SPEAKER_00
Hello and welcome to Office Hours with EAB. Today we're joined by the Director for Student Retention at Syracuse University to talk about how their institution has revamped its approach to student retention. Our guests talk about the ways that the technology, people and processes had to change in order to make a meaningful difference.
Give these folks a listen and enjoy.
SPEAKER_01
Hello and welcome to Office Hours with EAB. My name is Adriana Musser and I'm a strategic leader at EAB. Today we're going to take a deep dive into how one university is rethinking their approach to student success and retention efforts.
With me to talk about this today is my friend and mentor, Dr. Cal Srinivas, the Director for Retention at Syracuse. As part of Syracuse's larger commitment for creating an inclusive student body, Cal works with all schools, colleges and divisions to further the ideals of supporting every student in achieving their goals.
And while she may be the face of the student success management tool, more importantly she provides leadership and strategic direction for the designated co-curricular and functional units that she supports for student retention and success. Welcome to the program, Cal.
SPEAKER_02
Thank you, Andrea, for inviting me. Happy New Year.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, happy New Year. Is it cold there? Just raining.
SPEAKER_02
Nothing like the usual winter.
SPEAKER_01
Very good. Very good. So just as we, before we jump in, can you sort of share with us a little bit more about the work that Syracuse has been doing and how Syracuse has been structured as its approach to student success efforts over the years?
SPEAKER_02
Sure. Before I talk about the structure, I think it's important to understand what student success means to us first. Student success is a culture.
It's an ethos, right? It's not a single function, a particular office or a specific initiative on campus. It's an all-university effort to create an advanced academic excellence in a university welcoming to all. We realized that collaboration across the entire university was key.
We were then faced with the challenge of whose job is it anyway to be responsible for student success, right? Everybody, somebody, anybody or nobody. Therein lies the challenge. You guessed it.
It depends on who you are. It's different for everyone. So for an institution, student success is all about degree completion, retention rates, graduation rates, the ability to bring in good faculty, as well as staff and students, right? U.
S. news rankings are important. For students, they want to thrive.
They want to excel and they want to have the time of their lives. For them, sense of belonging is very important. They want to graduate and be gainfully employed after graduation.
For faculty, they want the students to learn and succeed in their courses, do some research and really engage with them. For parents, they want their children to be happy, engaged, study hard and succeed, reduce student debt load and not come back to live in their basements. So for a society, it's about helping the economy, building communities and less reliance on public assistance.
SPEAKER_01
No, I think that's great. And I think about like those as like different personas, all part of the institutional culture. So with that in mind, how does technology hold into it?
SPEAKER_02
Interesting question. You know, even though technology has revolutionized and transformed higher education, we see technology as a path to a solution, not a driver of change. We avoid technology for technology's sake trap, right? We let the academic goals or business goals drive the effort.
You know, as you know, COVID appended our business as usual playbook. And as with any initiative that involves implementing technology, it is equally important to manage change with people, process, technology and politics and review all the underlying business processes. We have to keep reminding everyone that Starfish is only a tool and it's not the tool that supports the student.
It is the people using the tool. Our team's mantra right from day one has been, it's not the technology, it's the people. We also believe that assessment comes first and then student success.
So the incentive for us to conduct assessment is created by source of data related pain and discomfort afforded by technological tools. So data creates urgency and is a catalyst for change. And we must be candid with ourselves.
If folks don't feel the pain, change won't happen.
SPEAKER_01
Thank you. Thank you. I do want to sort of give some context to some of our listeners.
The student success management. Here at EAB that means both Starfish and Navigate. They're both used to support the people, the processes in the workflows for student success.
Calvin, I didn't plan on asking this. But as I think about in the years that you've been at Syracuse, and I'm thinking personally when I was in college, I'm going to date myself 20 plus years ago, everything's changed. So when we think about perhaps how Syracuse in users is the people that we talked about in the beginning, how has that tech changed in this modernized campus that exists today?
SPEAKER_02
First thing we recognize that the true undergraduate excellence can be achieved only when we pay attention to the whole student. So as you launch the Orange Success Early Alert Initiative, which also involved overhauling the advising practices aimed at improving student success, we increased the training and support for our advisors, and we also coordinated all the advising across all schools and colleges, which were previously being done in silos and with the pen and paper method. School and colleges were supporting their students in their own way, and no one knew what the other was doing.
