Academic Support and Advising is Critical
The topic of how stress influences student attrition lays a tremendous foundation for institutions to consider the support and advising mechanisms that are in place to assist students. Looking for indicators of stress and responding appropriately could make the difference for a student. I've seen students who have felt disconnected from the institution and its community and how hard it is for them to maintain commitment. Substantive interaction with an advisor on an ongoing basis can help with this. Integrating and connecting students to the campus community can also create a circumstance whereby a student has more to lose than gain from dropping out.
I truly believe that you can't over emphasize the importance of the institutions commitment to student's success. I've had the opportunity to serve as a peer reviewer with my accreditation body; you can normally tell within about 10 minutes whether the campus has a total commitment among all departments. Those campuses with emphasizes on student success always fair better during the inspection and have better retention numbers.
An indicator of a campuses commitment to student success is whether or not all staff and faculty members are required to attend retention meetings and training.
Michael, please tell us how your school structures retention initiatives - ex. the frequency of retention meetings, typical agenda points, who is invited, the type of training, how frequently, for whom, etc.
Thanks.
I agree that all the structural components of supporting students is important. At the same time, I think that it is honesty of caring that the students pick up on the most. This is one thing that we can't fake.
As an Academic dean, at my weekly department meetings, retention is always the main topic. Faculty do not attend the weekly meeting, so we have retention training sessions in our quarterly in-services. These are usually lead by me, my associate dean, or one of my program directors. Everyone understands how important retention is and my instructors understand that it begins in the classroom.
Sounds like you're truly focused on improving student success rates! What topics do you cover in your quarterly training sessions? Do you ever have faculty share their best practices?
How do you identify those students who are under stress, Tracey? Frequently these are the very students who try to avoid contact with advisers. How do make that connection?
The hardest thing about helping a student with stress is identifying the problem before it is too late. The instructor is usally involved in teaching those students that are intrested in learning to give a large amount of time to the quite student who is hanging back. With some experance and training the insrtuctor will be able to spot and advies those students with stress and keep them in class.
Identifying students that are stressed out early and knowing who to send them too will help the student feel accepted by the school as a person not just a number.
Does your school have any formalized way to access stress levels? Do instructors receive any training to identify students who need support?
