To combat lower graduation rates, KSU will focus on four initiatives aimed at supporting new students.
- The President’s Focused Learner Program
The President’s Focused Learner Program (PFL) is a KSU initiative seeking to assist incoming students at risk of “Murky Middle” GPAs with their ability to navigate the academic and personal well-being factors often necessary for a student’s academic success. The PFL Program spans all majors at KSU.
- The FLIGHT Program
FLIGHT is a class-year connections initiative focused on providing support to students as they progress through their collegiate journey and learn to make meaning of their experience during their time at Kennesaw State University. FLIGHT utilizes a four-year framework built to assist each class-year in developing a unique identity aiming to increase students’ sense of community, belonging, and school spirit. Each year in the framework is designed to provide students with targeted information and developmental markers necessary to ensure their successful and timely degree completion.
The Four-Year Framework:
First-Year Experience: Foster a sense of belonging and connection with KSU and with FLIGHT class.
Second-Year Experience: Focus on leadership and career opportunities to prepare you for success.
Third-Year Experience: Flourish in your academic achievement, campus involvement, and career preparation.
Fourth-Year Experience: Finalize your journey at KSU by leaving your mark and becoming an alumnus/alumna.
- Evaluation of Transfer Credit
Students transferring between institutions tend to have unused courses in their new programs. This results in additional time and costs spent at the new institution. There is an articulation agreement for courses in the core curriculum between the University System of Georgia (USG) institutions, but no such agreement exists for private or out of state institutions. The goal of this project is to allow students to transfer to KSU more easily by accepting more relevant coursework into their programs.KSU is re-evaluating all the general education courses from our top feeder universities/colleges. Rather than evaluating for course equivalency, we will review each course for a match in learning outcomes in each of our general education areas. Additionally, new and renewed articulation agreements focus on how to maximize credits being transferred between institutions.
- Improving outcomes in first-year critical courses
KSU has identified courses that are high enrollment courses with significant DFW rates and will continue to ensure that sufficient sections are offered to meet student demand, offer targeted academic supports to achieve greater impacts, and engage faculty in learning communities focused on course redevelopment.
This project is aligned with one of our “Top 5 Strategies,” which is to expand faculty knowledge and practices that support student success.
All initiatives have identified outcomes, timelines, and measures. The KPIs listed below will be measured annually at a minimum.
- The President’s Focused Learner Program
- Engagement in program
- Participation or completion of tasks assigned within the PFL
- Enrollment based on engagement
- RPG over long term
- FLIGHT
- Engagement in program
- RPG over long term
- Sense of belonging surveys
- Focus groups
- Evaluation of Transfer Credit
- List of feeder schools
- Number of courses being added to student records
- Number of course transfer credits awarded
- Number of unique students impacted
- Improving outcomes in first-year critical courses
- DFWI rates
- Course enrollment and fill rates
- Early Alert engagement
- Midterm Grade reporting engagement
- Supplemental Instruction/Tutoring engagement
- Faculty engagement in learning communities around first year courses
Goal or targets (for each KPI):
We wish to see the long-term improvements in RPG rates for our new student population. We are also seeking continual improvement of program measures.
Current Status:
- The President’s Focused Learner Program
As of spring 2024, there were 2,219 enrolled students involved with the PFL program:
- FA20 cohort enrolled in SP24: 410 students
- FA21 cohort enrolled in SP24: 520 students
- FA22 cohort enrolled in SP24: 593 students
- FA23 cohort enrolled in SP24: 683 students
- Opt-In cohort enrolled in SP24: 13 students
1,920 (86.5%) of PFL students from Spring 2024 reenrolled in Fall 2024.
A number of events were hosted in spring 2024, designed to connect students to resources on campus, such as tutoring, advising, writing center, career and professional development, and campus wellbeing.A registration assistance event (“Registration Triage”) was also held to coincide with time tickets opening for spring 2024 registration.
