Gordon State College 2024

Mission Statement

Gordon State College strives to provide a nurturing learning environment where students can grow academically and personally, preparing them for success in life and for making positive contributions to regional workforce needs.

Core Values

Commitment to Excellence - Prioritize high standards in all endeavors, striving for distinction in education, research, and community engagement.
Student Success - Focus on enhancing regional workforce by effectively preparing students for successful careers, thereby ensuring a substantial return on their educational investment.
Innovation and Creativity - Encourage creative thinking and innovative solutions, driving progress and adapting to the evolving needs of our society and the wider world.
Belonging - Embrace and celebrate multiple perspectives, fostering an environment that enriches learning and promotes respect and understanding.

Student Profile Data for Fall 2024

PART 2. Observations, Next Steps, and Reflecting on Momentum Work

The last year has been significant for Gordon State College's (GSC) student success team. We have spent the previous year instituting innovative programs and reimagining several older programs. Notably, the Spring of 2023 was the first entire semester for our Faculty Mentor program. While the program has had its challenges, we recognize that building such a robust program from the ground up is difficult. In addition, we relaunched our early alert program (Always Alert). Always Alert had not been functioning since 2021. As a result, we had to invest considerable time in adapting a new platform to manage the program's workflows. We also had to recruit and train academic coaches for the program. In addition, we began an attendance-taking pilot in Fall 2024 that includes select core courses. We have already seen some preliminary evidence indicating that this will positively impact student success and retention (a decrease of individual class midterm Fs by 10% from Fall 2023 to Fall 2024 and a 4% decrease of at-risk alerts from Fall 2023 to Fall 2024 for our Week 11 progress report). Adding to the above, we have committed ourselves to a more robust professional advising program. We have expanded to six professional advisors who advise all GSC students up to 60 credit hours. We also have a dedicated advisor for students who have been readmitted to GSC after academic suspension. In addition, we have a dedicated first semester advisor for nontraditional transfer students.

Communication/Outreach to Students

Part of our momentum work is to streamline and standardize our communication and outreach to students. In this effort, we have launched new messaging and communication campaigns. Some examples include:

Probation messaging campaign - In the Spring of 2024, we launched a student on probation messaging campaign to educate students on academic probation about the challenges they face unless they improve their academic performance. This campaign, sent through Navigate, provides accessible information about financial aid, tutoring and support services, and more.
Outreach to Math Learning Support students - We also launched an outreach campaign for math learning support students. In the Fall of 2023 and Spring of 2024, administrators visited each math learning support section to encourage students and talk to them about how they can succeed. We also send helpful emails to math learning support students every two weeks, including support service information and growth mindset content. We continued this outreach in Fall 24.
Academic leadership visits to FIRE classes - Like the approach with math learning support, President Green has visited each FIRE 1000 course during the first week of class (Spring 2024) to talk to students about their academic journey and how they can succeed. President Green also visited FIRE courses in Fall 2024, and Dr. Shubitz visited as well.
Review official communications to students - We have rewritten the letters that Academic Affairs sends to students put on Academic Probation or Academic Suspension at the end of each term. In addition, as of Fall 2024, professional advising has begun to draft pre-written outreach campaigns with a variety of nudges. All professional advisors will use these campaigns starting in Spring 2025.

Scheduling (Top 5 Strategies for Success)

We have engaged in continuous conversations about data-driven scheduling, as this is one of our ASPIRE top five strategies. Our discussions about data-driven scheduling partially emerged from our experimentation with block scheduling in the 2022-2023 AY. Due to challenges with block scheduling, we have begun to review our class scheduling patterns and use data, such as ABC rates and course fill rates, to guide how we schedule core classes. The culmination of this will be the use of CourseLeaf software (which we have used for 3 years) to pre-generate course schedules based on student needs and course demand. Finally, we have also made a commitment to moving up our timeline for publishing course schedules in future semesters. Traditionally, GSC has published courses one semester in advance. This has often led to problems for students who desire more transparency and predictability when planning their academic progress. We are now moving toward publishing course schedules a year in advance. Our first step in this process is to finalize and publish the Spring 2026 schedule by May 2025. We hope to move up the schedule even more in the future.

Student Affairs Initiatives

Complementing the accomplishments of Academic Affairs, Student Affairs is also making great strides toward promoting retention and student success. Academic Affairs has taken over complete ownership of New Student Orientations from Enrollment Services and Academic Affairs. Our Dean of Students, Latoya Stackhouse, has led an effort to redesign our NSO to be more effective in promoting long-term student success. Student Affairs has also taken steps to encourage engagement and belonging among both residential and commuter students, including the launch of four Living and Learning Communities (LLCs) in Fall 2024. We are still awaiting data concerning the impact of the LLCs.

