Launch Of Student Success Implementor Brings Solutions To Higher Education Woes
Helping Campuses Stay Focused on What's Important and The Goals Set For Increasing Graduation Rates
WASHINGTON, Nov. 19, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Provosts facing mounting pressures from nationwide scrutiny of higher education, now have a powerful ally to accelerate graduation rates, and propel students to succeed. The Student Success Implementor, a system launched by the Education Delivery Institute, guides higher education leaders along a relentless path to student success goals, informed at every step, by real-time data.
"We help provosts dive into plentiful baseline data to find root causes of problems," said EDI's Chief Executive Officer Kathy Cox. "Then our mentoring process builds capacity for continuous improvement through access to a flow of real-time data."
Provost's juggle daunting challenges, including graduating more students, closing the achievement gap and graduating students in four years. Operating costs are up, tuition revenues are down and funding is being tied to performance.
"In education, there are all kinds of bandwagons," said Dr. Judith Walker de Felix, Vice Provost for academic affairs and Dean of the graduate school at the University of Missouri-St Louis. "What EDI has helped us do is focus our efforts on one goal and progress toward that goal as we add new strategies for student success."
In the case of the St. Louis campus, that goal is to increase the number of graduating students by 20 percent between 2013 and 2018.
"We're working on cutting the achievement gap in half, and other strategies we learned from EDI, to help us meet that strategic goal," said Walker de Felix. "We have retained enough students in the pipeline that we expect to meet the goal. For example, this fall we had the highest first-to-second-year retention that we have ever had, at 80 percent."
At the University of Hawaii, Interim Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs Joanne Itano and her colleagues already attained their goal of awarding 25 percent more degrees and certificates by 2015. They're now setting goals for 2016.
"Their focus on implementation was just invaluable," Itano said of EDI's guidance. "They came to Hawaii to work with our campuses and help them focus on their own goals."
Itano said EDI helped her campus develop a dedicated group of leaders who are always focused on implementing and maintaining strategies for student success, including the school's "15 to Finish" campaign.
Go to www.successimplementor.org
SOURCE Education Delivery Institute
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