Retention Progrms
I would like to know how many times per month do most campus's hold meetings with staff for best practices and attrition tracking per program. To discuss and evaluate issue?
What topics are covered in these meetings, Tammy? Are they oriented to professional development?
We have one on one meetings every other week with our Dean and every other week all program directors and the dean meet.
That is an extremely novel idea to actively discuss retention on a weekly basis. And, I can only imagine, that the more routinely this is done, the better the grasp the school has on its retention issues. And the students benefit from this additional input. And they truly feel like the school is rising up and taking notice of them on a personal basis not just promoting their school. They will be forever grateful for their success.
5% improved retention certainly seems like an attainable goal, Ralph. How are you measuring: institutionally, by department, by cohort?
We meet every Wednesday morning at 7:30 AM and discuss at risk students, with all program directors, financial aid, student services, and are admissions.
Our goal this year is to increase our retention rate by 5% in each program this seems like it could be a hard goal to obtain. But through our meetings on Wednesday morning we are catching are at risk students early and putting in a plan for each individual student.
We discuss this with our staff and faculty 2 times a month we are all very mindful of the importance of retention within all our programs.
As of now it seems like this will have a positive impact on our retention this year.
Joan, do the retention discussions involve all the faculty members in the department as a group or are they done individually?
Our school (Miramar Fl) discuss retention every month with our program director because it is the instructor's responsibility, even though sometimes it may be unfair, if a student has a personal problem that can't be helped. But most of the time we try to catch it right away.
I'm interested in this answer too, Henry. A lot depends on the pre-existing culture, how much time is dedicated to training/education, number of students to be reviewed, attitude of the participants, etc.
