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List of all Retention Council Agendas & Minutes
Agenda & Minutes for October 8, 2003 (revised)
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Agenda of the Retention Council
Bartlett Room- Newhouse II 10:00-12:00 p.m.
| I. |
Announcements |
Horace Smith |
| II. |
Approval of the June minutes |
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| III. |
Update on Mid-Semester Progress Report Revision * |
Anne Shelly |
| IV. |
Honors Program Retention Program |
Judy Hamilton |
| V. |
Study of Alternate Offer Students- Introductory Demographics |
Bobbi Yonai, Tim Wasserman |
| VI. |
Other Business |
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| * Word files sent out electronically on October 6, 2003. |
| Next Meeting: November 5, 2003 Bartlett Room 262 NH II |
Minutes of the Retention Council
In Attendance: Marlene Blumin, Maureen Breed, Andrew Clark, Larry Davis, Sheila DeRose, Susan Donovan, James Duah-Agyeman, Dave Gerlach , Bea Gonzalez, Rosanna Grassi, Judy Hamilton, Marianna Lebron, Lynda Mason, JoAnn May, Kenneth Miles, Helen Murray, Michael Olivette, Lena Rose Orlando, David Potter, Felicia Proud, Amie Redmond, Rebecca Reed-Kantrowicz, Hanna Richardson, Don Saleh, Anne Shelly, Steve Simon, Horace Smith, Eric Spina, Martha Sutter, Anastasia Urtz, Chris Walsh, Tim Wasserman, Michael Wasylenko, Barry Wells, Barbara Yonai
I. Announcements
Changes to minutes can be sent electronically since they were late getting out.
Introduction- Dave Gerlach, Research Associate, Center for Retention Studies.
Hanna Richardson has been named a Research Associate with the Center for Retention Studies.
II. Update in Mid-Semester Progress Report Revision
Anne Shelly presented an updated on progress toward revisions to the MSPR (see attached copy of version 5). The significant changes to the report include:
A new 2-category format for indicating completely satisfactory or deficient progress. Instructors will only indicate performance deficiencies for students in the latter category.
A new category for identifying the first-year "stars". Instructors can identify any student who is a "potentially outstanding student".
The optional listing of mid-term grades reduced from the complete grade scale to full grades only (i.e., A, B, C, D, F).
This version has been approved by ACC. Programming into PeopleSoft 8.0 is in progress for a Fall 2004 implementation.
In an attempt to identify the high-achieving first-year students this year, a short-term solution is in place. In early January 2004, Center for Support of Teaching and Learning (CSTL) will pull the Fall 2003 semester GPA for all first-year students and will generate a list of all students with GPAs between 3.5 and 4.0 by school/college of enrollment (duals will be noted). Those students participating in the Honors Program will be identified. These lists will be distributed to the schools and colleges with recommendation for the following actions:
meeting between faculty advisors and their listed students to review the students' Spring 2004 class schedules before the add deadline. Advisors can encourage the students to explore the more challenging courses available to and appropriate for them;
encouragement by faculty advisors that students respond to Honors Program invitations to take honors sections of their courses;
invitations from department chairs to attend discipline-specific lectures or programs that provide a co-curricular connection to the students' programs of study.
There was some concern expressed about using the MSPR to identify high-achieving first-year students as having a potential negative impact on the students themselves. It was emphasized that students would not be receiving this feedback on their reports; the information will be reported only on the school/college reports.
Schools, colleges, and other units are considering ways in which this information will be useful for connecting with these students, particularly during their spring semester.
III. Honors Program Retention
Judy Hamilton presented Honors Program plans to reach out to first-year students not in the Honors Program with the goal of helping to retain good students at the University. The leavers' study showed that those who leave after their first year who had 3.5 or better GPAs said that they left for two reasons:
Left SU because they weren't finding academic challenge.
Left because they could not find "others like me." Presumably, they couldn't find others like themselves who sought academic challenge.
The Honors Program plans attend to each of those two points.
1) We are dramatically changing the way we recruit first-year students to the Honors Program for second semester. We have always waited until grades are out which is usually Thursday before the Monday in January that classes start. It has always been problematic because the window to reach out to students is so small, and the process of doing significant schedule adjustment to fit in an Honors course and an Honors seminar is a logistical nightmare. In addition, the leavers' study showed that students are beginning to think about leaving in the first 6-8 weeks of the first semester. For both reasons, we sought to change the process. The question is: How can we identify appropriate students before first-semester grades are available? Last year (Fall '02) I sent out an email message to faculty for recommendations, and received approximately 6 responses. This time, I obtained the list of people who received the MSPRs for freshmen, emailed those faculty and asked if they would identify the stars so that I could invite those students to the Honors Program. Even though we are in the first few days of faculty responses, already I have received 18 responses. This year there are 99 Founders' Scholars and 479 Chancellor's scholars who are first-year students not in the Honors Program. I will be inviting these three populations of first-year students - Founders' Scholars, Chancellor's Scholars, and those recommended by their faculty - to take Honors courses in the spring. Current Honors students will register on November 12. Within a day or two after that, I will give permissions for Honors courses where there is space to anyone in those three populations, and they can register during November registration. We are in the fortunate position of having enough money to have plenty of additional Honors courses for spring so there will be considerable space available. I have about 290 spaces for current Honors students and about 100-150 spaces for students from the invited populations. We are also inviting all of these students to join the Honors Program for second semester. Applications are due December 15. Decisions will be made on the basis of first-semester grades and on application essays. Students signed up for an Honors course may stay in that course even if they happen not to be accepted into the Program.