The students felt bounced around by different schools and colleges and offices, and they had to repeat their story a million times, and that was not something they were happy about. So now we know, especially after COVID, technology is here to stay and has become an integral part of our lives. Every day we are being asked to navigate the challenges in this digital world.
We are having to rethink and make technological investments just to stay relevant. And then we are also being asked to change and adapt to the new demands of our students, be it flexibility in modes of instruction or removing silos from various data sources. At the same time, change is not something that comes easy for all.
And as in academia, you know, Zell Miller had once said, it's easier to change the course of history than it is to change a history course.
SPEAKER_01
You're doing your one layer. I think that's a good point to sort of transition. Like, when we were gathered together back in November, you gave a stellar session on nudges.
And you feel free to correct me. But I think early alerts was earlier framing that is now transitioned into a newish concept, newer of the nudge. And I was wondering if you could share with our listeners a little bit more on your session on the nudges and the success that Syracuse has experienced.
SPEAKER_02
Absolutely. You know, when we rolled out our early alert and connect system in 2015, for one thing, we did not roll it out as a retention tool. We rolled it out as a tool in a way to share more and better information with all the decision makers across campus.
And we referred to faculty feedback on course performance as early alerts. But slowly we started noticing that if a student were to receive five alerts from professors during midterm. I mean, that carries a lot of negative connotation, right? But if you started referring to them as nudges, it was a lot easier for us to then get buy-in from our students.
Remember, these students live in the Fitbit generation. They're constantly being nudged, you know, to walk, to stand up, to do this, to do that. And the students understand and respond appropriately to nudges.
Of course, some of them are continuing to ignore us, but those are the few then we have to make a concerted effort to reach out to. And the nudge can be very powerful if we are strategic about the population we want to impact. We can't just send a nudge to a whole 20,000 students.
No, it has to be very strategic, very intentional. We must be very clear as to what behavior change we are expecting when the student gets the nudge. Most importantly, we need to understand the scope and the outcome we are aspiring for.
We always hear that students don't read emails, right? Personally when I talk to the students in my class, I know that they read it, but they choose not to respond because they have read what I have told them, but they just decided not to respond. So a nudge then becomes a small bite, sound bite, that then they feel that they can easily respond to instead of an email. And then at our institution, we use nudges in the form of SMS, texts, emails, phone calls, outreach through social media.
And the design of the nudge is important for it to have the desired effect. For example, an attendance nudge can gently steer the student towards showing up to class, or a low quiz score can lead students to make better choices with their time and decide whether to go for a tutoring session or not. Some examples, one quick example I'll give is one faculty member raised a flag saying that the student had not come to the class on Thursday and then did not show up for dinner on Sunday, so she was a bit concerned.
So when we routed that flag to the residence director and the residence director had the residence advisor reach out to the student, we found out that the student has called it her feet and could not walk and that's why she hadn't gone out of her room. So these nudges are so powerful if the right people in the positions are doing what needs to be done with those nudges.
SPEAKER_01
So Cal, I just want to pause you there, something really resonated with me because you focused in on the people in that example. Yes, there was tech and yes, it did its thing, but it was the people who made the difference and I've been working with Starfish for over 10 years and it's still the people and the stories that mean the most to me and I appreciate the one that you shared. Another example, if I just belabor this because it's so impressive to me, going back to when we were in fall of 2020, that crazy semester and you use SMS, you texted students around like compliance and had some really impressive results.
If you could just touch on that a little bit for our listeners.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, during COVID, we had a very intricate system in place in terms of testing our students. So the students had received five emails Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and most of those emails had been ignored when the emails said that you have to be tested by Friday morning or your Blackboard access is going to be removed. And then we used orange success as a vehicle to send a text message where we send students, all the students who had received emails that, OK, Blackboard connection will be disconnected if not tested today.
And we had about 400 students show up at the stadium to be tested so much so that they called, hoped in smalling my colleague and said, you need to stop this. We cannot handle this. So it was very impactful.
