George D. Kuh

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Student Success in College Lessons from High
Performing Colleges and Universities
George D. Kuh U of Maine System March 20, 2007
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Overview

• What educationally effective colleges look like
• Lessons from high-performing institutions

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What does an educationally effective college look
like?
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Project DEEP

• To discover, document, and describe what high
  performing institutions do to achieve their
  notable level of effectiveness.

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DEEP Selection Criteria

• Controlling for student and institutional
  characteristics (i.e., selectivity, diversity,
  institutional type), DEEP schools have
• Higher-than-predicted graduation rates
  
• Higher-than-predicted NSSE scores
• Region, institutional
• type, special mission

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Effective Educational Practices
Level of Academic Challenge
Active Collaborative Learning
Student Faculty Interaction
Supportive Campus Environment
Enriching Educational Experiences
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Project DEEP Schools

• Doctoral Extensives
• University of Kansas
• University of Michigan
• Doctoral Intensives
• George Mason University
• Miami University (Ohio)
• University of Texas El Paso
• Masters Granting
• Fayetteville State University
• Gonzaga University
• Longwood University

Liberal Arts California State, Monterey Bay
Macalester College Sweet Briar College The
Evergreen State College Sewanee University of
the South Ursinus College Wabash College
Wheaton College (MA) Wofford College
Baccalaureate General Alverno College
University of Maine at Farmington
Winston-Salem State University
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DEEP Guiding Questions

• What do strong-performing institutions do to
  promote student success?
• What campus features -- policies, programs, and
  practices are related to higher-than-predicted
  graduation rates and student engagement?

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Research Approach

• Case study method
• Team of 24 researchers review institutional
  documents and conduct multiple-day site visits
• Observe individuals, classes, group meetings,
  activities, events
• 2,700 people, 60 classes, 30 events
• Discover and describe effective practices and
  programs, campus culture

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What We Learned from Project DEEPJossey-Bass
2005
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Ponder This

• Which of these areas needs attention right now at
  your institution?
• What might you do about it?

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Hay muchas maneras de matar pulgas
There are many ways to kill fleas
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Worth Noting

• Many roads to an engaging institution
• No one best model
• Different combinations of complementary,
  interactive, synergistic conditions
• Anything worth doing is worth doing well at scale

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Six Shared Conditions

• Living Mission and Lived Educational
  Philosophy
• Unshakeable Focus on Student Learning
• Environments Adapted for Educational Enrichment
• Clearly Marked Pathways to Student Success
• Improvement-Oriented Ethos
• Shared Responsibility for Educational Quality

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Creating Conditions That Matter to Student
SuccessDEEP Lessons

• We cant leave
• serendipity to chance

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Living Mission and Lived Educational
Philosophy

• The mission, values, and aspirations are
  transparent and understandable.
• Widespread understanding and endorsement of
  educational purposes.
• Some deviate little from original mission others
  have new missions and expanded educational
  purposes.

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Mission and Vision

• George Mason University
• The Right Place. The Right Time
• We will be a magnet for outstanding faculty
  who will devise new ways to approach problems,
  invent new ways to teach, and develop new
  knowledge for the benefit of the region and
  nation

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Teaching the Culture

• Macalester College students, faculty and staff
  understand and articulate the Colleges core
  values of academic excellence, service,
  multiculturalism and internationalism. These
  values are enacted in the curriculum and
  co-curriculum.

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Living Mission and Lived Educational
Philosophy

• Operating philosophy focuses on students and
  their success.
• Complementary policies and practices tailored to
  the schools mission and students needs and
  abilities.
• Institutional values really do guide many
  important policy and operation decisions.

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Academic rigor at Sewanee

• High challenge, high support
• 68 first yr 70 seniors report working harder
  than thought they could
• Cannot miss class (or WF)
• Demanding grading scales requires faculty to
  engage struggling students
• Commitment to teaching availability enhances
  mentoring relationships
• Comprehensive exam senior year
• 101 student to faculty ratio
• Honor code Emphasis on academic integrity
  strict student enforcement

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Focus on Student Success

• Sea change at KU to emphasize undergraduate
  instruction
• Experienced instructors teach lower division and
  introductory courses
• Faculty members from each academic unit serve as
  Faculty Ambassadors to the Center for Teaching
  Excellence
• Course enrollments kept low in many
  undergraduate courses 80 have 30 or fewer
  students 93 50 or fewer students.

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Unshakeable Focus on Student Learning

• Student learning and personal development are
  high priorities.
• Bent toward engaging pedagogies
• Cool passion for talent development (students,
  faculty, staff)
• Making time for students
• Accommodate students preferred learning styles

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Learning-intensive practices

• CSUMB and George Mason require every student to
  take from 1-3 writing-intensive courses. They
  along with most DEEP schools have strong writing
  centers to emphasize and support the importance
  of good writing.

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Co-curriculum reinforces academic engagement

• Ursinus Colleges Common Intellectual Experience
  (CIE) is a two-semester course for first-year
  students. Common readings and Uncommon Hour
  give students a shared intellectual experience
  outside the classroom that complements class
  activities.

