Retention at the Poly

My work at the Poly is becoming more defined each week.  Last week I sat in on many different first year classes and also met with the Offices of Student Life and the Center for Teaching and Learning.  During my time here,  I am going to help conceptualize three different retention strategies that will be instituted as pilot projects in the School of Communications and the School of Health and Applied Sciences (similar to a US school of Public Health with some other applied degrees --EMT, etc. thrown into the mix).  The system here is very de-centralized and each school acts on it's own.  These two schools both indicated that their faculty would committ to working on retention issues. The three ideas I am going to help them consider are an early alert system for students who are struggling in first-year courses (this will be my primary focus), the concept of a first year seminar to help the disconnect in the very large first-year courses, and the idea of a summer reading or first lecture series during orientation to help add an academic componenent that is also a small-group activitiy.  Last week I wrote several colleagues about how UC Denver and other institutions built their early alert program.  Thought folks would enjoy seeing the challenges/opportunities here at the university.  All in all, I've got my work cut out for me!

To offer some more insight about the retention challenges/differences

• K-12 system is very poor here--even best students are good memorizers but not good structured thinkers/problem solvers.  They are coming from a poor K-12 system into a European/American university model.
• Very large first-year courses.  All students are required to take a core that includes Basic computing, English, Mathematics, and some other core courses inside their school/major.  I've been to many of these classes this week and they have between 150-200 students.  How do faculty with such large classes know what students are and aren't doing well?
• Heavily based exam system rather than continuous evaluation.  Especially for large classes, multiple choice tests are only way professors claim to be able to grade everything.  And they often weight the final exam VERY heavily (sometimes as much as 60%).  Also--once a student fails an exam, the class is not available unitl the next year (e.g. English 101 only offered in fall semester and not again until next fall). 
• No advising system in place--students have to figure most out on their own.  Also--no such thing as an undeclared major--students are admitted directly into a school/college.  Admission process is that students score high enough on national tests and are then admitted to the university if their score is high enough. Small schools such as environmental health, journalism etc. only take about 30-50 students which is great for them, but 60% of student body is in the business school which some faculty label as the "throw away" degrees.  You can't get in to other degree programs, you are placed in Business administration or Human Resources degrees.  This makes it very hard to motivate students who wanted to be in the Communication school but are placed in Busines school instead.
• Personal issues: financial: many students have enough money to pay for tuition but not much else--several students in class I attended didn't purchase the book b/c they had no funds, transportation: no transportation system and bulk of 12,000 students live off campus.  Some walk 5-7 miles each day to get here.  I asked about a bus from the neighborhood where most live and they said they've tried that and the system was abused (not sure what that means).  And of course the usual college issues: drinking, dating, etc.
• Academic issues: English is official language of the university and the 3rd language of most students who come here.  Biggest academic need is english writing skills.  Problem solving/structured thinking is next--students can memorize but not problem solve. General study skillls: students take 6 courses per semester which are each 4 hours (or 4 days) per week.  These students are in class ALL DAY LONG.  Many have no idea how to juggle their schedule, study time etc.
• Self esteem--Namibian students are very polite but extremely timid.  Very few would have any sense of how to advocate for themselves here at the University.   They have workshops here on self-esteem but I think the larger issue is how to students begin to advocate for what they need.

Some opportunities:

• They do have a writing center and a Center for Teaching and Learning which does some professional development with faculty but sounds like it is fairly limited.  Essentially our version of Student success center, faculty professional development and K-12 outreach work all happen at the CTL.  Writing Center has potential but capacity is a big issue.  I have suggested using senior English/communications students to pay as tutors but they said that there schedules are so heavy that they don't have time to tutor. 
• Both School of Communications and School of Public Health faculty seem eager and willing to participate in such a system.  These two schools are doing more continuous evaluation rather than just exams than some other colleges which might make a 5 week check-in easier than a professor that won't have a test until mid-semester
• Students are highly motivated and hard workers--if they've made it here they are part of a very small percentage of students in this country who go to college (only 2 universities exist).  The sense of entitlement to a college education does not exist here.
• While faculty don't have a very diverse teaching style--mostly just lecture in delivery--those who I have observed are very good public lecturers
• Office of Student Life has capacity in terms of a social worker, health office (nurse), and counselor
• The Office of Student Life has done this type of "check-in" on their student leaders (student council etc.)--getting their grades half way through semester and offering help if they are struggling--they like the idea of providing this for everyone, not just their star students.
• Willingness on behalf of administration to build academic advisors into the schools infrastructure
• Willingess on behalf of administration to also take reccomendations under consideration about what is necessary to make such a model successful