An Easy, Cost-Effective Way To Remain Current With Student Success
Twelve presentations are selected from the top rated sessions at our National Symposium on Student Retention each year for live presentation as webinars.
All webinars take place from 1:00 – 2:00 pm Central Time on the designated date, during which time participants may ask questions and provide feedback. An unlimited number of colleagues from the registrant’s institution may attend. CSRDE members and non-members are invited to participate. Each registration includes 5 weeks of access to the recorded podcast.
"We have found the CSRDE webinars to be an essential value-added component of our membership.
The menu of award-winning presentations by colleagues who have “walked the walk” makes this option a
convenient, efficient, and economical way to maintain both currency and contacts in our field.
This webinar platform provides easy scheduling along with - yet another featured bonus! - options to
share within our organizations. The level of coordination and support of these programs from the
CSRDE staff/team is always amazing, always professional."
John Rollins, Director, Academic Performance Studies
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
Webinar Cost
-
CSRDE members:
One to six webinars are included with membership, depending on level -
Add'l webinars for members:
$129 each
$79 each for blocks of 3 or more -
Non-CSRDE members:
$229 each
2023 - 2024 Webinar Series
Mary Dioise Ramos, Monica Nandan, Kandice Porter, & Susan Mac Leod Dyess of Kennesaw State University
Institutions of higher education frequently develop solutions using a siloed approach and design services without necessarily involving the end user in the development process. The webinar will describe the application of Human-Centered Design Thinking (HCDT) in understanding student challenges and will aid in the development of student success initiatives. The session will introduce participants to the HCDT principles and demonstrate how they can be applied to create more effective, engaging, and meaningful learning experiences for students. In addition, participants will have the opportunity to engage in activities and discussions designed to enhance their understanding of the HCDT process and its application in educational settings. The session will also illustrate the impact of HCDT on student progression, retention, and graduation. Participants will have a thorough understanding of the principles of HCDT and the tools and techniques needed to implement them in their educational contexts. The webinar will provide teachers, administrators, educational technologists, and other participants with the knowledge and skills necessary to promote student success through implementing HCDT.Kim Brooks, Sarah Jurden, &Glenn Davis of Bowling Green State University
Students at Bowling Green State University who receive early alerts are less likely to successfully complete their courses and be retained. For this reason, we are working to improve the impact of our early alert initiative through careful differentiation of students by areas of need, enhanced timeliness, personalization of outreach, and ensuring that students get connected to critical resources. Our previous approach was mostly passive and relied heavily on automated or otherwise less personal emails. The revised model leverages existing relationships by connecting students with staff members they are already close with and therefore best positioned to offer meaningful support. To accomplish this, we introduced the role of Outreach Coordinator (OC), which is ascribed to existing staff members. OCs, who use phone calls and texts as primary communication strategies, are assigned to students based on their degree of connection: for example, student athletes are assigned to coaches or another staff member from Athletics, and students in high-touch scholarship programs are assigned to their scholarship coordinator. We are gathering data to measure the impact of this revised strategy, though early indicators suggest that more students are being directly connected to a broader range of campus resources than before.Rory McElwee, Amy Ruymann, & Erin Hannah of Rowan University
Academic advising drives student success and completion. In today’s landscape of data democratization and online retention platforms, advising has become more professionalized with protocols driven by data-fueled case management in addition to relationship-building. This session will describe strategies to optimize the reach and efficacy of Rowan University’s centralized professional advising organization via leveraging online student success platforms, dashboards and reports, and institutional partners including Institutional Research, Registrar, academic leadership, faculty, and more. Advisors are assigned specific students, typically from one or more specific academic programs, in a case management approach, and typically are embedded in the academic departments of the students they serve. Data-informed protocols are used to identify and intervene with students on numerous dimensions, including those who impact the four- and six-year graduation rates, those with 120+ credits, those registered for a duplicate course, those in academic jeopardy, and more. Advising protocols evolved in response to emerging data sources to ensure best practices in proactive advising, particularly in reference to equity gaps in success outcomes for students from minoritized populations. This paper addresses the change management strategy for the institution and advising unit as well as suggests strategies for other institutions.Robert Terry of the University of Oklahoma, George Bogaski of the University of Oklahoma, Nicole Campbell of the University of Oklahoma, Adelle Sturgel of Lehigh University, & Jordan Loeffelman of the University of Oklahoma