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Learning Intensive Practices

• University of Texas at El Paso uses learning
  communities and course-based service learning and
  volunteerism to actively engage its mostly
  commuter, first-generation students.

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Cross-cultural experiences

• George Mason offers shorter study abroad
  experiences to meet the needs of their large
  non-traditional population. Similarly, Kansas
  and UMF arrange class-based trips that are more
  accessible to their first generation students

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Environments Adapted for Educational Advantage

• DEEP schools make wherever they are a good place
  for a college!
• Connected to the local community in mutually
  beneficial, educationally purposeful ways.
• Place conscious.

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Linking campus and community

• George Masons Century Club Business,
  professional, and government organizations
  promote partnerships between the University and
  the metro area business community. Members
  volunteer to work with faculty and students in
  job and internship fairs, resume and interviewing
  workshops, and networking opportunities.

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Physical space promotes collaboration

• Woffords Milliken Building -- its science
  center -- was intentionally designed with plenty
  of fishbowls and other areas for group work
  space. Homework lounges, adjacent to faculty
  offices, also promote interactive learning.

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Environments Adapted for Educational Advantage

• Buildings, classrooms, and other physical
  structures are adapted to human scale.
• Psychological size fosters engagement with peers,
  faculty and staff.

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U of Kansas Digital Environments Technology
enriched learning

• Faculty make large lecture classes engaging via
  PowerPoint, Blackboard software, and other
  technology including slides and videos, and
  interactive lecturing, which incorporates
  various opportunities for students to
  participate.

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National Center for Academic Transformation

• Course redesign using technology
• Demonstrated gains in student performance with
  reduced costs biology, math, psychology
• Roadmap to Redesign http//www.thencat.org/R2R/R
  2R_ProjDiscipline.htm.

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Clearly Marked Pathways to Student Success

• Institutional publications accurately describe
  what students experience.
• Make plain to students the resources and services
  available to help them succeed.
• Some guideposts tied directly to the academic
  program others related to student and campus
  culture.

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Required Enriching Experiences

• All Ursinus students complete an Independent
  Learning Experience (ILE), such as an independent
  research or creative project, internship, study
  abroad, student teaching, or summer fellow
  program or comparable summer research program.

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Intentional acculturation

• Miamis First Year Experience (FYE) brings
  coherence to the first-year by linking (1) Miami
  Plan Foundation courses taught by full-time
  faculty (2) optional first-year seminars (3)
  community living options that emphasize
  leadership and service and (4) cultural,
  intellectual, and arts events.

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Intentional acculturation
Rituals and traditions connect students to each
other and the institution
KUs Traditions Night. 3,000 students gather
in the football stadium to rehearse the Rock
Chalk Chant, learn Im a Jayhawk, and hear
stories intended to instill students commitment
to graduation
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Clearly Marked Pathways to Student Success

• Efforts tailored to student needs.
• Mutually reinforcing student expectations and
  behavior, institutional expectations, and
  institutional reward systems.
• Redundant early warning systems and safety nets

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Organized Learning Support

• POSSE (Pathways to Student Success and
  Excellence) students at U of Michigan are
  assigned to a counselor and learn the importance
  of faculty office hours, study tips and how to
  connect to tutoring services.
• POSSE taught me how to survive the University
  of Michigan.

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Meet students where they are

• Fayetteville State
• Faculty members teach the students they have,
  not those they wish they had
• Center for Teaching and Learning sponsors
  development activities on diverse learning needs
• Cal State Monterey Bay
• Assets philosophy acknowledges students prior
  knowledge

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Improvement oriented ethos

• Positive restlessness
• Self-correcting orientation
• Continually question, are we performing as well
  as we can?
• Confident, responsive, but never quite satisfied
  
• We know who we are and what we aspire to.

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Shared responsibility for educational quality

• Leaders articulate and use core operating
  principles in decision making
• Supportive educators are everywhere
• Student and academic affairs collaboration
• Student ownership
• A caring, supportive community

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Student role in campus governance

• All University of Kansas committees are required
  to have 20 student representation, including
  search and screen committees. Therefore, new
  faculty recruits interact with students from the
  start.

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Making Work Work for Students

• University of Maine at Farmington Student Work
  Initiative employs students in meaningful work
  in student services, laboratories, and
  field-research. Such experiences provide
  opportunities to apply what they are learning to
  practical, real-life situations.

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Institutional Reflection
Areas of Effective Educational Practice
Areas of Question or Improvement
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Lay out the path to student success

• Draw a map for student success
• Front load resources
• Teach newcomers the culture
• Create a sense of specialness
• Emphasize student initiative
• If something works, require it?
• Focus on at-risk, underengaged students

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Socialization to academic expectations

• Wofford first-year students read a common
  novel and write a short essay connecting it to
  their own lives. The eight best essays are
  published and distributed to all new students,
  creating the first class celebrities.

