Year-to-year retention of NIU students is up this fall over last in several key indicators.
New freshmen. New transfers. First-generation students. Returning undergraduate students.
Retention percentages now have returned to – or, in some cases, surpassed – pre-pandemic levels.
So how is NIU accomplishing this?
“We implemented a number of strategies – some high-tech, some high-touch,” said Laurie Elish-Piper, interim executive vice president and provost.
“We really began to use Navigate more intentionally and more strategically,” she added. “We got more faculty and advisors and others on campus to use the alert system so that if there was a concern about a student, we could intervene more quickly.”
A partnership between the divisions of Academic Affairs and Student Affairs, meanwhile, is engaging residence hall community advisors (CAs) in the retention process.
“If a student hadn’t come to several classes in a row, for example, and alerts had been put into the Navigate system, the CAs would go knock on their doors to check in and say, ‘Hey, are you OK? I’ve learned you haven’t been to class,’ ” Elish-Piper said. “That combination of the high-tech and the high-touch was one way we were able to move the needle on retention.”
The other ways are many.
- In the fall of 2021, NIU launched Student Financial Advising Services to help students navigate finances during their college journey and stay in school. During the 2022-23 academic year, the unit assisted more than 800 students and hosted 45 events or presentations with more than 500 attendees.
- Recognizing that the first week of classes is a critical opportunity to engage students actively and early, the Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning (CITL) launched a Week of Engagement Toolkit for faculty in fall 2022 to heighten connections with students and foster a sense of belonging.
- CITL also created the Scaffolded Support for Teaching Gateway Courses Toolkit to reduce DFUW rates – percentages of students who earn grades of D, F, U (unsatisfactory) or W (withdraw) – and equity gaps in those courses. CITL provided timely recommendations throughout the semester for teaching practices that improve student success in these critical courses.
- NIU’s Mathematics Assistance Center joined the Huskie Academic Success Center in the Learning Commons of Founders Memorial Library, improving its visibility and accessibility.
- Counseling and Consultation Services has boosted the availability of its services to support those students who are experiencing mental health challenges.
- The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences has launched a docket of “second-half” courses that begin midterm to provide second chances for students whose academic performance suffered in the first eight weeks, and is piloting a credit-recovery program for students who successfully completed many (but not all) criteria of the course.
- Some faculty have offered amnesty, especially to first-year students struggling to transition to higher education, that includes extended deadlines or opportunities to submit revised work.
NIU provides many support services for students including the Founders Learning Commons which offers one-stop access to academic support and technology services.
Nichole Knutson, associate vice provost for Student Success, points to collaboration as critical.
And, she said, that partnership also involves current students who are asked for their feedback through Huskie First Surveys on what they’re struggling with and what would help them. Based on their responses, they are matched with the appropriate services and are contacted by the corresponding offices.
“We’ve done a lot of work within the campus community and the colleges to look at our academic success rates and course-pass rates – our DFUW rates – and then to look at our teaching and pedagogy practices,” Knutson said, “along with how we can best facilitate usage of campus support services, such as tutoring, supplemental instruction, our cultural centers and the food pantry for those students experiencing food insecurity or housing insecurity.”
At the same time, she added, “we’ve made some changes to our new student orientations to be more flexible and, hopefully, to encourage more career exploration and more major exploration.”
The reason is simple.
“When we look at the national landscape of students, they might change their majors multiple times, depending on the institution,” Knutson said.
“As students are going through their time with us at NIU, we’re hearing, ‘I always thought I wanted to be X, Y, Z, and now that I’m in those classes … .’ We sometimes hear this with our practicums or experiential education experiences – that students thought that they wanted to do something their whole lives, and then as soon as they get into that internship, or they’re in the classroom, or whatever that experience is, they might realize, ‘Hey, this isn’t exactly what I thought it was,’ ” she added.
“And so we’re trying to provide opportunities, whether through Career Services or with the Braven program, that increase students’ networks and that try to make connections between academics and employment and career experiences.”
