Wal-Mart Foundation Student Success Initiative
Huntsville, Alabama
President: Dr. Helen T. McAlpine
Institutional Data
 A HBCU serving primarily minority students.
 Significant percentage of first‐generation (56%) and low
socioeconomic background students (59%).
 Significant portion of students take developmental courses
before entering their college‐level coursework.
 Lacking appropriate college preparation and knowledge of
the expectations of college academic rigor, many students
become readily discouraged and drop out of their programs
before they’ve completed their developmental courses.
 Concerned about student retention, in particular with
respect to these students who usually don’t stay enrolled long
enough to develop a track record of academic achievement
and student success.
Institutional Transformation
Measure Student Success
 Drake State, as a technical college, measures student
success in several categories: year‐to year retention rate,
program completion rate, in‐field job placement rate, and
licensure examination pass rate. This information is
provided annually to the Council on Occupational
Education (COE), one of the accrediting bodies for the
College. These rates for 2009‐10 year are as follows:
1. Program completion rate: 60.57%
2. Year‐to‐year retention rate: 68.17%
3. In‐field job placement rate: 85.83%
4. Licensure pass rate: 92.54%
Measure Student Success
 At the present time, Drake State does not track transfer
rates, since newly obtaining regional accreditation
through: Southern Association of Colleges and Schools –
Commission on College (SACS).
 Through articulation agreements with three local
universities, approximately 10% of the students do transfer
into business, engineering, and hospitality programs
offered by these universities.
 The College does a comprehensive review of each program
annually. These reviews include evaluation of other factors,
most of which are tracked on a five year trend table.
Institutional Change - Drake
 Retention strategies shift from various departments/divisions to entire
campus.
 Focused more attention internally.
 Restructured the College’s retention efforts.
 Looked objectively, reflected on what was well and what needed to be
reinforced, such as communication and accountability.
 Purchased an Early Alert System for the campus.
 Enhanced communication among administration, faculty, staff, and
student.
 Allowed additional professional developments toward retention efforts
(Faculty Learning Communities, Developmental Education, NoelLevitz Conference).
 Increased overall academic program planning.
Efforts Towards Retention
 Refocusing faculty on retention efforts, including early
recognition of students who seem to be losing interest or
are greatly distracted in class and lab activities.
 Implementation of the Starfish Early Alert System for
tracking and communicating student-by-student retention
issues as they occur in real-time.
 Incorporating more data points into the student tracking
system to provide support for deeper analysis of trends,
underlying issues, and success of various intervention
strategies.
 Increasing the visibility of program retention rates in
annual reviews, hearings, and performance reports.
Student Success Strategies - Drake
 Starfish Campus-Wide Early Alert System
 Student Success Achievement Plan (S-SAP)
 Restructured Orientation Course
 Student Services Resources/Notifications
 Accurate Advising
 Peer tutors
 Engagement
Best Practices – Drake
 Being a mentor institution has allowed Drake to see the
importance of the following:
 Student support services
 Comprehensive retention plan with descriptive initiatives
 Student tracking modules
 Continual professional development on retention and
advising
 Open communication with administration about retention
strategies
 Faculty by-ins
 Community awareness
Community of Best Practices
 Drake has embraced retention as a whole since beginning this
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project.
The collaboration has led Drake to support all retention
initiatives at all levels of the college (top-down).
Student services, faculty, staff, and administration have
supported Starfish Early Alert System, peer tutoring,
developmental education, and other retention strategies
deployed by the Retention Committee.
The College has also issued a college-wide challenge to include at
least one aspect on retention or completion in next year’s unit
plans and student learning outcomes.
The College has implemented the retention efforts in all parts of
the unit and strategic plan for the College.
Community of Best Practices
The collaborative relationship with SUNO has led to a very meaningful dialogue on the
Drake campus. This dialogue was stimulated by various factors:
 Focused and reflected upon the impact of retention experiences.
 Researched retention initiatives at other colleges to get a better perspective on key
issues, challenges, and successes of other programs, including four year institutions.
 Increased and enhanced interactions and collaboration efforts with personnel at
another institutions.
 Energized faculty and staff to explore new ideas, develop a deeper understanding of
underlying issues, and gain greater insight into the causes of the failure of students
to complete their programs of study.
 Increased the engagements of faculty and staff by hosting more retention
workshops and intra-division retention sessions and collaboration efforts.
 Engaged personnel of SUNO has led to a better focus on our own issues and
stimulated new ideas that we expect to benefit our own efforts to improve student
retention.
New Orleans, Louisiana
President: Dr. Victor Ukpolo
Relationship of Collaboration
Drake State
Mentor Institution
 Based on graduation, retention
strategies and practices.
 Chosen to bring a breadth of
successful strategies to the
project, including early outreach
to high school students, summer
enrichment programs, student
orientation, learning support
centers, first year seminars,
family nights, developmental
education programs, tutorials,
and faculty/staff to student
mentoring and support.
SUNO
Mentee Institution
 Improve student success rates.
 Matched with Drake State in
order to build a collaboration
between the institutions to
include: campus visits,
meetings, and other support
activities over a full academic
year.
Implementation of Relationship
 The collaborative relationship for the project:
 Identified successful intervention strategies for
supporting student success
 Disseminated and supported implementation of these
strategies
 Built a community of practice among participating
schools around student success
 Assisted participating institutions to increase the
number of students completing their academic
programs.
The Institutional Model – Phase IV
Collaborative
 Drake and SUNO had an open and genuine dialogue.
 Recommended that SUNO focus on implementing a
more comprehensive approach for providing
intervention strategies for student success.
 Underlying issues were customer services, professional
development and disconnect between academic affairs
and student services.
Strategies for SUNO
 Effective Communication Strategies
 Campus-Wide Early Alert System
 Utilize Assessments/Results/Analysis
 Faculty Accountability
 Textbook purchases
 Faculty Disconnect
 Professional Development Activities