AASCU’s Student Success Equity Intensive (SSEI) Cohort 3
As of August 2023, Georgia Gwinnett College has been accepted as a member of the third cohort of the Student Success Equity Intensive (SSEI) facilitated by AASCU.
In connection with our involvement in the cohort, GGC is currently administering the ITA (Institutional Transformation Assessment) survey across campus to stakeholders to provide insight into our students’ sense of inclusion and belonging, as well as on opportunities for our campus to improve in the core areas addressed by the Intensive.
Observations and Next Steps
Expansion and restructuring of the Student Success Committee (SSC)
The Student Success Committee (SSC) is a new college-wide committee reporting to the Provost. The committee is chaired by the Dean of Student Success and includes broad representation from faculty and staff, both in Academic and Student Affairs and from other areas of campus. Members include representatives of the faculty, Provost’s office, Student Affairs, Enrollment Management, New Student Connections/Orientation, Advising and Mentoring, Academic Enhancement Center/tutoring and PSI, and more.
The group addresses matters affecting students’ belonging, retention, progression, and completion, with an eye toward addressing the needs of focused student populations who may need more intentional support in order to succeed. As a college-wide committee, the SSC meets monthly as a large group, in addition to working group meetings between the large group meetings.
SSC Working Groups: The Student Success Committee includes several working groups that meet on an ongoing basis between committee meetings. Currently, those working groups include:
- RPG Data and Drivers
- Focused Student Populations
- Seminar Courses: GGC 1000 and GGC 2000
- Learning Communities
- Learning Support
- Advising and Mentoring
Learning Communities scaling for all students by Meta-major
As noted above, Learning Communities will be scaled so that they are available to all new, full-time, first-year students who wish to enroll in them, with target implementation beginning in Fall 2024. It is anticipated that we will need to have 130 learning community “triads” (sets of 3 linked courses) created around the 7 Meta-majors (below) and promoted by March-April 2024 to meet this target.
The 7 Meta-majors are:
- BUSI (Business)
- EDUC (Education)
- HEPR (Health Professions)
- ITEC (Information Technology)
- HUAR (Humanities & Arts)
- SOSC (Social Sciences)
- STEM (Science, Technology, Math)
Based on prior experience with learning community implementation, we expect that regular, robust communication across the academic departments/Chairs, Enrollment Management, Student Success, and others will be critical to setting our students up for success in these learning communities. In addition, we plan to work with the Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE) on campus to ensure we provide opportunities for faculty to become versed in integrative learning principles.
First-Year Seminar Curriculum Change Proposal
In keeping with the college’s Strategic Plan, the First Year Seminar (GGC 1000) course is being reimagined as a possible 2-credit course that will equip our first-year students to demonstrate the ability to think critically and solve problems related to academic priorities at GGC.
The Student Success Committee working group on seminar courses is focused on this effort and will continue to meet with other stakeholders (College Curriculum Committee representatives, faculty, ASA leadership, and others) to advance this effort in 2024.
