UGA students are very well prepared. Ninety-one percent of the admitted Class of 2029 posted an average core high school GPA of 4.0 or higher, with 98% having completed at least one advanced course (such as AP, IB, or Dual Enrollment). Often such high-achieving students have never experienced any kind of failure. But the demanding pace of a research institution like UGA often poses significant and unexpected challenges for our students. Our Academic Coaching program provides direct, differentiated assistance for students as they navigate college, overcome challenges they encounter, achieve academic success, and ultimately graduate. Helping our students cultivate a productive academic mindset is an important part of this process.
Housed within the Office for Student Success and Achievement, Academic Coaching offers UGA students the opportunity to meet with certified and trained Academic Coaches to discuss their pathways to success. Coaching empowers students to identify their strengths, explore evidence-based study strategies, reflect on their own learning, and ultimately develop a growth mindset.
Typically, the coach and student work together to create a strategic learning plan that lays the groundwork for awareness of what strategies and practices will be necessary for success in UGA’s academic environment.
Academic Coaching also plays a crucial role in UGA’s Connect & Complete Persistence Framework which is a set of academic policies for undergraduate students in academic difficulty. The goal of Connect & Complete is to provide timely intervention to prevent students from being dismissed. Students on academic warning are required to meet with an Academic Coach, to prevent them from moving to dismissal. When those students who are dismissed return to the university, they have a degree completion team that includes an Academic Coach, along with their academic advisor and a case worker from Student Care and Outreach to formulate a success plan.
UGA students are very well prepared. Ninety-one percent of the admitted Class of 2029 posted an average core high school GPA of 4.0 or higher, with 98% having completed at least one advanced course (such as AP, IB, or Dual Enrollment). Often such high-achieving students have never experienced any kind of failure. But the demanding pace of a research institution like UGA often poses significant and unexpected challenges for our students. Our Academic Coaching program provides direct, differentiated assistance for students as they navigate college, overcome challenges they encounter, achieve academic success, and ultimately graduate. Helping our students cultivate a productive academic mindset is an important part of this process.
Housed within the Office for Student Success and Achievement, Academic Coaching offers UGA students the opportunity to meet with certified and trained Academic Coaches to discuss their pathways to success. Coaching empowers students to identify their strengths, explore evidence-based study strategies, reflect on their own learning, and ultimately develop a growth mindset.
Typically, the coach and student work together to create a strategic learning plan that lays the groundwork for awareness of what strategies and practices will be necessary for success in UGA’s academic environment.
Academic Coaching also plays a crucial role in UGA’s Connect & Complete Persistence Framework which is a set of academic policies for undergraduate students in academic difficulty. The goal of Connect & Complete is to provide timely intervention to prevent students from being dismissed. Students on academic warning are required to meet with an Academic Coach, to prevent them from moving to dismissal. When those students who are dismissed return to the university, they have a degree completion team that includes an Academic Coach, along with their academic advisor and a case worker from Student Care and Outreach to formulate a success plan.
We consider several factors in our assessment of academic coaching. Each semester we review the number of coaching appointments, unique students served, self-select appointments requested, and professionals trained to serve as affiliate coaches. Additionally, we distribute pre- and post-surveys to students who participate in coaching, as well as survey coaches for their feedback on the impact of coaching. Finally, in partnership with Academic Advising, we review the impact of Degree Completion Team meetings on student persistence.
Our goal is to grow the academic coaching program, while creating a framework to sustain a program that students and coaches find effective. We have demonstrated growth in the number of coaching appointments, unique students served, self-select appointments requested, and professionals trained to serve as coaches. Total coaching appointments increased from 602 in 2023-2024 to 1030 in 2024-2025. Unique students served increased from 417 in 2023-2024 to 761 in 2024-2025. Both total appointments and unique students served are inclusive of self-select appointments, and those students required to participate in coaching as part of the Connect and Complete framework. Self-select appointments requested increased from 108 in 2023-2024 to 356 in 2024-2025. Professionals trained to serve as affiliate coaches increased from 2 in 2023-2024 to 86 in 2024-2025.
Student survey results (on a 1 to 5 Likert scale inventory from strongly disagree to strongly agree) indicate that students overall consider coaching highly useful (M=4.69, SD=0.52). The survey asked the respondents how likely they were to return for an additional coaching session in the future. Over 80% of the respondents indicated the likelihood of returning, providing further support for the usefulness of coaching.
Coach survey results (1 to 5 Likert scale inventory from strongly disagree to strongly agree) demonstrated that coaches perceived coaching to influence students’ perceived control over their academic performance (M = 4.08, SD = 0.90), sense of belonging (M = 4.00, SD = 0.85), and academic success (M = 3.92, SD = 0.90). Finally, assessment of the Degree Completion Team (DCT) model for students returning from Academic Probation, found that during the 2024-2025 academic year, students who completed a DCT were four times more likely to return to good academic standing that students without DCTs.
In fall 2023, we partnered with InsideTrack Training and Development to offer both foundational and advanced levels of training and certification for academic coaches. By fall 2024, five faculty and staff members successfully completed the certification process to become fully credentialed InsideTrack trainers. During the 2024-2025 academic year, these trainers facilitated five Foundational Academic Coach training sessions, preparing 86 additional professionals to serve as affiliate academic coaches. While several professionals who complete the training have gone on to serve in this capacity, not all chose to do so. Efforts are underway to identify strategies that will strengthen the connection between training completion and active participation as affiliate coaches among faculty and staff.
During the 2025-2026 academic year, we are conducting a comprehensive review of the academic coaching program structure. We are exploring strategies to increase engagement and encourage more trained faculty and staff to serve as affiliate academic coaches.
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