Baldwin-Wallace didn’t rely solely on the online Campus Pack program. The school recruited more than 200 alumni volunteers to mentor freshmen in the College 101 course, helping the teenage students better understand and forge a reliable path to graduation.
“I think technology can facilitate these things, but it’s not necessarily the silver bullet,” DeGennaro said. “Technology can help connections, and that’s one of the fundamental pieces of our initiative.”
Some small schools have taken retention cues from some of the country’s largest campuses, such as the University of Kansas.
Estrella Mountain Community College in Avondale, Ariz., with an enrollment of about 15,000, has many new students in need of basic English courses—a requirement that calls for early intervention before students’ grades plummet and they leave school.
Estrella Mountain Community College used a data-mining company based in Virginia, Starfish Retention Solutions, to pinpoint which students were struggling academically and in danger of dropping out of school.
College officials also reported a drop in the number of students in its “academic recovery” program. With faculty, instructors, and counselors being able to more easily track students with consistently low grades, students in “academic recovery” dropped by 30 percent last year.
Estrella officials used the Starfish software to find and help students who were frequently tardy for class or absent altogether. The program also took academic performance into account.
When the Starfish software flagged an Estrella student, a message was sent to a college counselor, who contacted the student.
Ninety-eight percent of faculty concerns about struggling students logged in the Estrella database resulted in student consultations with tutors and counselors, according to Starfish.
“The fact that Starfish automatically delivers that feedback to the service providers on campus makes timely intervention possible,” said Joyce Jackson, dean of academic affairs. “Faculty confidence in the system is increasing as service providers close the loop to inform faculty that their student referrals are being addressed.”
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