Retention and Success Progress and Data

Over the last two years (since enrollment and retention lows during the early part of the Covid-19 pandemic), we have seen substantial retention and success progress across various student populations at Gordon State College. Some of the progress we have been making can be seen below in our Fall-to-Fall and Fall-to-Spring retention rates. Comparing the 2021 and 2022 FTFT cohorts, we saw a .9% increase in retention. Many of our efforts in AY 2023-2024 paid off, as we saw a 3.5% increase in retention. Also significant is that our latest Fall-to-Spring retention rate is at a record high of 85.7% (not seen since 2014). Preliminary data from Fall 2024 (midterm grades and Week 11 progress report data) indicates we are on track for solid Fall-to-Spring performance as the year ends.

FTFT Retention Cohort (Fall to Fall)

FTFT Retention Cohort (Fall to Spring)

As an access institution, we pay a lot of attention to specific populations of students. Of the many populations worth noting, we have seen increased retention among our residential population and among African American males. Retention rates for our FTFT Fall 2023 residential students are up 7% over the Fall 2021 cohort. Retention rates for our FTFT Fall 2023 African American male students are up 8.5% over the Fall 2021 cohort. Please see the tables below for more information.

Table 1 - Residential Students

Table 2 - African American Males

We are optimistic and excited about the progress of our work. We have used the past year to create a foundation for improvement. We are also engaging in a reorganization of student support and faculty development offices. In the summer of 2024, we launched the Center for Workforce Development, serving students and faculty in their academic and professional endeavors. CWD houses professional advising, faculty mentoring, career services, CETL, and more. The merging of several offices and initiatives has helped to foster a large collaborative team focused on helping students and developing faculty. In addition, we are also optimistic about the positive impact our advising redesign and faculty mentor programs will have on our students.

While we have had much success over the last year, there are places we fell short. One area was to gain more training for professional advisors and faculty advisors. Our professional advisors do not have the access to training resources they should have. In addition, many faculty advisors receive little to no formal training. Most of the experience that faculty advisors have is gained informally from colleagues and from being "on the job." This leads to substantial problems for students, often lengthening the time it takes them to complete programs and decreasing their course completion rate.

Starting in Spring 2025, we will dedicate more training-related resources to professional advisors and faculty advisors. This, along with an increased sphere for professional advising (we have moved to 60 credit hour professional advising) should have a significant impact on success and retention.

One area of struggle has continued to be faculty buy-in for mentoring. Faculty feel overworked and have not been as vested in mentoring as we would have hoped. As an institution, we need to do a better job of communicating the need for mentoring and provide more resources related to effective mentorship. We will make a big push in this area in the Spring and Fall of 2025.

In most cases, when we had success in our student success initiatives, it was due to the energy and dedication of individuals involved in those programs. When we do not succeed, it often owes to a lack of energy and commitment related to a lack of resources and personnel. Our greatest challenge is limited time and staff, which puts a lot of stress and significant demands on the individuals responsible for our success initiatives.

The biggest lesson that we have taken from the last year is that we need to have a focused, conscious, and purposeful approach to our programs. Programs such as the Mentor Program, Always Alert, FIRE, and our general advising apparatus must be aligned and mutually reinforcing. One step we have taken from this in the Fall of 2024 is to begin to codify specific processes related to student success and retention. The Student Success Center is working on a new Tutor and Student Worker handbook and a new Advising Handbook. We are also working on certifying our tutor program (level 1) and our Testing Center.

Besides the items we discuss below, Gordon State College must create a master student success communication plan, schedule, and process document (still in progress in Fall 2024). This is much in line with the developing manuals and handbooks for advising and tutoring. Such a plan, including all success activities and dates when those activities occur, will ensure that personnel changes and other related problems do not disrupt our success agenda. In this effort, we are currently working on a master schedule for success initiatives, which we will continue to develop during the next year. The creation of handbooks, manuals, and written processes will streamline our retention and success initiatives and apparatus.

Due to the changes at GSC, we are realigning our student success goals. In the future, Academic Affairs will focus on engagement, communication, and intervention to promote student success. A big part of this is fostering collaboration between faculty and professional advisors so that we can develop effective student success teams for first-year students. In this vision, first-year students will have (at least) four individuals that will support them, including:

A professional advisor
A faculty mentor
A FIRE 1000 instructor
An Always Alert academic coach (if needed)

In October 2024, GSC was awarded a Title III grant to help at-risk student populations at Gordon. Going forward (into the 2025-2026 AY), students in FIRE 1000 will also have access to a peer mentor.

