In the College of Arts and Sciences, we believe in a “Culture of Care.” We care for our students, and we care for the faculty and staff who support students. Through our dedication to students, we form a strong community. We are the COAS Student Success Network, and we operate from a shared vision of holistic support of each other and of our students.
COAS Strategic Enrollment and Retention Plan (SERP)
COAS SERP Mission
Reduce gaps in access, retention and completion through targeted student support
COAS SERP Vision
Build a COAS Student Success Network, where COAS units are aligned towards shared goals
SERP Innovation Projects
Through the COAS Innovation Grant process, three faculty leaders were selected to develop and implement projects that advance the COAS SERP mission and vision. The three projects focus on important aspects of our First-Year Experience work.
Julia Broderick
Julia is designing “Healthy Attachments for Student Success (HASS)” materials and community for faculty who teach first-year courses. A key goal of HASS is to help instructors develop strategies that can reduce the risk of burnout.
Sarah Dalrymple
Sarah is creating a COAS process for identifying courses with high DFW rates and equity gaps. She will work with COAS Chairs to engage faculty who teach these courses in a faculty learning community that focuses on high impact practices which have been found to positively impact student retention.
Gail Shuck
Gail is developing and piloting a first-year writing directed self-placement process for multilingual students. Through this process she will also help to build a sustainable data management system for tracking multilingual student success.
Strategic Retention Initiative (SRI) Grants
With our SERP goals and infrastructure in place, we are ready to extend and support the work at the department level through Strategic Retention Initiative (SRI) Grants.
COAS SRI grants provide college-level funding and training, delivered over a 2-year period, in order to develop targeted retention strategies within departments.