Planning and executing strategies for improving first-year college retention begins long before the actual retention outcome is observed. Using data to inform planning and decision-making requires integrating data collection and analysis plans into the yearly admission, enrollment, and course performance cycles. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how such a data-driven strategy has been implemented by focusing on six key windows in which getting timely data with accompanying analytics has resulted in an approximately 10% increase in first-year retention across the last six years. Moreover, we intend to show how embedding these key data gathering and analytic windows within a Continual Performance Cycle (CPC) across years has led to refinements in how we come to understand the factors that may play increasing roles in whether students achieve the degree of success required that makes retention more likely.Jennifer Wade-Berg. Deborah Baxter, Kandice Porter, & Susan Dyess of Kennesaw State University
The Wellstar College of Health and Human Services (WCHSS) at Kennesaw State University developed a new theoretical model to understand and impact student success by combining two existing frameworks: Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child (WSCC) (Willgerodt and Maloy, 2021) and the Student Success Ecosystem (Millet et al, 2020). The WCHSS Student Success Model also appends novel constructs to produce an innovative holistic student success model with four key domains and two strategic initiatives. This model provides academics and practitioners with a framework to conceptualize student success, develop actionable interventions to drive improvement, and evaluate outcomes that continue the call to define student success more holistically.Catherine Nutter & Wayne Perrin of Texas Tech University
Roughly 40% of students who begin a college degree drop out before they finish (Causey et al., 2020). Some students decide the cost outweighs the benefits of a degree given their goals. Some value the degree, but have to work to fund it, and often that job takes priority. Others face struggles unrelated to finances, such as time management, social activities, and lack of study skills. Many eventually find themselves on academic suspension due to low grade point averages. The Academic Recovery Advising (ARA) program at Texas Tech University works exclusively with students who are returning from academic suspension or academic dismissal. This program facilitates student success through targeted, one-to-one advising that addresses academic, personal, and financial barriers and provides support to address those issues. The program begins working with students while those students are away from the university, creating a structure and relationship that forms the foundation of the advising partnership when the student re-enrolls.Rex Butterfield, & Philip Allred of Brigham Young University-Idaho
In 2004, ACT, Inc. noted that there were three elements that contributed most to retention: first-year programs, academic advising, and learning support. As more evidence of the effectiveness of a campus-wide, multi-pronged approach to retention and student success, Vincent Tinto recounted, “Though it is true, as we are often reminded, that student retention is everyone’s business, it is now evident that it is the business of the faculty in particular. Their involvement in institutional retention efforts is often critical to the success of those efforts. Regrettably faculty involvement is still more limited than it should be” (2007, p. 5 emphasis added). Involving the whole campus in retention efforts can be challenging, but there are some economical ways to enlist more help. Between 2015 and 2020, despite some ups and downs, Brigham Young University Idaho has enjoyed an overall six percent increase in retention, from 68% to 74%. In that time, a college success course has begun to fill the role of a first-year experience, advising has increased focus on retention and student success, and to fill the learning support area, faculty are increasingly involved in retention efforts through mentoring and targeted interviewing. Statistically significant results in the internal assessments of the efforts have been somewhat rare, but the two efforts that have shown statistical significance could be especially high impact and helpful: the Student Success class has shown recent significance, and students who were interviewed by faculty members have a statistically higher GPA than those who were not interviewed. The paper explores the implications of these results.Chen Zong & Suzann Koller of the University of Wyoming
The purpose of this study is to examine the predictors of transfer student success at a large transfer-in 4-year public university using the three-stage transfer success model, which includes student demographic background, pre-transfer academic experiences, and post-transfer academic experience. In this study, the transfer student success was defined as one-year (fall-to-fall) retention or graduation of a transfer student. The research question is: What are the statistically significant predictors of transfer student success in the first year at a large transfer-in four-year public university, and at what stages are the significant predictors? The sample included 5,041 transfer students from Fall 2015 to Fall 2019 cohorts. Binary logistic regression analysis was conducted to assess whether the selected variables were statistically significant predictors of transfer student success. The findings indicate that the significant predictors of one-year transfer student success include variables for all three stages: tuition residency, current age, transferable associate degree, on-campus or distance education, cumulative GPA, student classification, attempted credits, and undeclared major. This study demonstrates how to use the conceptual model at a large transfer-in four-year public university, and discusses the possible implications and recommendations for similar institutions.Matthew Little of University of Tennessee Southern