2) The second part of the Honors plan involves linking students in these three populations with others like themselves. We have a new Honors Student Association, just formed last spring, that is underway this fall. I attended a national honors conference last year and gathered all the information I could get my hands on about honors student organizations. A crucial factor in their success is sufficient staff support, and the Honors Program finally has a staff person who has the time to work with them. The HSA has put on a welcome barbeque for freshmen, are putting on discussion desserts with faculty, movie nights, a college bowl team, and a breakfast club for 5th and 6th graders at Levy middle school. These are just some of their activities. See the handout that includes their web address. I have invited members of the three populations to join HSA.
The goal of these 2 initiatives is, for those who respond, to link them up with others like themselves and to get them registered for a spring Honors course, both by Thanksgiving.
Potter: Diversity has been an important goal of Honors. In these initiatives, what provision is being made to ensure diversity?
Hamilton: Diversity is not automatically there, particularly because the Founders' and Chancellor's Scholars are not diverse groups. We are doing several things. We are seeking recommendations from Bob Wilson and others of his colleagues. Also, we will be inviting students of color whose grades are outstanding in that small window in January. We want to do everything we can to ensure a diverse group and welcome any suggestions for more ideas.
Smith: Do all students who apply to the Honors Program have places in courses?
Hamilton: Yes, we are fortunate for next semester to have the financial resources to be able to offer quite a few additional Honors courses. My estimates are about numbers of spaces needed in courses, not about numbers of students, since many take more than one Honors course.
Spina: We have a trend of 20 students or so every year that want to be in the Honors Program but cannot participate.
Saleh: Is there a low yield rate?
Spina: No, there is a low opportunity to be in the Honors Program.
Hamilton: I have been talking about the process of admitting first-year students to the Honors Program for the spring semester. These questions are about the admission of incoming freshmen in the fall and involve the process that starts in their senior year in high school. We aim for an incoming class of 150 freshmen every fall. Of that 150, usually about 130-135 are what we call "preaccepts." We select them on the basis of quantitative criteria and send them a letter that essentially says "you are in if you want to be in." We also have room for applicants, about 15-20. If you run into prospective students who indicate an interest, please do refer them to us and we'll give them an application. (Also note that any students who apply for fall and are not admitted then, are automatically re-considered for spring.) Let me say here, that it's a rather touchy situation for us. We can't overtly advertise that we invite applications, because we would be inundated with applications, and would not have room to admit them all. The Admissions Office would much prefer that we not be in the position of telling large numbers of students "no." Because of that complication, we really can't advertise our presence to prospective students.
The other factor that exacerbates this touchiness, is the large number of merit scholarships the University gives out. The "preaccepts" are only a subset of the Founders' Scholars. As you heard me say earlier, there are 99 Founders' and 479 Chancellor's Scholars (freshmen) not in the Honors Program this year, and another very significant number of Deans' Scholars. They have all received a message from the University that they are "good students" by virtue of their merit award. If all of them knew about the Honors Program, they would want to apply and would expect to get in.
Let me add an observation about the incoming freshmen in the Honors Program. At one time we admitted 250 freshmen for the fall semester. For financial reasons we were told to cut that to 150. The point in time at which we did that happens to coincide with the initial observations of the University's retention problems with good students. Perhaps that's mere coincidence but I think not.
Miles: If you could clone yourselves, would you be interested in speaking at Freshman Forums to spark attention?
Hamilton: We could reach out to untargeted audience, but not sure how beneficial it would be.
IV. Study of AO
Barbara Yonai presented retention data on alternate offer (AO) and regularly admitted students. There were no handouts because it is necessary to verify the data with admissions first. Data were presented on the Fall 1992 through Fall 2001 cohorts. All of the data are based on the same cohorts used in most of the retention studies.
Susan Donovan reminded the council about how the application for admission-is worded. Students can indicate a secondary and even a tertiary choice of school or college, or indicate that they do not want to be considered for an alternate offer. Admissions has eliminated the practice of giving students an alternate offer that they have not selected. Students who apply to dual programs, but are only accepted into one, are coded as AO but they are really a different group from those that only wanted one program and received an alternate offer. The procedure of asking students if they did or did not want an alternate offer was started three years ago.
Background variables for alternate offer and regular admits were presented, including gender, ethnicity, financial need, and SAT score ranges. Next, data were presented based on college of application and college of admissions. These data provided a picture of the college where students are alternate offered and what was the students' original choice. Next attrition and graduation data were presented for the 1992 through 2001 cohorts. For the early cohorts there were some differences in these rates, but in the later cohorts these differences were not as great. Data were also presented for students who IUT (Intra-University Transfer). Students (both alternate offers and regular admits) are more likely to persist if they IUT. The GPA ranges for alternate offer and regular admit students who graduate and drop out were also presented. There were differences in these rates but they vary from cohort to cohort.
Susan Donovan indicated that the University message to incoming students is that they can move between colleges, but alternate offer students are not able to do that easily and then are disappointed.
These data will be reviewed with Enrollment Management and the Dean of Admissions and additional studies will be conducted.
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