- Total PFL coaching appointments in Spring 2024: 63 appointments
- Total programmatic offerings in Spring 2024: 16 events and workshops
- Total event attendance for Spring 2024: 260 check-ins
- FLIGHT
In our third year with the FLIGHT program, we have increased our collaborations with the campus partners to encourage FLIGHT students to get involved across the three classes and added smaller events to enhance connections early. As of this date we have a total of 13,410 interactions of FLIGHT students this fall 2024. In AY23-24, we reported 636 for FLIGHT26 and 6,582 for FLIGHT27 students. These are not unique users
We are working with Institutional Research to capture progression data for FLIGHT27 students and expect to see positive results that are comparable to the FLIGHT26 first-time full-time retention rate after 1 year of 78.7%. Additionally, we are working to align the participation of FLIGHT students and their progression for FLIGHT26 and 27, now that we have had two classes running simultaneously. After one year of tracking the FLIGHT 26 students, our data indicated that participation in FLIGHT events contributes positively to academic progression. Students who participated in FLIGHT events had a higher average GPA of 3.09 and a progression rate of 70%. In contrast, students who did not participate had a lower average GPA of 2.88 and a progression rate of 63%.
Our post-event survey after the Football Runout event did not yield a good response rate and we will be working with Institutional Research to send an email at the end of fall 2024 to learn whether their engagement positively impacted their affect towards the KSU community.Our expectation is that the responses will indicate positive results comparable to the FLIGHT 27 results last year where 92% of students who did participate reported feeling a sense of community at KSU. Some highlights from last year’s report about the Football Runout event include the following responses from FLIGHT 27:
- 79% made at least one new connection with another FLIGHT27 student.
- 96% are proud to be a FLIGHT27 student.
- 94% are likely to attend future KSU events.
- 95% are proud to be a KSU student.
- 96% feel like they are part of FLIGHT27.
- Evaluation of Transfer Credit
Evaluation for the year is still underway. We do expect to see a lower rate of credits awarded because this year ‘s review will only include new incoming students; whereas last year the analysis and credit awards were reviewed for all students at the time. Last year’s baseline demonstrated a significant increase. Given those changes were successful, we should expect to establish an expected rate for one year by which future years will be compared.
- Improving outcomes in first-year critical courses
In Fall 2024, Full Term courses maintained a high fill rate of 90% and experienced a 6.32% increase in enrollment. Seven Week Session I saw a slight decrease in capacity utilization, from 79% filled in Fall 2023 to 72% in Fall 2024. Seven Week Session II enrollment rose marginally, with the fill rate going up from 74% in Fall 2023 to 76% in Fall 2024. Learning Support Full Term courses saw a sharp increase in the fill rate, from 1042% in Fall 2023 (likely indicating high demand relative to seat availability) to 167% in Fall 2024, suggesting efforts to address the demand. These trends suggest strong, steady demand for Full Term courses, while shorter or support-oriented sessions may need adjustments to better match student needs.
There were small improvements in the DFWI rates in MATH 1190 Calculus I, in Fall 2023 and Spring 2024 which could be the result of several initiatives including more access to support services and the creation of a new course (MATH 1179 Calculus for Life Sciences). Unfortunately, DFWI rates for Math 1111 College Algebra and 1113 Precalculus were not as positive. MATH 1111 remained steady in Fall 2023 compared to Fall 2022, but increased in Spring 2024 compared to Spring 2023. For MATH 1113, DFWI rates for Fall and Spring increased by 5% over Fall 2022 and 2% points over Spring 2023.
Interventions like Supplemental Instruction (SI) and tutoring through the SMART Center continue to show benefits in general. Students who engage with SI and tutoring typically have higher mean grades, higher pass rates, and lower DFWI rates than the students who do not by significant margins.
Supplemental Instruction Fall 23 & Spring 24
SMART Center Fall 23 & Spring 24
In Early Alerts, final overall participation rate for Fall 2024 was 75%. This is up from 71% in Fall 2023 and 74% in Spring 2024. The participation rate for faculty teaching in our “Critical Courses” was 77%. In Midterm Grades, in Fall 2023 the midterm grade participation rate was 42% and the Fall 2024 midterm grade participation rate was 65%. The participation rate for midterm grades in Critical Courses went from 45% to 70%.
