Initiative aims to help firstyear students succeed
By Kevin Miller
22
Susie Brubaker-Cole wants nothing to do with
average when it comes to the success rate for
first-year students at OSU
O R E G O N S TAT E R
Only about 83 percent of new Oregon
Staters return for their sophomore year,
and only about 60 percent go on to earn
an OSU diploma within 6 years. Both
numbers are near national averages, but
that’s far from good enough, says Susie
Brubaker-Cole, vice provost for student
affairs. With strong backing from OSU
President Ed Ray, she leads a push to
make sure more new students stay on
track toward graduation.
“This is about students’ dreams and
futures,” she said. “This is about young
people coming to a place that’s new and
full of opportunities that they can’t even
see when they first get here. And this is
about students finding their path to doing
things they didn’t even think were possible before. This is also about an institution reshaping itself to fit the needs and
aspirations of today’s students.”
Although it’s hard to quantify such
things in the university’s collective memory, the First-Year Experience Initiative
appears to be the most ambitious student
success effort in OSU history.
It includes a requirement that almost all
first-year students live on campus. Many
will live in subject- or interest-oriented
groups in the dorms, with support from
advisers and faculty in those fields.
“Academic learning assistants,” older
students similar to resident advisers but
specially trained to support first-year
students in their classroom pursuits, will
live in residence halls and be ready to help
keep them on course with their academics. Said Brubaker-Cole: “They’ll be able to
go down the hall and knock on a door and
say, ‘You told me you’re worried about
your chem mid-term next week. Let’s
make a plan to get you ready.’”
Meanwhile, traditional academic
advising — highly developed in some
OSU programs and pretty much optional
in others — will become a requirement
across undergraduate programs.
“We know that being known by an
adult individual — a faculty member, an
adviser, a staff member — is a huge predictor of success in college,” she said.
A consistent advising effort across
campus is all the more important because
so many students change majors.
“When you have a system that functions one way on the left and one way
on the right, you have a big crack for
Opposite page: Susie Brubaker-Cole mingles
with students during an orientation visit.
(Photos by Hannah O’Leary)
FALL 2014
students looking for the right major to fall
through,” she said.
To counter this and other threats to
academic progress, the university is
creating mandatory checkpoints to make
sure someone notices if a first-year student starts to struggle, especially in key
math and writing classes that form the
foundation for college work. Meanwhile,
OSU faculty members are working hard to
remake introductory classes to improve
student success.
“If you look at the profile of our students coming in, they have great high
school GPAs, and yet we know many of
them face challenges in being ready for
college-level math and college-level
writing,” Brubaker-Cole said.
“I’ve talked to maybe 200 students
at OSU who have said something like, ‘I
made it through high school without having to do much work, and I come to OSU
and I’m not prepared to buckle down and
do the work it takes to be successful.’”
OSU’s booming enrollment and higher
institutional aspirations can make it a
tough place for those who fall behind.
“OSU is an ascendant university,”
Brubaker-Cole said. “We are asking more
of our students, and we should ask more
of our students, but I think we also have a
responsibility to help them transition into
the college-level learning environment.”
New students will be urged and often
required to participate in programs and
classes aimed at getting them quickly
connected to their peers on campus, and
at teaching them what it takes to succeed
at a university.
Brubaker-Cole noted that personal, onor off-campus issues may slow students’
progress toward graduation. Many — including but not limited to those from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds
— face enormous financial pressures,
both from the high cost of attendance and
from needs in their families at home.
“We see students under tremendous
pressures,” she said. “We see them sending money home from their financial aid,
from their jobs, because their families are
deeply distressed.”
Mental health issues, substance abuse
and other factors also get in the way, but
students facing such challenges have a
better chance of working past them when
someone at the university notices that
they’re in trouble and reaches out.
“It’s been too easy for students to get
lost,” Brubaker-Cole said, noting that
even as they’re about to tumble off the
path toward their degree, students often
don’t see what’s coming or know what to
do about it.
“They have an unbelievable ability to
remain optimistic and to think that they
are going to be the exception to the rule,”
she said. “They have a quarter where they
get two C’s and two D’s and they think,
‘Oh, well, that’s OK. I can recover next
quarter,’ but it’s the start of major trouble. Or you’ll tell them that only 2 percent
of students who got an F in a course were
successful in the next course in the sequence, and they’ll say, ‘Oh, I’ll be in that
2 percent!’ Well, you probably won’t.”
Brubaker-Cole is confident that this
year’s efforts and those to come will
move OSU’s first-year retention and six-
Adviser Kerry Kincanon, ’01, helps first-year
student Allison Daley plan her class schedule.
year graduation rates away from “average” and toward “excellent,” but she said
it’s crucial to remember that it’s not really
about numbers.
“This is about people’s lives. We need
to tell students constantly, respectfully
but forcefully, that it’s not just a matter of
showing up. It’s a matter of coming here
with a vision and a passion and then actively engaging in all of the opportunities
that can allow you to make that a reality.
We have to tell students that in the residence halls. We have to tell students that
in the cultural centers. We have to tell
students that in advising appointments.
We have to tell them that in office hours.
Alumni need to be talking about it.
“Rather than ask students, ‘What’s
your major?’ I like to ask them, ‘What’s
your mission? What’s your purpose in
being here?’ And I also like to tell them: ‘I
care that you’re here. I want to see you
do great things.’”
A home page linking to myriad aspects
of the First-Year Experience Initiative is
at oregonstate.edu/ase/firstyear and a
page to familiarize students with various
aspects of the program and some new
requirements that come with it is at oregonstate.edu/main/firstyear. q
23