Universities are Trying to Help College Students Make it to Graduation Catered to Them

When students enter college, they each have their personal lives that they bring with them that contributes to planning out their degrees.

First time students are faced with a new way of scheduling classes, among many other new choices they must make as they experience some independence. Other students may be in rigorous STEM programs or face personal issues that can make keeping up with their workload difficult.

In order to help students through a variety of challenges, many universities have implemented various advising programs to help students.

Lorain County Community College is one of several colleges that have a “nudge program,” as one of their solutions for aiding students.

The nudge program was first introduced at LCCC to help STEM students with reminders, and access to resources. However, after they saw success with student interaction, they decided to scale the program to reach a wider audience of students.

“There are around eight thousand students on the nudge platform in any given term,” said the Director of Institutional Planning and Engagement at LCCC Erika Fenik.

The platform is catered to send different types of messages to different groups of students. Students who have applied, are first year, second year and those near completion all receive messages that are suited to their group’s specific needs.

“The platform that we have, is tailored for our institution and uses artificial intelligence to respond to students, providing them a variety of resources that is pertinent to what they have messaged,” Fenik said, “or it does prompt them related to some things that may be a barrier for them, but also may be a barrier for students that they know.”

In order to see how effective the program was at getting students to actually use the resources that they sent nudges out about, Lorain did a study related to their food pantry to help address food insecurity on their campus.

A questionnaire was sent to students asking if they would benefit from food pantry resources, and those who selected yes received more information regarding how to visit the pantry. From August to September of 2018, they saw an increase in visitors of 51% thanks to the program.

“It’s been a really effective tool to get students to actually take advantage of those resources that we have here for them,” Fenik said. 

While the nudge program at LCCC is set up to provide ongoing support, The University of Dayton has another program to help aid their students.

The Student Success Network, also known as Starfish at Dayton is an early alert program to help reach students that may be struggling.

“It is an advising platform and also serves as our early alert system, where faculty can flag students who are having academic difficulties or, in some cases, if they are concerned about a student’s well being,” said the Director of Student Success, Strategies and Operations at the University of Dayton Rebekah Lawhorn.

While Starfish is a good platform to alert faculty about struggling students, it doesn’t holistically address the situation. The students who are alerted to staff are sent to their Academic Intervention Response Team, where a committee then decides which resources are right for each student.

One of the resources available to students is academic coaching which provides time management and study skills, talks through test anxiety and students can roleplay scenarios with an advisor to help them know how to approach professors for help.

Kent State University doesn’t have a university-wide program like LCCC or Dayton, but each of its colleges has an advising team that tries to help their students reach completion. 

For new students that are overwhelmed with selecting a major, a unique and growing program at Kent State is the Exploratory Program which allows students to take courses and receive advising catered to helping them find their strengths and passions.

Part of how the Exploratory Program aids students is making sure the courses they take count. When a student is undecided but seems potentially interested in two different majors, their advisors help them find elective courses that will meet their requirements no matter what major they end up choosing.

“85% of our students will declare their major within their first three semester,” said Senior Director of Exploratory Programs and Retention Initiatives Nicole Kotlan.

**I will be revising and adding visuals**