Proactive use of technology to retain, motivate and graduate Hispanic students in four years at Eastern Connecticut State University
For the last fifteen years, the University Strategic Plan for Eastern Connecticut State University has focused on student-centered actions to improve retention, academic support services and a campus climate that leads to graduation in four years for all students, with special attention to the academic success of our increasing minority population. Currently we have 27% minority students, primarily Hispanic, African American and Multi-racial. We also have 28% minority faculty/staff. As a result, we have had much impact on the retention, graduation rate and academic progress of our Hispanic students, as evidenced by the study conducted by the Education Trust (2012), our strategic use of predictive math models, advising software, and faculty/staff technological collaboration to detect, predict, remedy problems and promote success of Hispanic students (see https://edtrust.org/resource/advancing-to-completion-increasing-degree-attainment-by-improving-graduation-rates-and-closing-gaps-for-hispanic-students/). The Education Trust data analysis showed that Eastern had consistent increases in 6-year graduation rates for Hispanic students during 2004-2010, being first in the top 25 institutions listed (37.8% increase for Hispanic student), and Eastern was second in closing the gap in 6-year graduation rate between Hispanic and white students in that period (57.8% for Hispanics vs. 53.7 for White student). Because of our ongoing success in enhancing Hispanic students’ graduation rates Eastern was chosen by the U.S. Dream Foundation in 2016 to be one of two public universities chosen to enroll the DACA students funded by the Foundation for four-year undergraduate education. We have retained 100% of the 2016 cohort of 47 students and now in Fall 2017 have 113 students enrolled from the U.S. Dream Foundation successful applicants. Their confidence on our abilities to graduate Hispanic students is in line with our focused technology-enhanced student success work which has received considerable funding from two five-year grants – one from the Nellie Mae Foundation (Project Compass 2007-2012) and one from the U.S. Department of Education – Title III Student Support Services program (2009-2014). From 2010 to present we have continued to maintain good retention (75%-78%) and consistently good academic performance in GPA, # credits gained per semester, 4-year and 6-year graduation rates for our Hispanic students, in line with our university averages (the latter in the low 50+%).
Technologies
Our use of technology to enhance cost effectiveness and improve how we monitor, solve and prevent problems in enhancing retention and progress to graduation for our Hispanic students started with our work for the Project Compass – Nellie Mae Foundation grant. The funding allowed our math faculty to utilize data from several years of admitted high school student applications to develop two multivariate statistical models to predict students leaving Eastern — one model predicting students who would leave due to low academic performance and one model predicting the risk of withdrawal for students not in academic risk of dismissal. These two models were then used to develop four targeted advising cohorts (now called TAC groups) which the Advising Center utilizes to more clearly focus their advising staff resources on incoming first year full time students. The TAC groups 1 an 2 receive intensive, intrusive advising and focused tutoring support, while TAC 3 and TAC 4 students (not at risk academically) receive attention from advising staff and faculty that can lead to greater engagement (such as connections to student organizations, experiential learning opportunities) and closer monitoring of their connection to the university. Hispanic students are part of all four targeted cohorts and so are receiving constant attention in a variety of ways, facilitated by technology-driven targeted cohort reports. Additionally, the use of GradesFirst software by faculty and staff , which allows all providing services/advice/support to any student to enter the issue and resolution of the meeting into GradesFirst, has improved tracking of a student’s career path at Eastern. The Advising Center also developed a Multicultural Advising Initiative to provide annual positive recognition to high performing minority students through an annual certificate-granting celebration that brought in minority role models (many of them Eastern alumni) to talk about their successes after graduation and how Eastern had inspired them in their career paths. The use of technology to generate the reports of these high performing students, to track the needs of all students through GradesFirst, and to provide greater attention to those students most at academic risk has led to more targeted, cost effective and prompt support of student needs. Additionally, technology was used to develop reports that would show how students of the various advising groups (by minority background and first generation college student categories), to see how many academic credits they were taking per semester and how many credits they were attaining per semester. This reporting allowed all staff and faculty involved in mentoring/advising students to see where the problems were and to discuss how to help solve those problems as soon as possible. It was clear that intrusive advising was needed to ensure that students took enough credits per semester to allow for a four-year graduation. This led to development of a four-year graduation plan technology report (developed by faculty in the Business Information System program) which the students had to file by the end of their first year at Eastern for their chosen major. The Advising Center professional advising staff helped all incoming first year students with filling out this four-year academic plan and that was saved in GradesFirst so that all faculty and staff connecting with the student would be aware of the plan. This made it possible to achieve more effective collaboration among university departments for the common goal of getting each student to progress more effectively towards graduation. The tracking of students in each targeted advising cohort as they utilized the tutoring services in the Writing Center, Mathematics Achievement Center and Supplemental Instruction Center of the Academic Services Center allowed all advisors involved to see which students were accessing the support services and how best to encourage them to use them as needed.
