For many first-year students, the transition into higher education can be a challenge. An established program at Shepherd University in West Virginia provides targeted support to students who may experience greater difficulties in college, helping them to succeed personally and academically.
Shepherd Success Academy, a personalized coaching initiative, has helped improve persistence and retention rates across the institution and helped build students’ sense of accountability and confidence in navigating college. Since 2020, the intervention has broadened to accept all students who seek help, extending the reach of success coaching on campus.
The background: The academy was created in 2017 to address student retention and outcomes generally, a growing trend in higher education. Among the fall 2016 cohort, the university had a 65 percent persistence rate.
Shepherd has a diverse student body; over 40 percent of Shepherd students are first-generation or low-income learners. Many also choose to commute to campus, and more are working at least part-time.
“We have learned that students, when faced with adversity, will attempt to figure it out on their own and do not ask for help until the challenge is overwhelming and the opportunity for resolution is too late,” says Julia Franks, chief of staff for the student affairs division and director of the Student Success Center (SSC).
At one point, the institution had an initiative that helped students connect to staff during key periods in the academic term, but there were no dedicated personnel for this effort, so “students were being sent from one office to another to seek help, and most fell through the cracks,” Franks says.
To meet student needs holistically, administrators launched the Shepherd Success Academy to ensure students received personalized guidance.
Prior to the launch, Shepherd staff collected data from faculty and staff members to understand the gaps in student readiness when they entered college and what services already existed so as to not duplicate offerings.
“Success coaches are advertised as distinct from academic advisers, as those conversations with their adviser focus on planning curriculum and meeting requirements for their major, whereas a success coach will provide students with space for everything in between: learning strategies, life management skills and interpersonal communication skills,” Franks says.
How it works: First-year students are invited to join the academy upon admission to the university based factors on that demonstrate a need for additional support, including students who were provisionally admitted or who earned lower high school GPAs or standardized test scores. Just because students receive an invitation does not mean they are part of the academy.
Within the academy, students are matched with a coach who meets with them weekly to provide insight into managing academic rigor, life on campus and overall changes with the transition to higher education. Together, the student and coach build a personalized success plan to maintain strong grades and build relationships on campus, Frank says.
Each meeting lasts between 30 to 45 minutes and allows students to discuss their unique experiences at Shepherd and their transition from high school to college. The success coaches, in turn, help students identify areas of improvement to build upon, including skill development, goal setting, identifying their learning styles or navigating campus resources.
“Students can also bring up a range of topics with their coach that relate to challenges they are experiencing, for instance: questions about any kind of academic policy and where to go to find the answer, feeling any undue academic pressure, or wanting to explore academic options of any kind,” Franks says.
The impact: Since the academy’s launch in 2017, 286 students have participated, with an average fall-to-spring retention of 90 percent (compared to their nonparticipating peers, who retained at 72 percent) and a fall-to-fall persistence at 68 percent (compared to 55 percent).
Success coaches track students’ GPAs, persistence between semesters and their academic standing to gauge the effectiveness of the program.
Academy participants averaged a higher GPA (2.48) compared to their peers who did not join (2.03) and anecdotally have shared that the program has helped their transition to college.
“This data shows that when a student is connected to a consistent resource, they are more likely to persist than those not connected,” Franks says.
Scaling up: The success of the program led to the university expanding the intervention. In 2020, Shepherd created the Student Success Center, which provides coaching to 150 or so students per year through an early alert system, walk-in hours, classroom presentations, referrals from campus departments or programs geared toward specific student populations.
SSC coaches have met with around 3 to 5 percent of Shepherd’s student body, and staff hope to further scale this effort. One challenge has been distinguishing coaching from other student support efforts and making students aware of the resource. At present, most referrals come from peer-to-peer discussions, social media or presentations from practitioners working with students.
“It takes some time to build credibility, since our data is more long-term data, but our data has shown that we’re successful, giving students the assurance that taking the first step to come to the SSC will help them get over the hump,” Franks says.
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