In addition, we plan to use academic assistants within each department and EAB's Navigate to foster communication and cooperation among each student's success team. Mentors, advisors, FIRE instructors, and coaches can view relevant information about their students in Navigate and record data that will help and inform other success team members. Significantly, all our Student Success Inventory items are a significant part of creating functional success teams for students. That is the focus of our momentum plan this year.

Success Inventory

Advising Redesign / Intrusive Advising (ASPIRE Top 5 Strategy) (Gordon State College-2024)

Strategy/Project Name:

Advising Redesign / Intrusive Advising (ASPIRE Top 5 Strategy)

Momentum Area:

Purpose

Pathways

Category:

Advising

Strategy/Project Description:

Gordon State College completed its last advising redesign three years ago. Before the redesign, we had five advisor/faculty members who taught our first-year experience course and served as advisors for students enrolled in those courses. These advisor/faculty members held a hybrid role at Gordon. With our redesign in 2020-2021, we adopted professional advising for first-year students. Under our current system, advisors do not teach. They advise their advisees full time, and the first-year experience course is taught by teaching faculty.

Our vision for this project is to overhaul our advising system and:

Phase in two-year professional advising. This means all students with 60 credit hours would receive professional advising. Students beyond 60 credit hours would be paired with a faculty advisor in their major. To do this, we must expand our professional advising staff from 5 (Fall 2023) to 10 (Fall 2026). The number reflects current Fall 2023 enrollment and an average of 200 advisees per advisor.

Update for Fall 2024 – this has been implemented, and we now have six full-time advising staff supported by two full-time personnel who provide advising services to specific student populations. We hope to hire a seventh full-time advisor for Fall 2025.

Implement intrusive advising at Gordon State College. We will train our advisors and create a professional advising apparatus that is hands-on and proactive.

Update for Fall 2024- We have taken strong steps in this direction and will begin formal training (through NACADA and other organizations) in the Spring of 2025.

Better integrate professional advisors into our three academic schools and improve communication between professional advisors, faculty, and school administrators.

Update for Fall 2024 – This has been implemented. We have assigned dedicated advisors to our schools and departments. Each of our three schools has two dedicated advisors, who are being integrated into those schools (increased communication with faculty and collaboration with administrators and academic assistants).

Empower professional advisors with tools that they can use to help their advisees succeed. One way of empowering professional advisors is to create a system where they can provide feedback on what classes their advisees need and when those classes are scheduled. Traditionally, advisors and students have "taken" what academic departments have provided. We want advisors to be able to provide data-informed feedback to academic departments so that departments can schedule classes that students need. This is part of our data-driven scheduling initiative, one of our top success strategies going into the 2024-2025 AY.

Update for Fall 2024 – We have taken strong steps in this direction, and hope to have a data-driven course schedule available for Fall 2025.

Activity Status:

Scaling

Evaluation/Assessment plan:

Evaluation Plan and measures:

KPIs:

KPI 1. The number of advisees per advisor

KPI 2. Year-to-year retention for FTFT students

KPI 3. Student perception of advising quality (from survey) – "satisfied"

Baseline measure (for each KPI):

KPI 1. 200 actively enrolled students per advisor per Fall term and 175 per Spring term.

KPI 2. 1 percentage point

KPI 3. 1 percentage point

Current/most recent data (for each KPI):

KPI 1. 172.6 in Spring 2024

222.5 in Fall 2024

KPI 2. 49.7% (our Fall 2022 FTFT cohort retention number)

53.2% (our Fall 2023 FTFT cohort retention number)

This is an increase of 3.5%

KPI 3. No data

Goal or targets (for each KPI):

KPI 1. 200 actively enrolled students per advisor per Fall term and 175 per Spring term.

*We may need to crease this to 225 and 175 or 250 and 200 given the realities of 60 CH professional advising.

KPI 2. 51.7% (for the Fall 2023 cohort – results in Fall 2024) and 54.7% (for the Fall 2024 cohort – results in Fall 2025)

KPI 3. 80% "satisfied"

* New data not available

Time period/duration:

3.5 years for full impact (assuming transition to two-year professional advising is completed during the 25-26 AY)

Progress and Adjustments:

We are in the very early stages of this redesign. However, we have taken several steps already, including:

Reflecting on how advisors communicate with students. In this, we have begun to consider and design ways to "nudge" students into behaviors and choices that will benefit their academic success.

Update for Fall 2024 - We are in the process of designing standardized advising campaigns with text and email nudges.

Creating a plan for assigning new students to advisors (and mentors) before New Student Orientation. In the past, these assignments did not occur until the first week or two of the fall semester.

Update for Fall 2024 - We had a difficult roll-out of this step due to staffing issues; we hired four new advisors during Summer and Fall 2024. We will achieve the goal of assigning advisors to new students for Spring 2025. Faculty Mentors may not be assigned until Week 2 of the Spring term.

