Advising

To combat lower graduation rates, KSU will focus on four initiatives aimed at supporting new students.

1. 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 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.

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.

In freshman orientation classes each 1st-year student will be required to complete an assignment designed to encourage the use of stepping blocks data.  Based on an academic major of interest, students will research common jobs associated with the major as well as the job market and the salaries associated with these positions.

All incoming first-year students were connected post-NSO with online information and communication from their top 5 engagement choices via the Panther Involvement Network - PIN. During their in-person NSO event, each student attended a 'Panther Connect' session to dive deeper in their top desired involvement opportunity, where they were able to connect and share contact information with students that possess similar interests as them.

A series of retention and completion initiatives are conducted annually to identify high-priority students and disseminate outreach campaigns aimed at referring, reengaging, and reenrolling these students. During the spring 2024, summer 2024, and fall 2024 semester, we piloted specialized outreach campaigns and retention interventions to high-priority populations to encourage the students to engage in specialized advising with our Student Success Specialist or attend a workshop focused on achieving academic success following an unsatisfactory midterm progress report.

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.

The First Year Experience is one of three embedded experiences that is built into the GC curriculum. To “Complete your journey,” for First Year Experience, students need to complete their GCSU 0001 (FYAS) and GC1Y courses.

EGSC is seeking to improve the rate at which students complete the English composition series and required math course within their first 30 hours of coursework. We understand that failure to complete these vital and foundational courses in the early portion of a student’s education journey can hinder the student by blocking courses that need the prerequisite and by limiting the number of choices a student has available to choose from during each successive registration period.