- The President’s Focused Learner Program
Beginning Fall 2024, we have transitioned the services and events formerly provided by the President’s Focused Learners program into a larger student support office: Student Success Programs. Franklin Ard, former director of the PFL program, was hired as Executive Director of Student Success Programs. The former program coordinator, Ellie Thomson, recently moved into an Associate Director role in the SSP office as well.
While the PFL program is retired in name, the successful programmatic and student support elements of this program, which were designed for “murky middle” students, are now being deployed by Student Success Programs, which allows us the opportunity to provide a broader level of support for this population. These elements include academic coaching, academic success workshops, guided study sessions, registration support, academic enrichment events, online resources, and priority academic outreach efforts.
Importantly, academic coaching has also been expanded, as PFL students (and any student in the “murky middle” GPA range at KSU) are now able to take advantage of coaching from four (soon to be six) coaches, rather than the single coach/coordinator assigned to the former PFL program. “Murky middle” students also receive targeted outreach from the SSP coaching team, in order to drive coaching and workshop/event attendance.
- FLIGHT
Data from the Flight 27 cohort is pending institutional official census reporting.
An adjustment made in AY24-25 will be to focus more intentionally on fewer, more high-impact social and educational programs. As of the date of this report, we have done 7 small programs with 224 attendance (this is not unique users). Overall, we have done 22 events specifically for FLIGHT class students or as sponsored events with 8,877 interactions with students (not unique users). We have begun work on a collaboration with Strategic Planning, Assessment, and Analysis to conduct the surveys and focus groups as part of the evaluation and assessment plan. Additional conversations related to the program, include using the university’s definition for first-time, full-time students for our FLIGHT students to help us more efficiently and effectively track their progress to degree completion, and working with Strategic Planning, Assessment and Analysis on a definition for “student engagement” to make sure we are appropriately applying it to the FLIGHT students interactions in campus activities.
- Evaluation of Transfer Credit
Prior to our transfer credit hour project in fiscal year 2022, 9871 of 38,973 enrolled undergrads had been awarded transfer credit with 5,537 enrollees holding transfer credit within the Core curriculum areas. In fiscal year 2023 when we started the project, KSU re-reviewed transfer credit requests and awarded additional credits resulting in 7,169 of 39,973 enrolled students holding credit that counted for the Core curriculum areas. This past year (FY24) as the project becomes a mature and sustained practice, 6,487 of 40,591 enrolled undergrads hold transfer credits in the Core curriculum areas.
- Improving outcomes in first-year critical courses
We have made strong strides in student support through peer education (SMART Center, Supplemental Instruction and Learning Assistants) and raising awareness of the importance of early alerts and midterm grades among administrators. The additional changes needed seem to be in engaging more directly with chairs and faculty in taking a more micro-level look at the courses. In Fall 2024 we provided bi-weekly and then daily updates on early alert and midterm grade submission, seeing significant improvements in the rates of participation in these initiatives.
In summer 2024, we also held the inaugural training for Faculty “Block Champions”, these are faculty who are associated with first year courses in the block scheduling initiative. As many of these are critical courses, we hope that identifying faculty who are closer to the courses, aware of some of their colleagues concerns, and have additional credibility will positively influence pedagogical practices and participation in university level initiatives.
- The President’s Focused Learner Program
PFL initiatives that proved beneficial to our “murky middle’ student population will continue to be integrated into the service offerings and events now offered through the Student Success Programs academic support office. Academic coaching will remain a strong priority for PFL students—and any student with a “murky middle” GPA range at KSU. Intentional connection and frequent collaboration with other campus student support offices will be emphasized.
Through Student Success Programs, we will collect more robust data to determine which activities are most impactful for “murky middle” students. SSP will also engage in priority interventions for “murky middle” students, which will include information about SSP’s academic coaching and student success workshop and event offerings. We will endeavor to continue to grow academic coaching availabilities with an emphasis on “murky middle” students and those students with academic challenges.