Reconfiguring and restructuring several campus offices that serve students and promote faculty and staff development.

Update for Fall 2024 – We have merged the Student Success Center, Career Services, and other offices.

Plan for the Year Ahead:

Some measures we plan to take during the remainder of 2024 include:

Expanding our professional advising staff from 5 to 6

Update for Fall 2024 – Completed. We hope to increase to 7 for Fall 25.

Assigning advisors to students before NSO and sending several communications before and right after NSO informing students of their assigned advisors and other campus resources

Update for Fall 2024 – We will achieve this for Spring 2025.

Creating a series of template messages for professional advisors to send to advisees during the semester. The advising team will design these messages (no more than one a week) collectively and then create messaging campaigns within Navigate to schedule messages before the start of the semester. These messaging campaigns will reflect a shared success message and a graduation message.

Update for Fall 2024 – This is in-process.

Delivering paper advisement invitations to residential students who do not respond to emails or text message invitations.

Update for Fall 2024 – This has been implemented for students who are at-risk at midterm.

Reiterating the importance of students taking 15 credit hours per semester.

Challenges and Support:

The greatest challenge to this plan is the ability to fund the expansion of our professional advising staff. To make two-year professional advising a reality, we must double the number of advisors over the next 2.5 years.

Even without fully adopting two-year professional advising, we can still implement intrusive advising and better integrate professional advisors into our three schools. While funding for training is a barrier, we should be able to secure at least adequate funds.

Another challenge we have identified during the Fall of 2024 is that we lack written processes, handbooks, and manuals for advising, tutoring, and related services. In addition, we do not have a master calendar for student success activities and campaigns. We are addressing this problem and hope to have remedied it by Summer 2025.

A variety of information could be helpful, including data about advising loads for professional advisors at peer institutions and training resources for professional advisors. We will contact staff at other institutions for some of this information.

Contact email:

sshubitz@gordonstate.edu

Primary Contact:

Scott Shubitz, nterim Executive Director of the Center for Workforce Development

Always Alert (early alert program) (Gordon State College-2024)

Strategy/Project Name:

Always Alert (early alert program)

Momentum Area:

Purpose

Category:

Early Alerts

Tracking Student Success

Strategy/Project Description:

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.

Currently, the program works based on ad-hoc alerts submitted by faculty in Navigate and by scheduled progress reports. Progress reports are sent out during the 5th and 10th week. Instructors can also submit Always Alert referrals at other times. Instructors are provided with four reasons for progress reports or ad-hoc alerts. Alerts in Navigate trigger an email to the at-risk student and their advisor. Emails include supportive information and information about resources on campus. If instructors select "Poor Grades" as an alert reason, the student receives an email prompting them to make an appointment with an academic coach.

Activity Status:

Refining/Maintaining

Evaluation/Assessment plan:

Evaluation Plan and measures:

The program's efficacy will be measured by analyzing data collected through Navigate and surveys sent to students.

KPIs:

KPI 1. The percentage of unique students who received alerts and made an appointment.

KPI 2. The pass rate of students who attended appointments versus those who received alerts and did not attend appointments.

KPI 3. Overall student success and retention (FTFT year-over-year comparisons)

KPI 4. Student perception of the program as it relates to the institution's interest in their success.

KPI 5 (new for Fall 2024). Faculty participation.

KPI 6 (new for Fall 2024). Students marked at-risk on progress reports.

Baseline measure (for each KPI):

KPI 1. One scheduled appointment in Navigate per unique student.

KPI 2. The percentage of students who attended Always Alert appointments who earned an ABC versus the percentage of students who received a notification to attend an Always Alert meeting but did not make an appointment or respond to the nudge.

KPI 3. Percentage growth year-over-year in FTFT students.

KPI 4. The percentage of survey respondents who answer that they believe the Always Alert program is beneficial to them or their peers.

KPI 5 (new for Fall 2024). The number of faculty that participate in progress reports – 86% (average of AY 23-24 progress reports)

KPI 6 (new for Fall 2024). 12% for Progress Report #1 (average of FA 23 and SP 24 Progress Report #1) and 18% for Progress Report #2 (average of FA 23 and SP 24 Progress Report #2)

Current/most recent data (for each KPI):

KPI 1. We have problematic data. Students are selecting the "Always Alert" service in Navigate for non-Always Alert meetings. We are overhauling the organization/workflow within Navigate this summer and should have a better system in place for Fall 24.

Update for Fall 2024 - We still have problematic data. Due to changes and refinements, we do not have multiple semesters that we can compare to each other.

KPI 2. We have low/limited data. Due to the problem associated with KPI 1 and other issues, we do not have sufficient data to measure this KPI. We should see an improvement in Fall 2024.

