore, it is vital that we focus our limited time, energy, and money on those students who need us most, when they need us most. We must discover which students to nudge along, and then find a way to reach those students who do not want to be reached. The right nudges at the right time are a key to success in retention and completion.

Dr. Jim Hintz, Associate Vice Chancellor for Student Success, Inclusion, and Belonging at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, joins co-hosts Jared Tippets and Eric Kirby to share his knowledge, wisdom, and insights on how campuses can increase their retention and student success efforts!

Dr. Hintz serves as the Associate Vice Chancellor for Student Success, Inclusion, and Belonging at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.  He is a part of the Student Affairs senior leadership team and is responsible for developing strategies to enhance student success, inclusion and belonging by leveraging and aligning curricular and co-curricular student experiences. 

Prior to Illinois, Dr. Hintz served in various positions at Purdue University, University of Connecticut and Ohio University.  A native of Norwalk, Ohio, Dr. Hintz earned his Doctorate in Higher Education Administration from Indiana State University and both a Master's degree in College Student Personnel and a Bachelor's degree in Social and Managerial Science from Ohio University in Athens, Ohio.  

In this episode we share our formula for breaking down silos on campus.

One of the key aspects of changing a culture on campus is breaking down the existing silos and getting people to work together rather than working independently. Campuses must become more concerned about the success and persistence of every student than their own departments.

Silos and territorialism on campus are created by individuals and departments being more concerned about their own welfare, workload, and receiving credit than they are about the welfare of the individual students. We have found that the following mantra serves as a constant reminder to all our staff and breaks down the silos of working independently. 

WE MAKE DECISIONS BASED ON:

First, what is best for students,
Second, what is best for the university,
Third, what is best for our department/unit, and
Fourth, what is best for me individually.

Unfortunately, we find that many in higher education MAKE DECISIONS BASED ON:

First, what is best for me (and my resume, my career, my workload, etc.),
Second, what is best for my department (what is easiest, etc.),
Third, what is best for the university, and
Fourth, if it happens to work out, what is best for students.

When individuals and departments make decisions based on what is in their best interest or what is easiest for their department, it immediately builds up walls and silos. When we become territorial, the students lose. If campuses want to be successful at retaining more students, they must move to a culture that puts students and their success first, above our own self-interest.

Dr. Dhanfu Elston, Senior Vice President for Strategy and Chief of Staff at Complete College America, joins co-hosts Jared Tippets and Eric Kirby to share his knowledge, wisdom, and insights on how campuses can increase their retention and student success efforts!

Dhanfu E. Elston, Ph.D.  (pronounced: dah-NEE-foo) serves as Complete College America’s Senior Vice President for Strategy and Chief of Staff. He utilizes his national policy and campus expertise for practical application, implementation, scaling, and branding of student success and workforce aligned strategies across CCA’s Alliance of states, systems, and consortia. Previously, Elston led institutional completion, retention, and student affairs efforts at minority-serving institutions that garnered national attention, including Georgia State University, Purdue University Northwest, and Clark Atlanta University.

It is important to remember that Generation Z students are much closer with their families and rely heavily on their parents or guardians in their decision-making process (Hundrieser, 2015). As a result, it is very important for colleges and universities to partner with parents in their students success.

In this episode we talk about creating a Parent and Family Services office to serve as the single point of contact for parents, families, and supporters. This office will also play an important role in keeping families informed and connected to campus throughout the school year. 

Dr. Paul Dosal, Senior Vice President for Student Success at the University of Central Florida, joins co-hosts Jared Tippets and Eric Kirby to share his knowledge, wisdom, and insights on how campuses can increase their retention and student success efforts!

Dr. Paul Dosal joined the University of Central Florida as the inaugural Senior Vice President for Student Success in July 2022.   In this position, he is responsible for Enrollment Management, Student Success and Advising, Career Readiness and Experiential Learning, Student Life, and Health and Well-Being. He serves as the university’s champion for creating and sustaining an integrated, comprehensive, and intentional student experience that ensures all students who start at UCF can finish at UCF.   

