Success Centers designed to increase outreach, student retention
Academic adviser offices line the hallway in the Towers Student Success Center Office on Friday, Sept. 23 in Kessler Hall.
In 1991, Michelle Howard was the only academic adviser for students in the Towers who hadn’t decided on a major.
“Pre-advising” started 25 years ago at Central Michigan University when four professionally trained academic advisers were hired. Today there are 11 Student Success Coaches on campus, and either a Success Center or academic advising center in each of the four residential areas of campus.
“This is a lot about finding students where they’re at in terms of their development and trying to minimize a sense of bureaucracy (or) confusion about where services (on campus) are located,” said Howard, the executive director of academic advising and assistance. “We brought services to areas where students are located and spend a good deal of their time.”
Each Success Center typically includes a Success Coach, an academic adviser and other administrative faculty involved in helping address issues that might hinder students from staying at the university.
“The Office of Student Success’ primary focus is retention,” said Steven Johnson, vice president of Enrollment and Student Services. “It’s not part of enrollment or advising. It’s part of that triage to work closely with academic departments to help facilitate continuation for students.”
This year a new Student Success Center was added to the College of Health Professions. No new staff members were added, but their office was turned into a success center to make their presence more visible, Howard said.
Success Coaches meet with 18 to 23 students a week, said Chelsea Belote, Office of Student Success assistant director. Because they try to meet with every student who passes through success centers at least three times in a semester, each coach will meet with about 150-200 different people each semester.
Belote said the most common problem students address with Success Coaches is time management.
Students employed by the call center as well as staff in the success centers reached out to the incoming freshman class a week before classes started this year to make a connection with students before they got to campus.
“We’re being intentional and calling students when we notice they haven’t registered for classes by the registration date,” Belote said.
Success Center employees and the student-staffed call center reaches out to other populations of students they see as “at risk” of leaving the university or not graduating on time, Belote said. This includes students who withdraw from a class.
“We know the importance of on-time graduation and the expense of withdrawing form courses,” Howard said. “If withdrawing from courses is happening in multiple semesters, not only are you delaying your time to graduation, but that’s lost tuition. We don’t want to be adding to the expense of being in college, or the loan indebtedness, so that is absolutely on the minds of the university.”
When a student decides to disenroll at CMU, Howard hopes someone from a Student Success Center or other staff member reached out to them to weigh their options.
“The reasons why people leave are often very understandable, it’s just a matter of did they have a contact person at CMU?” Howard said. “We’re not trying to keep students here at all costs, but what are some other options they have here? Maybe they dropped a class or they’re not doing well because it’s not something they’re as interested in as they thought.”
Colleges have been “extremely” receptive to using success centers.
“For several years at CMU, we’ve known we want to make sure we have the right number of students to advisers,” Howard said. “We’ve improved dramatically. Before 2013, we had estimated a 1,200 to 1 ratio between students and advisers and in recent studies we’re averaging approximately 650 to 1.”