Update for Fall 2024 - We still have problematic data. Due to changes and refinements, we do not have multiple semesters that we can compare to each other.

KPI 3. .09% increase year-over-year. Retention was 48.8% for FA 21 and 49.7% for FA 22.

Update for Fall 2024 – 3.5% increase year-over-year. Retention increased from 49.7% to 53.2%.

KPI 4. No data

Update for Fall 2024 - We still have problematic data. Due to changes and refinements, we do not have multiple semesters that we can compare to each other.

KPI 5 (new for Fall 2024) - Fall 2024 - 95% for Progress Report #1 and 91% for Progress Report #2

KPI 6 (new for Fall 2024) - Fall 2024 – 11% for Progress Report #1 and 13% for Progress Report #2

Goal or targets (for each KPI):

KPI 1. 90 per semester. This is roughly 3% of our total population. According to our data, between 10% and 20% of students are "at-risk" starting after Week 5.

KPI 2. To be determined

KPI 3. 1% per year.

KPI 4. A majority responded that the program benefits students (>50%).

KPI 5. > 90%

KPI 6. < 11 for Progress Report #1 and < 13 for Progress Report #2

Time period/duration:

Spring 2026

Progress and Adjustments:

The last year has been a big one for Always Alert. Always Alert was relaunched in Spring 2023. We had to re-enlist faculty volunteers and reconceptualize the program. During the last year, we've built a group of 15 academic coaches (mostly faculty, but a couple of staff). We have trained Academic Coaches with best practices for consulting with students about the struggles they face in class.

In relaunching this new system, we have created four distinct emails for four alert reasons that instructors can select progress reports or when they submit ad-hoc alerts. Once those alerts are issued, students receive the emails. The "Poor Grade" alert results in students receiving an email with supportive words and a matrix of Academic Coaches they can choose to meet with. When students choose a coach, they are forwarded to the coach's Navigate personal availability page, where they can make an appointment. This system works relatively well in terms of workflow, as appointments in Navigate are automatically fed to faculty Outlook calendars. In addition, Navigate sends appointment reminders to the coaches and students.

The biggest problem with this system is that students likely have too many choices to choose from when selecting a coach. In addition, many coaches have limited availability, forcing students to select several coaches to find availability that fits their schedule. These extra steps lower the likelihood of students successfully scheduling an appointment. This has resulted in a relatively small number of appointments being scheduled under this system.

Update for Fall 2024 -

We have been evolving Always Alert to better suit the needs of students. One change we made was to move our second progress report to Week 11. This provides more time for progress updates between midterm grades and the progress report. We have also used automated processes in Navigate to make the alert system more effective. In this new process, progress report alerts and ad-hoc alerts entered by instructors are fed into an appointment campaign which runs continuously and nudges students to seek help from an academic coach. The appointment campaign feature allows students to click one button and select a time/day to meet with any available academic coach. The previous system emailed the student with supportive messaging and provided a grid for students to choose individual academic coaches. This issue was that students would have to select several coaches to find a time/day that worked for them. This decreased the number of appointments that students made. For our second progress report in Spring 2025, this new automated process increased appointments by 30%. Unfortunately, we ran into some hiccups for Fall 2024, when we tried to use the same appointment campaign for ad-hoc alerts, progress report 1, and progress report 2. The system did not add students to the nudge campaign more than one time, so if a student was marked at-risk for progress report 1 and 2, they would only receive nudges to book an appointment for progress report 1. For Spring 2025, we will be using different appointment campaigns so that students can be added to more than one campaign if they receive multiple at-risk alerts (during different times of the semester). Regardless of the issues we encountered with the automated system, we continued to see substantial faculty participation in the progress reports, with over 90% of faculty participating in the Week 5 and Week 11 campaigns in Fall 2025.

Plan for the Year Ahead:

To fix the above problem, we will overhaul the workflow of the system in Navigate. We will designate a Student Success Center staff member as a case manager for Always Alert. In the new system, "Poor Grades" alerts will create an open "case" within Navigate. The SSC staff member will manage that case and work to connect at-risk students with Academic Coaches. We believe this new system will result in many more completed/successful academic coaching appointments. We will implement this system for Fall 2024.

We believe this new system will also allow us to streamline data collection for the program.

Update for Fall 2024 – We need to adopt the solution discussed above. In addition, we need to do a better job of pairing at-risk students referred to through Always Alert with support services. One solution for this may be to find a case manager for different types of at-risk alerts, so that person can review the alerts, pair them with resources, and conduct follow-ups.

Challenges and Support:

The biggest challenge we face is making sure that the workflow works the way it is supposed to. In addition, we need to advertise the program and let students know its purpose is to help them succeed. If students do not believe in the program, they will not make or attend a meeting with an academic coach.

