Of all the parts involved in student retention such as: student involvement in campus activities, career planning so that students will have clear career plans, to quality orientation programs Is there a way to measure which is the greater contributor to retention efforts?

Retention metrics are useful & helpful only if they can actually have an impact on retention initiatives. With that in mind, essential retention stats might include data from checklists used by both the student and admissions personnel. In addition, how effective would admission and retention benchmarking interviews be? For example interviews such as offer rejected/accepted, post acceptance interviews, drop out interviews etc. may also hold valuable data that can be measured and used to improve retention statistics.

In my courses I utilize different forms of grading a student's understanding of the material. In class assignments following a brief lecture allow me to imediately monitor the student's grasp of what has just been discussed. I also use exams and complicated projects broken down into smaller lab assignments. This way they can pace themselves and see an otherwise large project to the end.

I have created to-do lists in my PDA, and that worked well enough. I found that a small spiral bound notebook gave me a greater satisfaction of crossing off the accomplished tasks. I also keep the book until I use up all the pages. This way I can look back and really feel good about all the things that I got done.