This activity is designed to enhance first-year student persistence, progression, and graduation by fostering a coordinated approach that integrates faculty mentoring, professional academic advising, and career services guidance. The focus is on holding students accountable for their academic choices, ensuring they remain on a graduation plan aligned with their career goals, and connecting them with key campus resources to support holistic development.
Student Accountability & Engagement:
- Students are required to actively participate in mentoring meetings, advising sessions, and career readiness activities.
- They are responsible for updating their academic plan each semester, reflecting on milestones achieved, and setting goals for the next term.
- Early alerts and progress checks are used to identify students who are off-track, prompting timely interventions from advisors and mentors.
Expected Outcomes:
- Increased first-year student persistence and progression to the sophomore year.
- Improved alignment of academic plans with intended majors and career goals.
- Enhanced student engagement with faculty mentors, advisors, and career services, resulting in greater ownership of academic and professional development.
Long-term, increased retention and graduation rates for students in programs aligned with their career pathways.
- Semester Progress Checks & Academic Plan Monitoring: Advisors require students to complete semester progress checks, updating DegreeWorks with milestones and course plans. Completion rates tracked and reviewed monthly.
- Mentoring Engagement: Faculty mentors meet with assigned students each semester. Participation tracked via mentoring logs and recorded in advising system.
- Registration Compliance: Advisors and staff monitor student registration status to ensure timely course enrollment.
- Student Feedback: Annual surveys and optional focus groups assess student perceptions of accountability, engagement, and career readiness support.
- Persistence Tracking: Institutional Research reports track first-year progression to sophomore year, as a long-term measure of success.
Baseline Measures:
- Baseline data will be established using Fall 2025 cohort participation and engagement reports, DegreeWorks completion rates, and survey results.
Frequency of Assessment:
- Direct measures (progress checks, mentoring engagement, registration) assessed each semester.
- Indirect measures (student perceptions) assessed annually.
- Retention/persistence data assessed annually through Institutional Research reports.
Goal / Target for Success:
- ≥85% of students complete progress checks and update academic plans by Spring 2026.
- ≥80% of students engage in faculty mentoring by Spring 2026.
- ≥95% of students registered by the registration deadline each semester.
- ≥80% of students report that advising supports accountability and career alignment by Spring 2026.
- Increase first-year to sophomore progression by 7% from Fall 2025 to Fall 2026.
Current Status:
- Baseline data collection is ongoing for Fall 2025 cohort. Initial assessment reports will be available at the end of the Fall 2025 semester.
Currently, senior leadership is considering a change to this model to address students’ desires for more faculty guidance.
- Baseline data collection is ongoing for Fall 2025 cohort. Initial assessment reports will be available at the end of the Fall 2025 semester.
Faculty Mentoring: First-year students are paired with faculty mentors in their intended major. Mentors provide guidance on academic expectations, career pathways, and professional development, helping students understand how coursework and co-curricular opportunities support their long-term goals.
Professional Advising: Academic advisors work closely with students to develop and monitor a semester-by-semester academic plan, ensuring course selection aligns with degree requirements and graduation timelines. Advisors review progress each semester and intervene early if students are off-track, reinforcing accountability for meeting milestones.
Career Services Integration: Career Services professionals collaborate with faculty and advisors to introduce students to career exploration, professional skills development, and experiential learning opportunities. This ensures students understand the connection between their major, coursework, and career readiness
Challenges:
Faculty Availability and Engagement:
- Limited faculty bandwidth may restrict the number of students who can be effectively mentored.
- Competing responsibilities (research, teaching, service) could reduce faculty participation or consistency in mentoring meetings.
Advisor Caseloads and Capacity:
- High student-to-advisor ratios may limit individualized attention and the ability to monitor every student’s academic plan closely.
- Advisors may struggle to provide timely interventions for students flagged as off-track.
Student Engagement and Accountability:
- Some students may not fully engage in mentoring, advising, or career readiness activities.
- Lack of motivation or understanding of the importance of academic planning and career alignment may reduce participation.
Access to Data and Early Alerts:
- Timely access to student progress data in DegreeWorks as we do not have the plan with report outs from there for academic plans.
Supports:
- Guidance on effective models for integrating faculty mentorship, professional advising, and career services to promote student accountability and persistence.
- Support for advisor and faculty professional development related to academic planning, student accountability strategies, and early intervention techniques.
- Data Access and Reporting Tools: for DegreeWorks
