Strategic Retention Initiative

Overview

The COAS SERP establishes goals, priorities and frameworks for student success in the College of Arts and Sciences. The mission of the SERP is to reduce equity gaps in access, retention and completion through targeted student support, and our vision for the college is to build a student success network where COAS units are aligned towards shared equity goals.

Last year we launched college-led retention strategies in Advising, Student Persistence and Re-Enrollment and First-Year Experience. Now, with our goals and infrastructure in place, we are ready to advance SERP work at the department level through Strategic Retention Initiative (SRI) grants.

The SRI grant program provides college-level funding and training, delivered over a two-year period, to develop targeted retention strategies within departments. For this round of SRI, we are focusing on retention initiatives. In the future, we will create opportunities for departments to design and implement recruitment-based initiatives.

A team-based approach

• We will award two years of funding to three COAS department teams.
• Departments will submit proposals in teams of up to four members.
• During year 1, team members will each receive a $1,000 stipend.
• During year 2, teams will submit proposals to fund their pilot project with up to $10,000 available per project.
• The grant work is divided into two phases:
  • Year 1: Guided strategic retention planning (Fall 2024 – Spring 2025 )
  • Year 2: Department-level retention initiative pilot (Fall 2025 – Spring 2026)

Responsibilities

• In the first year, the training and strategic planning work will require weekly engagement. For example:
  • Training sessions with all three SRI department teams
  • Planning sessions with Casey Iezzi and your Data Team partners
  • Working meetings with your department team
  • Strategy and information-gathering with campus partners (e.g., Institutional Effectiveness)
• In year 2, hours will likely shift based on the goals and needs of your pilot project. Expectations for outcomes will be determined by the department team’s specific pilot project

Framework

Strategic Retention Initiatives (SRIs) start with analysis and end with action–with several steps in between. In student support work, we often jump to action. In SRI work, we start with questions.

In our approach to strategic retention planning, we draw upon john a. powell’s Targeted Universalism framework, which helps institutions to set ambitious goals for all members of a community and to design targeted intervention strategies for particular groups that are the furthest from these goals. The framework offers a set of steps that prioritize data collection, analysis and needs assessment before determining a specific solution or intervention.

1. Establish a universal goal based upon a broadly shared recognition of a societal problem and collective aspirations.
2. Assess general population performance relative to the universal goal.
3. Identify groups that are performing differently with respect to the goal. Groups should be disaggregated.
4. Assess and understand the structures that support or impede each group or community from achieving the universal goal.
5. Develop and implement targeted strategies for each group to reach the universal goal.

During the planning phase, the COAS Data Team will guide each SRI department team through the steps of this framework (i.e., setting department-level retention goals; organizing data; identifying equity gaps; naming barriers; designing targeted interventions).

By the end of the planning and design process, each department team will have a proposal for a retention strategy, or set of strategies, to be implemented and assessed the following year.

Project deliverables

Fall 2024

• Primary task: Data organization and needs assessment
• Deliverable: Summary of retention data, structural barriers and strategic priorities

Spring 2025

• Primary task: Shift into planning targeted inventions
• Deliverable: Submit retention initiative proposal

Fall 2025 & Spring 2026

• Primary Task: Implement retention initiative pilot, track progress, evaluate outcomes
• Deliverable: Submit report and present to Chairs Council and home department

Strategic Planning Resources

The COAS SERP Data Team will draw from a number of existing strategic planning resources as they support departments.

SERP Frameworks

Our COAS SERP centers two frameworks that are essential to the larger vision:

1. With Collective Impact as our guide, we resist the template of isolation and defensiveness and instead embrace the power of the collective. Members of collective impact networks aim to “advance equity by learning together, aligning, and integrating their actions to achieve systems-level change.”
2. Through Targeted Universalism, we make a commitment to prioritizing needs assessment before action. Our year-long training and planning process allows adequate time for goal-setting, data disaggregation, analysis of structural barriers and the design of strategies that target key structural gaps.

Example Strategic Planning Resource: The Tamarack Collective Impact Toolkit

Needs Assessment & Planning

Disaggregated retention data helps us to identify which groups are in need of attention, but it does not provide any magical answers as to why some student groups are performing better than others and what interventions are needed. Compiling equity gap data is one step in a larger process of needs assessment and strategy planning. Needs assessment involves a number of research strategies, including the identification and examination of existing qualitative data (e.g., student surveys, focus groups); review of existing research on underrepresented students and promising practices; and the design and implementation of additional data collection efforts. Ideally, these research activities are conducted in collaboration with students who are members of the groups in focus.

Example Strategic Planning Resource: Knowing our Students: Understanding & Designing for Success (Achieving the Dream Guidebook)

High Impact Practices & Evidence-Based Strategies

Once we have a better understanding of particular groups’ experiences— the barriers they’ve faced and the supports they need— we can move to designing targeted interventions. The recommendation here is to focus on changes to structures, rather than isolated efforts that impact a small number of students. High Impact Practices (HIPs) have been found to improve retention, particularly for underserved student populations, primarily because they are designed to address structural barriers and can be scaled across a department or university. In addition, a number of evidence-based strategies, such as peer mentoring and success coaching, have received attention more recently as effective interventions for students at risk of stopping out.

Example Strategic Planning Resource: Achieving the Dream’s Teaching and Learning Toolkit

Implementation Guides

Drawing on the field of public health, we will also explore resources from the research domain of Implementation Science, which focuses on the adoption and integration of evidence-based strategies in real-world contexts. Although the focus of this field is primarily on evidence-based practices and in healthcare settings, the frameworks and tools have relevance to higher education. Implementation Science recognizes that the adoption of evidence-based strategies is not an easy or straightforward process; it requires careful planning, monitoring and evaluation.

Example Strategic Planning Resource: Implementation Science at a Glance (NIH/NCI Guide)