Student Success Team

1. Student Success Team Fall Retreat, 2010

2. Our Agenda: • Welcome and Opening Remarks: • Beth Ingram and Tom Rocklin (10 minutes) • Overview of the Focus of Today’s Retreat: • Sarah Hansen and Emil Rinderspacher (20 min.) • Group Discussion (90 min.) • Reporting Out (20 min.) • This year’s agenda in SST/Wrap Up (5 min.)

3. Today’s Retreat Focus Academic Affairs-Student Affairs Collaboration on a required pre-semester program for first-year students Anchored in The IOWA Challenge 3-days, with forward thinking toward 4-5 days in the future

4. Background • First-Year Experience Task Force recommendation • Camp Herky proposal/“immersion” • Strongly linked to research on student success (DEEP): • Clearly marked pathways • Clear expectations • Shared responsibility • Supportive campus environments • Enriching educational experiences

5. On Iowa! A Hawkeye Beginning

6. Goals • Overarching program goals: • Communicating institutional expectations of students and how to meet them • Introducing academic success skills • Promoting early engagement in meaningful educational experiences • Building social connections through interacting with others, similar and different • Learning about University traditions

7. Goals • Overarching program goals: • Communicating institutional expectations of students and how to meet them (The IOWA Challenge, Academic and Student Codes of Conduct – EXCEL, STRETCH, ENGAGE, CHOOSE, SERVE) • Introducing academic success skills (EXCEL) • Promoting early engagement in meaningful educational experiences (ENGAGE/SERVE) • Building social connections through interaction with others, similar and different (STRETCH/SERVE) • Learning about University traditions (ENGAGE)

8. Logistics • Program will: • Begin Friday evening, August 19th • End Sunday, August 21st with Convocation and the President’s Block Party • 10 member Executive Committee plus 20 member Steering Committee • Feedback loops built into timeline for faculty/staff/student input

9. Assumptions • A number of first-year programs exist and we need to figure out how to intersect with them • We can’t leave (first-year) student success to chance – it requires strong institutional commitment • Students can benefit from a strong transition program • It is essential to create a more supportive and challenging educational environment for students Adapted from the FYE Task Force Report

10. Guiding Principles • Comprehensive • Cohesive • Collaborative • Educationally meaningful • Relevant • Fun and engaging • Involving upper-class students • Serve as a launching pad • Inclusive • Uniquely Iowa • Technology-rich Adapted from the FYE Task Force Report

11. Challenges • Logistics (residence hall move-in, gathering spaces for large groups of students) • Intersection with other programs • Change Adapted from the FYE Task Force Report

12. Today’s Goals • Identify the most essential learning outcomes for the program, aligned with The IOWA Challenge expectations • Brainstorm effective and innovative strategies for addressing the outcomes • Discuss the logistics of implementing the strategies with a large population (4,000+ students) • Consider how we’ll measure achievement of outcomes

13. Framing the Conversation • Consider the definition of student success. Think about ways to frame the experience as a shared enterprise. • Consider the SST mission/vision which states: “SST advances opportunities for all students and embraces diversity as essential to our work.” • How can we design the program so that diversity is enacted as an essential and additive valuethroughout the experience? • Bring a perspective of what must we do.

14. Task 1: Essential Learning Outcomes • Which 1-3 learning outcomes from your assigned Challenge areas (Excel, Stretch, Engage, Choose, Serve) should be our primary focus for the 2011 program? Which outcomes are most essential and why? Consider which outcomes are most foundational in nature for first year students. • If you do not find an outcome on your current list that you consider essential for Year 1, you may add it. • ~20 minutes

15. Task 2: Strategies for meeting outcomes • What types of programs, activities, or approaches will best meet the outcomes you identified above? • Consider: • Guiding principles (cohesive, collaborative, etc.) • Student success as a shared enterprise • Diversity as additive and essential • ~30 minutes

16. Task 3: Managing logistics • Think more about 2-3 of the ideas you brainstormed in task #2 with regard to the logistics of working with 4,000+ incoming students. What approaches might work best? • Consider: • Guiding principles (cohesive, collaborative, etc.) • Guiding principles (technology rich, involving upper class students, etc.) • Student success as a shared enterprise • Diversity as additive and essential • 15 minutes per idea – 30 minutes

17. Task 4: Assessing our efforts • How will we know if we have met the learning outcomes you selected? • What methods should we use to assess whether the strategies you brainstormed were successful in teaching the outcomes you selected? • ~15 minutes

18. We will collect all the information and compile for the Executive Committee Reporting Out Share your most important revelation, most innovative idea, most exciting strategy

19. What’s next for SST? • Large Group Meetings as opportunities for shared learning and problem solving • If you have suggested topics for meetings, please let me know! • Action Committees: Focused on The IOWA Challenge