Refining/Maintaining

MGA admits a significant number of students who need remediation and are enrolled in learning support (LS) coursework.  MGA saw a 1.9% increase in the number of LS students from fall’22 to fall’23 and another 1.5% increase from fall’23 to fall’24.  In fall’24, 733 students placed into learning support, accounting for 8.7% of fall’24 enrollment.

Supporting student success is the major focus of all the momentum initiatives at MGA.  By building efficiencies into our advising processes, offering peer mentoring to our students, and enhancing our academic support resources, the student success teams that include our professional academic advisors, the Student Success Centers staff, and the academic success coaches, continue to work towards this goal.  This activity closely aligns with the following MGA’s ASPIRE/POISED goals: 1) To increase the number of qualified applicants for the Pre-licensure Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) and

Success is more about what you do while you are in college and less about which college you attend. A recent study showed that the most successful students are those who participate in undergraduate experiences, such as internships, undergraduate research, and service-learning. These engaged learning opportunities allow students to take what they learn in the classroom and apply it to the real world. Through internships, undergraduate research, and service-learning, students also gain unparalleled opportunities to hone their critical thinking and communication skills.

FIRE 1000 ("Freshmen Introduction to Reasoning Essentials") is a first-year course that stimulates students' academic self-efficacy, depth of intellectual inquiry, and problem-solving skills. This is done through research and reflection to understand themselves better, their purpose, and the campus community. FIRE 1000 was launched in 2017 and is required at GSC for all new and transfer students under 13 credit hours.

Always Alert is Gordon State College's early alert academic intervention program. The program is intended to help students at-risk of not succeeding in one or more classes. The program relies on volunteer faculty academic coaches to conduct one-on-one meetings. The program uses Navigate to facilitate outreach, appointment-making, and record-keeping.

GSU participates in a 7-institution University Innovation Alliance (UIA) initiative funded by the Kresge Foundation, conducting focus groups on identifying student success barriers. Through focus groups (30-50 students), we talk to different undergraduate populations, including First-Year, Transfer and Transition, Career Services users, and Academic Support users. Each semester targets a new population, gathering qualitative data to inform institutional improvements.

The Accelerator Academy is an academic program offered in the summer semester to students who did not successfully complete their introductory English class during the academic year. Students are offered wrap around academic support to help them understand how to successfully engage the material and complete the course successfully.  The goal of this course is to help increase student progression in order to meet the USG’s goal of completing English by the end of the freshmen year (30 hours).

We are engaging in a large-scale analysis of student success metrics related to curricular complexity to analyze its impact on student time to degree. Curricular Complexity provides a way to analyze the impact of course sequences and required credit hours on a student’s successful progression through the curriculum and their time to degree. Research has shown that curricular complexity is directly related to time to degree; reducing curricular complexity should therefore reduce time to degree for students.

Refresh the advising checklist/program maps we constructed at the first stages of Momentum by incorporating Core IMPACTS and reviewing course sequencing recommendations. Provide printed maps to each new student attending orientation.

A team formed between Advising, Orientation, and Career Services that will continue to work with the undecided student population. We created a plan to intervene early with undecided students to connect them with resources to help them make a purposeful choice. The plan begins at orientation with a breakout session designed to get undecided students thinking about making a purposeful choice and continues once the semester begins with strategic talking points during advising appointments.