Diana Stanslaski

We have recently redeveloped our retention committee to include at least two individuals from each administrative department and two faculty representatives. I would like to include represetatives from the student body and also alumni. Is anyone else currently including students and alumni in there retention committees and if so, how has this made more program more effective?

We haven't had much luck with drop surveys. Most students do not even attempt to respond. What other methods could we use to reach the students that drop of the face of the earth and never return?

We currently have retention committees at each of our campuses; however, I would like to know if anyone has developed a committee organizationally? What I would like to see our organiztion do is create an organizational retention committee in which representatives from each campus retention committee would get together to share ideas. These ideas would be implemented as an organization. We have great ideas at the campus level; however, that's as far as they go at this point. Since our students attend more than one campus, it would be beneficial to them if we were more consistent with our operations.

I'm afraid the changes occur often and very quickly. More often than not, we tend to react to the changes rather than taking a more proactive stance and forecasting the potential impact of the changes on students, faculty and staff.

Our Student Ambassador program (student leadership) has failed miserably. Students state that they don't have the time to commit to the meetings. I would be interested to hear about other Student Ambassador programs that have been successful. What have you done to make it successful and how do you generate interest from the student body?

In order to meet the needs of the industry, it is necessary to make changes to the curriculum and programs of study to stay competitive. This tends to happen quite frequently at the college I work at. We are a large career college with 7 campuses. How can we effectively communicate changes to students? We have tried e-mails, flyers, meetings etc. I would be very interested in hearing how others communicate change to the student body.