Prior to his appointment, Dr. Dosal served in a similar role at the University of South Florida from 2010 to 2022.  During that time, he led a collaborative movement that generated remarkable gains in undergraduate student success, most notably the four- and six-year graduation rates, and narrowed or eliminated achievement gaps by race, ethnicity, and socio-economic status.  His first administrative experience at USF came as the founding Executive Director of ENLACE Florida (now the Florida College Access Network, or FCAN) which promoted college readiness, access, and success for under-represented students across the state. 

Dosal is also a Professor of Latin American History, specializing in the modern history of Cuba and the Caribbean region. He is the author of four books, including Comandante Che, a study of the military career of the legendary Latin American revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara, and Doing Business with the Dictators, a history of the infamous United Fruit Company in Guatemala in the early 20th century.  

Born and raised in Tampa, he is a fourth-generation descendant of Cuban immigrants who settled in Ybor City in 1889. He earned his B.A. in International Politics at St. Andrews College in Laurinburg, North Carolina. He received his M.A. in Latin American Studies and Ph.D. in History at Tulane University in New Orleans. He earned promotion to Associate Professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and promotion to Full Professor at the University of South Florida. 

As we have consulted with institutions across the nation, we have found that regardless of the academic reputation or extracurricular experience an institution might have, if students are unable to afford to attend, these students will leave. In this episode, we talk about a number of considerations for increasing the number of student jobs on campus.

Dr. Dale Whittaker, Senior Advisor for Postsecondary Success and Pathways at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, joins co-hosts Jared Tippets and Eric Kirby to share his knowledge, wisdom, and insights on how campuses can increase their retention and student success efforts!

Dr. Dale Whittaker has worked for over three decades on the frontlines of public higher education in roles ranging from professor to president at some of the nation’s largest, fast-growing public research universities (Texas A&M, Purdue University, University of Central Florida).  Now as Senior Advisor at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Dale supports the transformation of higher education to produce more degrees for more people with more equity. His portfolio focuses on supporting national serving, rapidly growing universities as they use scale, reach and digital capacity to reduce income and racial gaps in the attainment of high quality degrees at the national level.

Each semester, during the 2nd week of classes, we work with faculty to report on the attendance status of each student. From this exercise we are able to: (1) clean up enrollment records; and (2) collect the names of students who have not been attending classes. We know from research that class attendance is an extremely powerful predictor of student persistence. Students who regularly attend all classes are much more likely to do well academically and are therefore much more likely to retain. Once we get the data back from our enrollment census, we have our academic advisors and peer mentors reach out to the students who have not been attending class to make sure they are doing okay and to encourage them to attend.

Dr. Tim Renick, Executive Director of the National Institute for Student Success and Professor of Religious Studies at Georgia State University, joins co-hosts Jared Tippets and Eric Kirby to share his knowledge, wisdom, and insights on how campuses can increase their retention and student success efforts!

Timothy Renick is the founding Executive Director of the National Institute for Student Success and Professor of Religious Studies at Georgia State University. Between 2008-2020, he directed the student success efforts of the university, overseeing a 62% improvement in graduation rates and the elimination of all equity gaps based on students’ race, ethnicity, or income level. For six consecutive years, Georgia State has graduated more African American students with bachelor’s  degrees than any other not-for-profit college or university in the nation. Dr. Renick has testified on strategies for helping university students succeed before the U.S. Senate and has twice been invited to speak at the White House. His work has been covered by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Time, and CNN and cited by former President Barack Obama. It was also the subject of the book, Won’t Lose this Dream (New Press, 2020) by Andrew Gumbel. Dr. Renick was named one of the Most Innovative People in Higher Education by Washington Monthly and one of the World’s 50 Greatest Leaders by Fortune magazine. He was the recipient of the Award for National Leadership in Student Success Innovation and was awarded the McGraw Prize in Higher Education. He has been principal investigator for more than $50 million in research grants focused on promoting better and more equitable outcomes for college students. At Georgia State, he has served as Chair of the Department of Religious Studies, Director of the Honors Program and Senior Vice President. A summa cum laude graduate of Dartmouth College, Dr. Renick holds his M.A. and Ph.D. in Religion from Princeton University.