| | |
University College Students Make Great Strides Forward with a Dramatic Reduction in Academic Probationary Rates
By Patrick Heery
University College, which serves primarily undecided freshmen and transfer students, is plunging into unprecedented student-success initiatives, and it is now clear that all of their hard work has paid off. In the last two years, the academic probation rate for transfer students has been 23.6%, whereas only three years ago, it was at 26.8%. Even more impressive is their success with first-year students. In 2004, their probation rate was at 16.7%; in 2006, 14.6%. But just this year, it dropped to 8.7%, nearly half of what it was just a few years ago.
Doug Orr, Director of UC 115, says that it is difficult to pinpoint a single policy change that can account for this dramatic improvement in academic performance. He said that it’s sort of like when you have a clock and it’s not keeping time quite perfectly, and so you take it apart, clean the insides, tighten a few screws, and then put it back together, to find it working much better, without really knowing what actions made the difference. What Doug Orr is referring to is a massive team-effort on the part of University College to reconstitute the first year experience for its students.
This effort has included…
• the continual expansion and renewal of Learning Communities (LCs), wherein a small group of students take courses together, interacting socially and academically as a community,
• the linking of the small seminar class, UC 115, with those Communities,
• the decision to require all 2007-08 undecided freshmen to participate in an LC and enroll in UC 115,
• an overhaul of the UC 115 course ranging from syllabus revision to compensating and enhancing professional development opportunities for UC 115 instructors,
• the continuing expansion of the Majors Fair (an opportunity for students to meet faculty and staff from the different disciplines and programs on campus), and
• the ongoing focus on academic advising, in which many freshmen this year had the same individual both teaching their UC 115 courses and serving as their academic advisor, strengthening the synthesis between advising and teaching. Every quarter, these students have a professional advisor at their side, a mentor and a teacher.
With all students participating in learning communities, suddenly every freshman had an upperclassman peer mentor; every freshman had a small cohort of colleagues with whom to socialize and work; every freshman participated in UC 115, a small seminar class, designed to prepare the student for the academic, cultural and psychological demands of a university experience; every freshman attended the Majors Fair to begin discerning his or her own choice of focus; every freshman had an established and meaningful relationship with a faculty member.
For the first time, University College had funds to pay its UC 115 instructors, who had previously served on a purely voluntary basis. As a result, UC 115 also had for the first time a waiting list for instructors and was able to institute a greater amount of professional development, expectations and responsibility. They attempted to articulate a real mission and team-like ethos for the collective UC 115 instructors, who were equipped with new and additional resources. University College then matched students and their advisors and/or UC 115 instructors on the basis of their interests and backgrounds.
The value of this new faculty advising model cannot be underestimated. Academic advising is one of the most essential components in ensuring a student’s success and satisfaction. College life, anywhere, can be a daunting experience for a freshman, sometimes difficult in the academic transition, sometimes even just lonely. A good faculty advisor can change all of that. And that is precisely what University College is trying to do. In this new model, undecided freshman are paired with the advisor who is teaching their UC 115 course and who also, thus, serves as their adult mentor in the Learning Community experience. These faculty, likewise, are teaching UC 115 courses which correspond to their respective disciplines. Suddenly, the individual freshman has a teacher, a scholar, a mentor, and an advisor all located in the same person. Nor does that relationship end with the class. Until that student chooses a major, the advisor is right there at his or her side.
David Ridpath, who teaches in Recreation and Sport Sciences and is a graduate of Ohio University as well, served as this joint teacher/advisor just last Fall quarter, and loved it. He describes how his students still come to him, even calling him on his cell phone, when their class ended several months ago. Not only was he able to advise his students through as their professor, but he also was able to create a small, safe classroom setting where the students, the peer mentor, and he could talk together, collectively advising one another, sharing in each other’s experiences and questions.
Benita Blessing, a tenure-track European Women’s and Gender History professor, also joined the team of these joint teachers/advisors last Fall. She meets with some advisees several times a week for sessions as long as an hour, has safe-zone training and tries to work with the LGBT community, has set up an internship program for students at the Athens Historical Society, and often meets with her advisees in Baker’s Front Room so that they feel more comfortable. Both she and Dr. Ridpath used this new model to enhance their own objective in cultivating a meaningful, academic and personal advisor/advisee relationship.
This is not the end for University College’s changes. As we speak, it is gathering data from multiple forms of assessment, data which will produce even more reforms in the system and hopefully, even greater results next year. What University College has created, through its UC 115 course, its learning communities, its academic advising, and its peer mentoring, is a community of normative and edifying interaction: a community of freshmen who challenge and learn from one another. The faculty and staff are still doing a lot of the work – all you need to do is go to Chubb 140, witness the hustle and bustle, and you will have no doubts as to the veracity of this statement – but they have created a context in which students have begun to actively pursue and develop their own education; these students, they are teaching themselves. But that doesn’t happen spontaneously; it is the result of determined and conscious planning, subjected to consistent evaluation, and motivated by something that has become a defining feature of University College: a love for its students.
Support the Faculty Advising Fund
The Faculty Advising Fund supports our advising model and many of the out-of-class activities that faculty and their students attend [plays, films, lunch, and service learning to name a few].
Your gift will enhance learning and help our faculty ensure students attain their educational goals and achieve personal success.
To make a gift, or for more information, please call 800.592.FUND or e-mail us at giving@ohio.edu.
|  |
| |
|