Meanwhile, members of the university’s Student Experience Team are examining data and tapping resources and tools available from educational consulting firm EAB to develop strategies that will support specific groups of students.
The group, including Elish-Piper, Knutson, Vice President of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and Chief Diversity Officer Carol Sumner, Vice President for Student Affairs Clint-Michael Reneau and Vice Provost for Academic Affairs Alicia Schatteman, discusses trends, concerns, ideas and solutions.
“For example,” Elish-Piper said, “one of the groups we’re looking at is students who are back for their second year but don’t have 30 credits earned. What do they need from us? We want to help accelerate their progress because they’ve gotten slowed down somewhere. Or, we’re looking at students who are first-gen and what sorts of ways we might be able to engage and support those students.”
Other conversations are exploring how to make NIU degrees more flexible, such as expanded online programs for students with full-time jobs or family responsibilities.
Direct contact is also paying dividends.
NIU’s Re-enrollment Work Group personally reaches out to students who have not registered for the upcoming semester as well as students with registration holds for admission, academic, financial or immunization reasons. Referrals often are made to the Center for Student Assistance.
Part of the counseling provided by Student Financial Advising Services staff is explaining “what it means to leave an institution and not have a degree,” Knutson said.
“Most likely you’re going to have some type of debt that you’re going to have to pay back, and students don’t always realize that,” said Knutson, herself a first-generation college student from a low-income household. “We also talk about the opportunity cost of wages lost. We have strong evidence to show that college graduates earn higher salaries. It’s thinking about, ‘What do you want your life to look like in the future? What do you want your children’s lives to look like?’ ”
Some of the initiatives to boost retention are fun.
Week of Welcome activities are now for all students, not just those who are new to campus – and, as a result, some 2023 events drew record crowds.
“Oftentimes we think retention happens at midterms or at the end of the semester,” Elish-Piper said.
The Student Involvement Fair, recently held in the MLK Commons, highlights organizations and campus resources and is an opportunity for Huskies to discover why they belong at NIU.
“Retention really begins the moment students arrive, or even before they arrive, at the moment they decided to come here. It’s the ways we communicate with students. It’s the ways we make students feel welcome,” she added. “Week of Welcome was strategically designed to provide those opportunities for students to feel a sense of Huskie pride, make friends, get involved, understand where things are, what resources are available, have fun and get off to a great start.”
In the end, both administrators are excited with the progress.
“I’m really pleased with the data and the numbers and where we’re at, but I also feel like we have an opportunity to continue with every student we admit because we believe that they have the abilities and the skills necessary to graduate,” Knutson said.
“And there’s always opportunity to create process improvement. There’s always opportunity for us to think about how we can better support students inside the classroom and outside of the classroom, and I think that is what’s really exciting: We will never be complete. There’s always more good work to be done.”
Elish-Piper similarly accepts that challenge, calling retention “a tangible outcome of our commitment to higher education and student success.”
“Retention is everybody’s responsibility. We all play different roles in it, but we can all contribute in many ways,” she said.
“It’s the right thing to do as an institution that prides itself on access, equity and opportunity. We need to make sure that, when we admit students to our university, we do everything within our power to provide the support, the resources and the opportunities for them to be successful,” she added.
“The other side of why this matters, or why we should do this work, is that when we retain our students, it’s not only good for them individually. It’s good for the university and it’s good for our region.”
How?
“Being able to retain students allows us to contribute to our region in terms of individuals who have college degrees and the ways they’re able to contribute to their communities,” Elish-Piper said.
“If we cannot help this student be the first in their family to graduate with a college degree, we’re creating a context where that student is unlikely to be able to get into the middle class. That student is unlikely to be able to develop generational wealth that then becomes a family legacy. That individual is not well positioned to be able to go on and do all the things they dreamed of doing when they started at NIU,” she added.
“That’s what really motivates me – to give that opportunity to as many of our students as possible so that they can have the benefits, experiences and the transformational opportunities that come with earning an NIU degree.”