Update for Fall 2024 -

In addition to the above workflow issue, we need to identify a staff member to manage cases (as discussed in the plan for the year ahead).

Contact email:

sshubitz@gordonstate.edu

Primary Contact:

Scott Shubitz

Faculty Mentor Program (ASPIRE Top 5 Strategy) (Gordon State College-2024)

Strategy/Project Name:

Faculty Mentor Program (ASPIRE Top 5 Strategy)

Momentum Area:

Pathways

Category:

Advising

Career/Major Exploration

Faculty Engagement

Strategy/Project Description:

The Faculty Mentor Program at Gordon State College pairs first-year students (students under 30 credit hours) with faculty in the student's major area/area of focus. Faculty mentors act as part of the student's success team. They provide professional and career guidance and encouragement and help connect students with campus resources. All tenure-track faculty members serve as faculty members. Faculty mentors act to provide services and support that complement the services offered by GSC's professional academic advisors.

Spring 2023 was the first full semester of the Mentor Program at Gordon State College. New GSC students under 30 credit hours were assigned mentors within the first month of the semester. This addition slightly increased the average of 13 students per mentor in Fall 2022. On the mentor side, mentors continued to follow the touchpoint timeline distributed in the Fall of 2022. Mentors were encouraged to contact and meet with their mentees at critical times in the semester. During this term, GSC saw increased faculty involvement and interest in the program. For example, a college-wide faculty committee (AARFA) met several times to discuss changes to the mentor program and to investigate ways to increase mentor-mentee interaction.

The most significant recommendation that the committee made was to reform the way that mentees are assigned to mentors. Going forward, more faculty stakeholders will be involved in the assignment process. In addition, different departments and schools could design their ways of assigning students to mentees. For example, the Education faculty at Gordon took a more hands-on approach and divided up mentees among themselves based on whom the faculty had a pre-existing familiarity.

The new approach to assigning mentees was implemented in Fall 2023. However, due to data-related problems, mentees were not assigned to faculty until the third week of the term. This ran contrary to our goal of assigning mentees during the first week of the term (or even before). We were, however, able to have our IT Department create an Argos report so that we can get the list of new students under 30 credit hours much earlier in future semesters. For Spring 2024, we should be able to begin assigning mentees during the first or second week of classes.

One significant adjustment we made during 2023 was how mentees are removed from mentors. The program aims to provide new GSC students with a faculty mentor during their first year when they receive professional advising. Most students, though, are assigned a faculty advisor after they move beyond 30 credit hours. That faculty advisor can then also serve as a mentor for the student. Ideally, a student's faculty mentor should become their advisor when they move beyond 30 credits. However, due to program changes, faculty shortages in certain areas, and other problems, this does not always happen. As a result, we have established a process for removing mentees from mentors who have moved beyond 30 credit hours and have a different faculty advisor. This is a process we will need to continue to refine and improve.

Activity Status:

Scaling

Evaluation/Assessment plan:

Evaluation Plan and Measures:

The initiative's efficacy will be measured by analyzing data collected in Navigate and surveys sent to students.

KPIs:

KPI 1. The number of uses of the "mentoring" service listed in Navigate appointment summaries.

KPI 2. Student survey question asking students to identify their mentor.

KPI 3. Student survey question asking students if they received one or more communication from their mentor.

KPI 4. Faculty survey question asking faculty if they reached out to their mentees at least three times (question will ask how faculty reached out to students, too).

Baseline measure (for each KPI):

KPI 1. One "mentoring" service per mentee (KPI Discontinued)

KPI 2. Each student respondent who can identify their mentor

KPI 3. Each student respondent who responds that they received one or more communication from their mentor

KPI 4. Each faculty respondent who responds that they reached out to their mentees at least three times

Current/most recent data (for each KPI):

KPI 1. This is still being implemented; faculty will need more training, and we will need higher participation among faculty to get good data. (KPI Discontinued)

KPI 2. 26.315% (of survey respondents could name their mentor)

KPI 3. 28.205% (of survey respondents received at least one communication from their mentor)

KPI 4. The survey will be launched in Spring 2024

*Update for Fall 2024 – Spring faculty survey: 39% of respondents reached out to mentees 3 or more times (31

respondents in total).

Goal or targets:

KPI 1. One-half "mentoring" services listed for the total amount of mentees.

KPI 2. One-half (50%) of student respondents identifying their mentor.

KPI 3. One-half (50%) of student respondents stating that they had received a communication from their mentor at least one time

KPI 4. One-half (50%) of faculty respondents responding that they contacted mentees three or more times

Time period/duration:

The end of Spring 2025.

