Danielle Trueba

Both the ability to manage and lead are important skill sets that contribute to a team's overall success. While management ensures structure, organization, and efficiency, leadership provides vision, motivation, and direction to move people forward.

It's so true that leadership can be a learned skill. With practice, feedback, and experience, anyone can grow into a strong leader.

Managers and leaders both work to help a team reach its goals. The difference is that managers focus on tasks and organization, while leaders focus on people and motivation.

The Career Services team has a significant role in retention. Ensuring students can visualize themselves in the role they are training for is a huge motivating factor. A positive and caring placement department demonstrates the school’s commitment to addressing students’ needs, which directly impacts retention.

This module provided perspective into the importance of connection and social involvement. Students need to feel connected to instructors and each other. The more students connect the higher the probability of persistence. 

This was great information. Because we are an Online school, mentorship is a little tricky. However, we do have a mentorship program within our HCA program. One way I was thinking we could informally mentor is by having a "Mentor Monday" post on Facebook. We could have successful students provide tips. 

I personally don't work in Admissions, however, I did learn some things that I can take back to our Admissions team. 

The stand-out for me was understanding that the time spent during the admissions process and the amount of knowledge the students has about the program prior to starting can have a direct impact on retention. I have always thought this was the case, but it was just observational. For example noticing that students who were rushed in last minute did poorly in their first couple of weeks and ended up dropping out despite efforts from our faculty and staff.… >>>

I really liked the focus on positivity! It's imperative that we all embrace a culture of positivity in order to be successful as an institution. 

My biggest takeaway for this section was: Use all interactions with students as extended admissions presentations. Remind students over and over of the WHY and WIIFM (what's in it for me) of attending school. Ensuring student know their WHY and keep it at the forefront of their mind is so very important! - Danielle