In July 2021, Martin Methodist College became The University of Tennessee Southern, and with this change came the opportunity to reimagine student success. In its 151-year history the institution had learned to be flexible and resilient, but, like many small, struggling, faith-based institutions, emphasis was placed on recruiting students rather than student success. Its location in a rural, under-resourced region also created obstacles towards better student success metrics. To serve the needs of its service area, several changes were instituted for student success. The institution, for the first time, created a position with a singular focus on student success, and another to support online learning. An early alert system was put into place, and student success was reframed for faculty, parents, and students in a new manner. Initiatives were undertaken to increase retention and persistence rates, and data was collected, analyzed, and acted upon in new ways. Within one semester cohort retention rates had increased by 7.9%, persistence increased, and students in academic distress decreased. The rates of students with a high-risk of stopping out improved in every area. The actions taken to achieve this improvement will be discussed as well as how the culture of the institution has changed around student success.Michael Tucker, Jonathan Poon, & Sophie Greenwall of the University of South Carolina
As more higher education institutions participate in offering college-level courses to high school students (often referred to as dual enrollment) it becomes increasingly important to evaluate the impact of participation in these courses on subsequent higher education student success outcomes, such as first-year retention and graduation rates. In recent years, there has been an increase in the body of literature devoted to this topic, however, much of this literature is aimed at analyzing the impact of dual enrollment courses on performance in community colleges. This study will examine the relationship between high school students taking dual enrollment courses and their later performance at a public, R1 university. Additionally, this study will employ Classification and Regression Trees (CART), a type of supervised statistical learning for identifying the success factors for dually enrolled students based on academic, demographic, and socio-economic features. The intention of this study is to offer results that provide generalizable knowledge for institutional decision-making pertaining to dual enrollment and success in higher education.Marla Mamrick, Claire Robinson, Sara Reinhardt, & Phil Moore of University of South Carolina
The importance of student advisement has been a topic of discussion in higher education for decades. Student success and time to graduation can be profoundly impacted by course schedules. This has led to the advent of the use of professional advising in conjunction with faculty members. Without reliable feedback regarding course scheduling, however, these professionals are limited in their ability to optimize course schedules for students. To fill this void, vendors are offering apps and instruments that provide standard reports and predictive modeling. While informative, these products generally lack contextual information at the institutional level. This paper will describe a collaboration between an academic advisement center and enrollment management researchers to leverage information concerning course DFW rates, course sequencing, and an at-risk student indicator to optimize course schedules for students.Victoria Wallington, Reginald Simmons, Emily Cardinale, Sarah Gianetti, & Valentina Hernandez of Central Connecticut State University
College students face many challenges in their first years of college. One intervention designed to assist in college success is Success Central, a peer-mentoring program developed at a mid-size regional university. Success Central peer mentors use college life coaching techniques to help mentees build the skills necessary for college success. This program was developed to increase student success, primarily measured through persistence to the following school year. Recent data analyses conducted by the university indicates that in recent years, commuter students are more successful than residential students, an unexpected outcome given prior research (Chickering, 1971; Pascarella, Terenini & Blimling, 1994). This paper will begin with an introduction to issues affecting persistence of residential versus commuter students. The differential impact that Success Central has on residential versus commuter student success will be examined. The paper will end with case examples illustrating the model and a discussion of the results.Register
CSRDE institutional members sign up for webinars using their membership registration forms. The number of webinars depends on the level of membership. If your institution is a CSRDE member and you would like to participate in a webinar, email csrde@ou.edu and we will put you in contact with the CSRDE representative on your campus. If you are an individual member, your membership includes one webinar. If neither you nor your institution are CSRDE members, you may use this form to register for a webinar.
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Accessing the Webinar
For each webinar, CSRDE will send the following emails:
- One to two weeks before webinar – Confirmation of your registration plus instructions to test your computer for compatibility. You may test your system now.
- One day before webinar – Login information and instructions for accessing the webinar
- Registrants will have five weeks in which to access and review the podcast and share the link with other colleagues at your institution.