- FLIGHT
As of AY24-25, the program is part of a larger unit led by an Executive Director, and at the program level we have a Director, Program Manager, and Coordinator of Student Engagement and Belonging. This change provides extended staffing support and opportunities for specialized communities from within the department. Additionally, the program concurrently works with Enrollment Services to support efforts to recruit, admit, and welcome FLIGHT 29. The department collaborates with campus partners in various units to provide holistic student support: Student Leadership, Career Planning and Development, Housing and Residence Life, Student Success, Student Volunteerism and Service, and Athletics. In addition to programs, the department is expanding the Student Advisory Board to provide feedback on student support programs/initiatives and serve as program ambassadors for the FLIGHT program. Strategic monthly communications from the Class Deans to each FLIGHT cohort will highlight information that students need to know specific to their class year or generally.
- Evaluation of Transfer Credit
We will re-evaluate credits from a collection of institutions outside of Georgia that have not been re-evaluated yet. We will also ensure transfer credits are mapped to the Core IMPACTS outcomes.
- Improving outcomes in first-year critical courses
We have made strong strides in student support through peer education (SMART Center, Supplemental Instruction and Learning Assistants) and raising awareness of the importance of early alerts and midterm grades among administrators. The additional changes needed seem to be in engaging more directly with chairs and faculty in taking a more micro-level look at the courses. In Fall 2024 we provided bi-weekly and then daily updates on early alert and midterm grade submission, seeing significant improvements in the rates of participation in these initiatives.
In summer 2024, we also held the inaugural training for Faculty “Block Champions”, these are faculty who are associated with first year courses in the block scheduling initiative. As many of these are critical courses, we hope that identifying faculty who are closer to the courses, aware of some of their colleagues’ concerns, and have additional credibility will positively influence pedagogical practices and participation in university level initiatives.
- The President’s Focused Learner Program
The challenge that the PFL program faced, and now also Student Success Programs will continue to face, is that academic coaching and workshops/events are voluntary for students. Our challenge is to reach the students at the point of need and persuade them to attend a coaching appointment or a workshop/academic event.
- FLIGHT
The main challenge is still to identify a sustainable funding model for FLIGHT. The Director has spent significant time with University Advancement staff and has identified a few opportunities for donations and sponsorships. Divisional leadership is also working to secure permanent funding for programming. Efforts in this area are ongoing.
- Evaluation of Transfer Credit
We have designated resources for this work. We should not have significant challenges.
- Improving outcomes in first-year critical courses
Maintaining enthusiasm and momentum in faculty support for these initiatives may be a challenge.
- The President’s Focused Learner Program
Student Success Programs is a new office at KSU and the opportunity to connect with other institutions that offer academic coaching within the system would be beneficial.
- FLIGHT
Support that could be provided by the System Office is a community of practice (not an official RAC) for departments that support first-year experience and student transitions with the goal of retention and progression, made available to academic and/or student affairs units.
- Evaluation of Transfer Credit
No additional support is needed at this time.
- Improving outcomes in first-year critical courses
Additional benchmarking in terms of both policies and data from other USG institutions on similar initiatives would be helpful.
Project Leads and Points of Contact
- The President’s Focused Learner Program
Franklin Ard, Director of Academic Student Support Services (fard1@kennesaw.edu); Sherrill Hayes, Interim Assistant Vice Provost (shayes32@kennesaw.edu); Lori Lowder, Associate Vice Provost (mlowder@kennesaw.edu)
- FLIGHT
James Stinchcomb, Interim Director of Student Engagement & Belonging (jstinch2@kennesaw.edu); Sierra Turner, Executive Director of Student Engagement and Belonging (sturn173@kennesaw.edu); and Gloria Laureano Fuentes, Senior Associate Vice President for Student Affairs (glaurean@kennesaw.edu)
- Evaluation of Transfer Credit
Chris Dockery, Faculty Director of General Education (cdockery@kennesaw.edu)
- Improving outcomes in first-year critical courses
Sherrill Hayes, Interim Assistant Vice Provost (shayes32@kennesaw.edu); Lori Lowder, Associate Vice Provost (mlowder@kennesaw.edu)