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2. Align initiatives with

• Student preparation, ability, interests
• Existing complementary efforts
• AACU Greater Expectations Inclusive
  Excellence
• Gen ed reform
• Carnegie SOTL/CASTL
• Service learning/Campus Compact
• Internationalization and diversity

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Association of American Colleges and Universities
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Narrow Learning is Not EnoughThe Essential
Learning Outcomes

• Knowledge of Human Cultures and the Physical
  Natural World
• Intellectual and Practical Skills
• Personal and Social Responsibility
• Integrative Learning

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What to Do?!?

• Student success requires that professors
  explain more things to todays students that we
  once took for granted
• You must buy the book, you must read it and
  come to class, you must observe deadlines or make
  special arrangements when you miss one
• Prof. Richard Turner (1998, p.4)

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Redundant early warning systems

• FSUs Early Alert program enables faculty to
  contact first-year student mentors and University
  College personnel to alert them to students
  experiencing difficulty during the first two
  weeks of the semester. Mentors contact students
  to advise and refer as appropriate.

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3. Attract, socialize and reward competent people

• Recruit faculty and staff committed to student
  learning
• Emphasize student centeredness in faculty and
  staff orientation
• Make room for differences
• Reward and support competent staff to insure high
  quality student support services

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Difference Makers

• Student success is the product of thousands of
  small gestures extended on a daily basis by
  caring, supportive educators sprinkled throughout
  the institution who enact a talent development
  philosophy.

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4. Put money where it will make a difference in
student engagement
in professional baseball it still matters less
how much you have than how well you spend it
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4. Put money where it will make a difference in
student engagement

• Align reward system with institutional mission,
  values, and priorities
• Invest in staff members who are doing the right
  things
• Invest in physical plant improvements that
  facilitate learning
• Sunset redundant and ineffective programs feed
  those that are demonstrably effective

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Effective Educational Practices

• First-Year Seminars and Experiences 
• Common Intellectual Experiences
• Learning Communities
• Writing-Intensive Courses
• Collaborative Assignments and Projects
• Science as Science Is Done
  Undergraduate Research
• Diversity/Global Learning
• Service Learning, Community-Based Learning
• Internships
• Capstone Courses and Projects

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Effective Educational Practices Increase Odds
That Students Will

• Invest time and effort
• Interact with faculty and peers about substantive
  matters
• Experience diversity
• Get more frequent feedback
• Discover relevance of their learning through
  real-world applications

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Something Else That Really Matters in College

• The greatest impact appears to stem from
  students total level of campus engagement,
  particularly when academic, interpersonal, and
  extracurricular involvements are mutually
  reinforcing

Pascarella Terenzini, How College Affects
Students, 2005, p. 647
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It Takes a Whole Campus to Educate a Student
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Promote and reward collaboration

• Tighten the philosophical and operational
  linkages between academic and student affairs
• Peer tutoring and mentoring
• First year seminars
• Learning communities
• Harness available expertise
• Make governance a shared responsibility
• Form partnerships with the local community

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Linking campus and community

• California State University, Monterey Bay
  (CSUMB) requires all students to complete both a
  lower and upper-level service learning experience
  as a means to apply knowledge and connect with
  the local community.

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6. Focus on culture sooner than later

• Ultimately, its all about the culture
• Identify cultural properties that impede success
• Expand the number of cultural practitioners on
  campus
• Instill an ethic of positive restlessness

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Triangulate multiple data sources

• ACT/SAT score reports
• BCSSE
• NSSE
• FSSE
• CIRP/CSS
• Noel Levitz
• CLA
• ACT CAAP
• Campus audit (Inventory for Student Engagement
  and Success)

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DEEP Practice Briefs Available www.nsse.iub.edu
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Checking the Truth

• Institutional Cultures
• What is distinctive about this institution To
  students? To staff?
• How do these distinctive aspects affect the
  campus climate? Student success?
• In what ways do institutional culture and
  dominant subcultures promote, or inhibit, student
  learning and success?

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Checking the Truth

• Student Cultures
• How do students describe what, how, from whom
  they learn? Are their experiences consistent with
  what is desired?
• How do student subcultures promote or inhibit
  student learning and success?
• What opportunities exist to celebrate students
  and their learning? Campus community?

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7. Put someone in charge

• When everyone is responsible for something, no
  one is accountable for it
• Get senior leadership on board
• Some individual or group must coordinate and
  monitor status of initiatives
• Those in charge not solely responsible for
  bringing about change
• Form high profile think force or similar group

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8. Stay the course

• The good-to-great-transformations never
  happened in one fell swoop. There was no single
  defining action, no grand program, no one killer
  innovation, no solitary lucky break, no miracle
  moment. Sustainable transformations follow a
  predictable pattern of buildup and breakthrough
  
• (Collins, 2001, p. 186)

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8. Stay the course

• Emphasize quality
• Focus on spread
• If it works, consider requiring it
• Beware the implementation dip

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Using NSSE DEEP Findings

• How well do our programs work and how do we
  know?
• How many students do our efforts reach in
  meaningful ways and how do we know?
• To what degree are our programs and practices
  complementary and synergistic?
• What are we doing that is not represented
  among the DEEP practices? Should we continue
  to do it?
• What are we not doing that we should?

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• Questions
• Discussion