Progress and Adjustments:

In Fall 2023, after we submitted the Momentum Report update, we surveyed all students paired with a mentor at the start of the semester. The Mentor Program survey was sent to 834 students via text and email on November 15, 2023. Students surveyed included all FTFT students under 30 credit hours in Fall 2023 (this includes transfer students). Only 79 students responded. This represents 9.472% of students who received the survey. The survey asked students to respond to various questions regarding the program. Our conclusions based on the survey results are below:

Only 26.315% of respondents had heard of the program, could name their mentor, and received at least one communication from their mentor.
The majority of respondents are not familiar with the program.
Most students familiar with the program think it is beneficial (96% - Q6).
Many students would like more information about the program and would like to meet a mentor (Q8).
We need to do much more to communicate the program to students. This communication should come through a) administration and the faculty mentor coordinator and b) faculty mentors.

We built on this data and previously identified problems in several ways. First, we assigned new FTFT students under 30 credit hours for Spring 2024 to mentors during the first week of the semester. This was an improvement over assignment during Week 2 in Fall 2023. In addition, academic departments sent individual emails to new students (FTFT under 30 CH) informing them that they were paired with a mentor. We also emailed all students, campus-wide, explaining the mentor program and the difference between mentors and advisors. Finally, we sent an email through Navigate to all new students (who received a mentor) stating that they were paired with a faculty mentor and explaining how they could identify their mentor on Navigate. These activities resulted in students receiving three mentor program-related emails. As we have done previously, we have also sent email reminders to faculty concerning recommended touchpoints.

Update for Fall 2024 – We will be sending out another student survey and faculty survey in early December. This will help us gather information about the progress of the mentor program. During Fall 2024, we performed outreach to faculty in order to promote the mentor program. We emailed out three pre-written activities and emails that they could send to students. We also emailed information about the mentor program and reminded them of touchpoints. In terms of adjustments, in Spring 2024, we engaged in a discussion with faculty leaders about how to improve faculty buy-in. This is an on-going process, however.

Plan for the Year Ahead:

The most significant challenge in the year ahead is increasing engagement between mentors and mentees. Above all, this requires substantial communication at all levels. We plan to continue to use global emails and other messaging to explain the program to students. We will also spend more time discussing the program during new student orientations. One change we plan to implement is to assign faculty mentors to mentees before the start of the semester; we will do this just before a student's NSO so they will know who their mentor is before the beginning of the semester.

In addition to communication, we need to increase faculty buy-in by discussing the program and changing the program based on faculty feedback and suggestions. We will do this by promoting more interaction between professional advisors (for first-year students) and faculty mentors (we will outline this more in the advising redesign section of this report). This way, we can promote the idea that faculty mentors are part of a larger success team that each student has supporting them. Adding to this, we have already started to create a library of emails and activities (pre-written and pre-designed) that will be available to be used by faculty. This way, faculty can easily access the library, pick messages or activities they like, and send those to students.

Another significant step we need to take in the year ahead is how we gather quality data. Based on our conversations with our EAB Navigate representative, we concluded that the best way to collect data about mentor-mentee interactions was through the appointment summary in Navigate. We then created a "mentoring" service in Navigate and asked faculty to select it when they completed appointment summaries after meetings with mentors. That way, we could quantify (at least in terms of a base) how many interactions mentors and mentees had. This new approach to gathering data has been problematic due to faculty adoption; many faculty are not completing appointment summaries or selecting the mentoring service after meeting with students.

Update for Fall 2024 – Many of the above steps will need to continually be taken as we move forward. In March 2024, we will offer a training and information session about the mentor program to the majority of the faculty body (at one time). The training in March will serve as a springboard for further training and efforts to gain more faculty buy-in. In addition, we plan to draft more pre-written activities and communications for faculty mentors. Finally, we hope to work with academic departmental leadership to plan program-based mentor activities for the 2025-2026 AY.

Challenges and Support:

The most significant challenge for the program is related to how useful and effective the program is perceived to be by students. The program's success requires mutual interest and involvement between faculty and students. We believe that the solution to this challenge lies in data and communication. If we can collect data demonstrating that the program is effective, we can communicate that data to faculty and students and hopefully convince them of the usefulness of mentee-mentor interactions and engagement. As a result, we believe it will take time and effort to brand the program so that both groups see it as something extraordinarily valuable for them to participate in. We believe that when we can show that the program leads to positive outcomes for students, more faculty will embrace the program and increase their engagement in it.

Update for Fall 2024 – Faculty buy-in and perceptions about the program continue to be a problem. Many faculty note their workload and their inability to devote substantial time to mentoring students due to large class size, a high teaching load, and other service-related responsibilities. Some also believe that since the program is not organic (mentors/mentees are assigned rather than “opting in”), then it will not be effective.

