When Brandy Cartmell left her hometown to become a freshman at Central Michigan University, in 1981, she did well in her courses but never made strong social connections. “It felt like nobody knew I existed,” she says.
Neither of her parents had attended college, and they didn’t know how to help. She dropped out within a year and returned to Jackson, Mich.
She enrolled at the local community college, regained her stride, and over the next few decades earned several degrees, including an M.B.A. and a doctorate in education.
Now Ms. Cartmell, who has worked at the University of Tennessee at Martin for nearly 20 years, is interim executive director of enrollment services and student engagement and registrar.
When she began pursuing the doctorate a few years ago and needed a dissertation topic, she reflected on her early academic struggles. She went on to design a “parent portal” for the university — a website where parents can check on their student’s grades and attendance, and learn about other campus resources, such as the health center, tutoring options, and forthcoming events.
Many of the students at UT-Martin, in northwest Tennessee, aren’t all that different from the young Ms. Cartmell in 1981 — about 40 percent are first-generation college students, and more than half receive Pell Grants. “Students need someone who knows they exist, and can get them through that first year,” she says. “I used my own experience as a guide.”
Ms. Cartmell, 51, has always been interested in technology — her first college degree, an associate degree from Jackson Community College, was in data processing. Her first job at UT-Martin was in the computer center.
Creating the parent portal didn’t cost much. She designed it at a time when UT-Martin had access to student-data portals from two companies; she repurposed one of them to turn it into the parent portal.
The portal positions UT-Martin as a leader in tapping the energy of highly involved parents to help improve student retention rates. Tennessee’s 2010 move to an outcomes-based funding model for higher education means that retention and graduation rates now factor heavily in determining state support for public institutions.
Elite colleges elsewhere may bemoan “helicopter parents” who won’t let their kids grow up, but at an institution that serves large numbers of low-income students — and needs to retain them to keep public dollars flowing — keeping parents in the loop is just another way to gain an edge.
“If parents are hovering around anyway,” Ms. Cartmell reasoned, “let’s use that energy in a positive way — let’s give them a landing pad.”
UT-Martin’s retention rates have risen slightly since the portal’s inception. In 2012-13, the first year it was used, the university had a freshman-to-sophomore retention rate of 69.5 percent. Last year it rose to 70.8 percent.
Federal privacy laws prohibit colleges from releasing students’ educational records, even to their parents. During freshman orientation, UT-Martin holds sessions for parents about the portal, but they can gain access only if their student signs a release. The university has found that most students and parents like the idea — 75 percent of parents of entering freshmen get permission and sign up.
Judging by reader response to a Chronicle blog item on the parent portal, however, not everyone thinks it’s a great idea. Critics said it infantilized college students and encouraged parents to harass professors.
Ms. Cartmell says she hasn’t heard much grumbling locally from faculty members worried about angry calls from parents. Parents can see their student’s class schedule, but the portal doesn’t list professors’ names.
“I do tell parents that the portal isn’t there so that you can call and complain,” she says. “It’s there so that you can talk to your student and encourage them to seek out academic resources.”
Robert Hodum, associate vice president for enrollment management and student success at Tennessee Technological University, another public institution, says today’s students have relied heavily on their parents throughout high school; expecting a clean break when the students are dropped off at college is naïve.
“If we completely sever that access, the student is just not prepared for that,” Mr. Hodum says. “Having a parent portal to keep the parents involved, and allowing them to have some input, can help wean the student off of that dependency.”
He is considering starting a portal on his own campus, even though Tennessee Tech has fewer first-generation students than UT-Martin does.
Janet Wilbert, interim coordinator of the student-success center at UT-Martin, is also the mother of a student there. She says Ms. Cartmell has been responsive to suggestions for improving the portal, including posting the schedule for final exams.
Ms. Wilbert says she was grateful for the portal during her son’s freshman year, when he earned poor grades. (Now he’s a sophomore and doing well, she says.)
“Those parents who have the wherewithal to be a little nosy may be doing their kids some good, especially during the first year,” says Ms. Wilbert, who is also an associate professor of health and human performance.
Yet Ms. Cartmell’s dissertation research also lends evidence to the belief that too much parental involvement can backfire.
When she matched student grades against parent use of the portal, she found that students whose parents had never signed up earned the worst grades — an average GPA of 2.27. Those whose parents got access but never logged in did better — an average GPA of 2.44. Students whose parents logged in five or fewer times during the year did the best — a 2.87 average.
Excessive monitoring was actually correlated with worse performance. Students whose parents logged in more than five times earned just a 2.54 average.
“Those kids get so used to their parents doing everything, they don’t take responsibility for themselves,” Ms. Cartmell says.
When UT-Martin started using the portal, two and a half years ago, Ms. Cartmell often referred to her son, Chase, during presentations about how it worked. One time when she called up his profile, she was shocked to see that he had received midterm grades of 3 D’s and a B.
“I thought it was a problem with the data,” she recalls.
It wasn’t. Her son had seen his grades slip after overcommitting to activities, including the pep club, a fraternity, and student government.
Ms. Cartmell, unlike her own parents back in 1981, had enough knowledge to intervene: She told her son to drop at least one activity. He followed her advice, finished the semester with a clean slate of A’s and B’s, and ended up graduating in three years.
