Influencing toward a culture of retention
As enrollment trends downward nationwide, campus admissions chiefs face more pressure than ever to hit their targets. But once students enroll, whose job is it to make sure they graduate?
This week I bring you insights from someone focused on just that. Tonia Jones Peterson is director of retention and student success at the University of St. Thomas, in Minnesota, a newly created position that reflects an institutional focus on guiding students to graduation.
Peterson, who reports jointly to the heads of academic and student affairs, is an office of one, so she focuses her efforts on influence, working to create a campus culture in which all staff members, including dining-service workers and building supervisors, recognize that student success is their goal.
Here are her pillars for building a culture of retention:
Data storytelling. To show whom the university is serving is the cornerstone of her work.
It’s easy for longtime employees especially to have an outdated perception of student demographics, Peterson said. As on many campuses, the percentages of low-income and first-generation students, as well as students of color, have increased in recent years. To get everyone on the same page about what students need, Peterson aims to:
- Share data regularly, in multiple places. Peterson’s regular email updates on retention, sent to the administration, get more frequent during busy periods like registration. She also includes updates in weekly academic-affairs and student-affairs newsletters, and shares data at faculty department meetings and other campus gatherings.
- Make information digestible. She is careful to pull out only the most relevant data points, and to make them succinct and easy to understand, so they stick in people’s minds.
- Consider the audience. Student demographics, retention rates, and graduation rates are staples, but depending on the setting, she may drill down on a certain population to give a more detailed picture.
- Provide action items. Along with numbers, Peterson suggests ways for people to act on them. At a recent faculty meeting, she underscored the importance of demonstrating to students that professors care, with tactics like being fully present in meetings and cognizant of greetings in person and in writing. She also talked about how to connect students with campus resources and provide helpful, timely feedback.
Partnerships. At an institution of 6,000 students, she focuses on creating partnerships with offices across campus. For example, the university sends a survey to new students six weeks into their first semester, and Peterson’s office as well as other offices, including financial aid, academic counseling, residence life, and human resources, all respond depending on a student’s requests or concerns.
Streamlining. Peterson facilitates coordination between offices and departments to raise students’ awareness of and simplify their access to all the supports available to them. This includes streamlining the many communications that the campus sends out about, for example, tutoring or housing selection.
Feedback. Student input will benefit any new programs or services, Peterson said. If you seek student voices and really listen, you can save yourself time and resources by building services that align with student needs, she said. Working with student government can help identify the best ways to reach students, she said.
