Published Oct 25, 2023 by Kathryn Palmer Eleven college are participating in the first cohort of the Gardner Institute’s Transforming the Foundational Postsecondary Experience program, which is designed to help boost student success during the first two years of college.
Colleges have long focused on reaching first-year students—the Gardner Institute’s namesake even coined the term “the first-year experience.” But more recent research suggests there is value in continuing those efforts through a student’s second year, when they’re most likely still finishing general education courses and deciding on a major.
“The first year matters, but the evidence we have, based on work with hundreds of institutions, shows that so does the second year,” Koch said. “When you take the two into account and address them collectively, you are dealing with anywhere from 75 to over 80 percent of all attrition that occurs in the higher ed. That’s largely gone unnoticed.”
The institute launched its new program, Transforming the Foundational Postsecondary Experience, this summer with the goal of closing performance gaps and improving student outcomes by helping colleges analyze data about their students and redesign their student success initiatives. ..................................
That opportunity to collaborate was also appealing to leaders of the University of Alaska Southeast, whose primary goal is to grow enrollment after its student head count fell from 2,297 in 2018 to 1,943 in 2023.
“We view enrollment as the result of recruitment and retention,” said Maren Haavig, the university’s provost. While university officials are already working to increase enrollment and retention rates, the opportunity to join a cohort of institutions with similar goals was appealing.
“This seemed like a way to leverage the Gardner expertise,” Haavig said, “and approach our existing—and probably some new—activities in a very coordinated and thoughtful way that we thought would be beneficial for us.”
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