Lastly, over the last ten years, technology has been utilized to gather faculty in discussion groups aimed at improving engagement of minority students and first generation college students, with help from the two 5-year grants mentioned above. The sharing of best practices on how to engage these students in experiential learning, motivation, and career development, and the ensuing collaborations among departments have been crucial to the development of our Hispanic student success strategies. These efforts led to the development of two majors that are of high interest to our Hispanic student population – the Health Sciences major (with concentrations in Public Health, Pre-Nursing and Pre-Physical Therapy) and the New Media Studies major (with concentrations in 5 disciplines that use technology to do multimedia communication – theatre, communication, computer science, digital art and design and English). One of the projects that came out of the New Media Studies major collaborations involved a collaboration among faculty/staff with expertise in visual art, video communication, graphic design and ecology to develop an educational program that showcased the importance of the Ceiba pentandra tree (known also as Iroko or Ceiba) to the African diaspora and populations in Caribbean and Latin American countries. La Ceiba/Iroko has been a major cultural component of many civilizations in Latin America but was also was crucial in allowing African slaves to acclimate to their new countries because the tree species found in the Latin American and Caribbean countries where they were taken also had major cultural/religious/medicinal value back in their home countries of West Africa. A book and a multimedia production resulted from the faculty collaborations and articles (published side by side in English and Spanish) as the Iroko: Tree of Life book in 2017. The involvement of students, faculty and staff (myself as a forest ecologist) in the Iroko project generated many experiences for our Hispanic students to revel in the importance of their culture on a global scale, and across disciplines – from science, to sociology, to communication to visual arts. (see Iroko project website – https://ms17artproject.com/exhibitions/the-iroko-project/). For the Health Sciences, the Biology, Kinesiology and Health Sciences faculty have also connected to choose improved ways to teach anatomy and physiology to our science students through the use of Virtual Dissection tables (a new form of equipment that provides true to life external and internal views of all aspects of the human body through the use of digital technology).
Explain project results
The results of the use of technology allowed Eastern to generate funding for continued enhancement of Hispanic student success and to target their existing resources more effectively to help Hispanic students achieve their career goals in a four year graduation plan. By using technology to predict which students need specific types of support services, and which students were taken advantage of our support services, then uniting faculty/staff in tracking their support of all students through GradesFirst, we were able to more efficiently take care of student needs. By motivating both faculty and students through the use of innovative technologies for teaching (through lecture capture innovation) and through research engagement (through the Iroko project, or the upcoming Virtual Dissection Table technology) we have been able to keep in the forefront of how to get students to value the application of knowledge to solve real-world problems in their chosen disciplines. Hispanic students are participating in undergraduate research, getting awards, doing competitive internships and gaining hands-on learning experience due to their connection to innovative technology in the classroom. The faculty are collaborating across disciplines to foster this integration of technology innovation in the university’s Liberal Arts Curriculum and in the various majors, for meeting the needs of today’s workforce in emerging careers.
Why it should be considered best practice?
The information we used to develop the math models for creating the targeted advising student cohorts, the statistical methods and the monitoring software that can generate reports by student categories are available in all universities and not costly nor hard to use. This involved using faculty as change agents by utilizing their statistical expertise to improve how we advised, monitored, tracked and ultimately increased progress to graduation for all our students. The fact that Hispanic students do better when surrounded by Hispanic role models has also been important in this process – we have Hispanic top campus leadership in our faculty, staff and administrators. But without the technology we would not be able to foresee any issues that were generated from our actions and to address them in a timely fashion. Without the technology we would not be able to engage our students in new learning experiences that utilize their already high interest in technology to develop their academic talents for their chosen career paths. The more applications they can see to the knowledge they are getting in the classroom, and the more hands-on learning experiences they encounter through the integration of technology in their education, the better prepared they are for work and graduate school programs after their graduation. The use of technology to ensure graduation in 4 years has also led to savings to our students in tuition dollars and enhancement of their ability to continue successfully in their chosen careers, with much less loan debt.
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