We could use ideas about collecting data related to the program's performance. In addition, if there are other platforms/systems (other than EAB Navigate) that other institutions use, that would be helpful to know.

Contact email:

sshubitz@gordonstate.edu

Primary Contact:

Scott Shubitz

First-Year Experience Course (FIRE 1000) (Gordon State College-2024)

Strategy/Project Name:

First-Year Experience Course (FIRE 1000)

Momentum Area:

Purpose

Mindset

Category:

First Year Experience

Mindset

Tracking Student Success

Strategy/Project Description:

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.

The course underwent a partial redesign in the Fall of 2021. The course was broken into three units: 1. Mindset and student success, 2. Self-knowledge and academic planning, and 3. Critical thinking in a focus area. Over the last year, we have been making observations and gathering data related to the efficacy of the redesign.

We have integrated NACE soft skills into the course.
We have integrated Stepping Blocks into the course.

We administer the USG Mindset Survey to all students in

Activity Status:

Refining/Maintaining

Evaluation/Assessment plan:

Evaluation Plan and measures:

FIRE 1000 is evaluated based on the success of students in the course and the skills they gain from it.

KPIs:

KPI 1. ABC rates in all GSC FIRE 1000 courses

KPI 2. The number of students who complete the USG Mindset Survey

Baseline measure (for each KPI):

KPI 1. Percentage

KPI 2. Percentage

Current/most recent data (for each KPI):

KPI 1. 61% ABC rate for Fall 2023

Update for Fall 2024 – 67% for Spring 2024

KPI 2. No Data

Update for Fall 2024 – Waiting on Mindset response data

Goal or targets (for each KPI):

KPI 1. 80% ABC rate for Fall 2025

KPI 2. 80% completion

Time period/duration:

We will re-evaluate in the Spring of 2026.

Progress and Adjustments:

We have used the last six months to study outcomes for our FIRE 1000 students and to discuss next steps. Our conclusion is that we need to use the FIRE 1000 course better to improve success and retention rates for first-year students. How to do that is still an ongoing discussion.

One concrete step we have taken concerns the use of accountability teams in the course. In this initiative, an instructor creates teams of students at the start of the semester. Team members are tasked with encouraging others to attend class and succeed. There is also some group work involved. We are currently reflecting on data from this activity.

As of the Spring of 2024, we have launched an administrative outreach campaign to the FIRE courses. In this campaign, members of the GSC administration, such as President Green, visit FIRE courses to talk to students.

Plan for the Year Ahead:

There are three main steps we are taking in the year ahead:

We are soon adopting a new open-source textbook for the course. The text has been authored by GSC's own Valerie Calhoun and Steve Raynie. It is titled A Reflective Approach to Critical Thinking and Student Success.
We will soon rename the course from "Freshman Introduction to Reasoning Essentials" to "Personal Develop and Critical Thinking." We hope that this name change impacts student perceptions about the course. Importantly, we want to remove the idea that the course is solely for first-year students. With the name change, we will proceed with a larger effort to rebrand the course so that students perceive it as fundamental to building a foundation for their academic success at GSC.
Our discussions about switching back to the older course model have evolved. With the older model, FIRE instructors also served as student advisors. However, switching to the old model may not be feasible in our effort to embrace two-year professional advising. Instead of using the old model, we want to use the FIRE course as a bridge to members of each student's success team. For first-year students, this means using the course as an opportunity to promote interaction between students and their professional advisors and faculty mentors. At the center of this will be fostering communication between FIRE instructors, advisors, and mentors. In this effort, we will use Navigate to facilitate this communication between members of each student's success team.

Update for Fall 2024 – Gordon State College was awarded a Title III grant from the Federal Government in October 2024. The grant provides substantial funding with the purpose of enhancing students’ experience in FIRE (and during their first year in general). The grant will pay for 5 peer mentors for FIRE classes in Spring 2025. This will ramp up to 20 peer mentors for FIRE classes in Fall 2025. Peer mentors will be GSC students who have demonstrated academic success and can offer support to first semester students.

In addition to peer mentors, we plan to phase out adjunct faculty for in-person FIRE courses. Depending on funding, we may have an additional lecturer or find another way to phase out adjuncts for FIRE.

Challenges and Support:

We only have one full-time faculty member who teaches the course. Several sections are taught by adjuncts and by faculty from various departments. This is not the best model for making a significant impact in the course, as FIRE instructors need to be masters of the content and master's at engaging first-year students.

Update for Fall 2024 – Funding for a FIRE lecturer is a major challenge.

We could use ideas about making the course more effective. In addition, we could use ideas about how to use the course to increase overall student success. For example, do other institutions use the course to connect students with their broader success team?

Contact email:

sraynie@gordonstate.edu

Primary Contact:

Stephen Raynie

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