And also we had a time when we had just piloted the intake form for our summer start students and we shared the link for the intake form through the SMS text. And we had out of 132 students, 130 students completed the intake survey and two of them had to be just convinced a little bit more to complete it. So it's very effective if done in the right way with the right population.
SPEAKER_01
No, thank you. And I think that aligns to New America's best practices on texting and nudging is you know what behavior you want and you target the behavior. And you also make it easy for the student to take action.
And you did that by adding that they that the link for them to complete that form or by directing them to the to the stadium for the for the testing. Like I think it was really well designed. And I do consider Syracuse one of the leaders in this space with Starfish in using texting as a nudge.
And I hope my memory is serving me right. But I remember a slide from your presentation and it said something to the effect of this is a quote, predictive analytics can save higher ed comma really that that that right. I was curious if you could share a little bit more context for that and because I think it's powerful.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, you know, Syracuse University has been using our homegrown as state SU tool. And we were slowly trying to roll that out. But then we realized we were having some trouble gaining some momentum there.
But then we came across this quote when Nacubo had partnered with AIR and Educause to craft a statement and a very nice written article. Saying that analytics can save higher education really. And that when shared with everybody created a sense of urgency and the use of analytics.
Now, higher education is under pressure all the time, right? To improve student incomes. We must navigate the challenges of declining student enrollment trends, focus on student outcomes, answer questions about the value of a degree, answer questions about the country, and then we'll be back. Answer questions about the concerns of equity.
But at Syracuse University, we decided that our campus wide collaboration had already ignited the analytics endeavors and ensured its long term use as a part of the data informed institutional culture. You know, many campuses struggle with using statistical probabilities to act on students, right? Now, we feel, but at Syracuse, we feel that our position statement on how our tools are intended to be used helps ensure that the tools we provide improve student success by allowing us to proactively point them to resources that they may not be aware that are available on campus. So that's important.
And if they don't take advantage of those resources, then we're not going to help them succeed, right? And New America had laid out the framework for us. So it was very easy for us to address, you know, possible issues surrounding the use of institutional data and using data ethically is complex. There is no magical formula, right? So we did a lot of training on the appropriate and the inappropriate uses of either the retention score or any other score that was available to us in the analytics platform, too.
And we continue to safeguard the student and institutional data. And extensive training was provided to ensure that advising leaders understand the results of the predictive analytics are just snapshots of a student's experience at a given time and can change.
SPEAKER_01
Oh, thank you. And to me, I do believe that the analytics and in higher, they are just another tool in the toolkit, right? The same as we would consider a flag or something else to be a tool. And just because there is a statistical model saying that this could happen or providing a numerical data point, that doesn't, it's a guarantee.
But this is a way of identifying where to look so that you can get to the root of the problem because it always goes back to the people. Yes. So sort of shifting at this point, we know how important it is to remove the institutional barriers to student success. And yet over the years, it's never like cease to amaze me.
How slow these processes can be for some institutions to resolve these administrative hurdles that could be a lot simpler. So I'm hoping you could perhaps share some examples of what Syracuse has done to address some of these hurdles that could slow students down.
SPEAKER_02
I'm not sure about the word hurdles, but holds in the system are a way to hold students accountable, right? Whatever the reason is, you know, whether it's an advising hold or a bursar hold, but sometimes these holds do become obstacles. Yes. For example, holds are placed on student registrations by a variety of offices, right? With a range of impact. So typically students are most impacted by holds when they're not allowed to register for the next semester.
Now, when that happens, we also give students the information of who to contact and how to get the hold removed. For example, we work very closely with the registrar's office, with the bursar's office during registration time to see if the bursar's office can temporarily lift a hold so that the student can register and then the hold can be put back on. As I mentioned earlier, with the renewed focus on improving retention and graduation rates, we work very closely with academic affairs, student experience, business side of the house and look at all the underlying processes and talk to students on how to get off their holds.
It's important not only to look at students at risk, but it's also very important to look at at-risk processes that are hindering our students from succeeding.
SPEAKER_01
No, thank you. And I think that's a great example. So throughout our conversation, another theme that I think has been under current has been how Syracuse has been able to develop this student engagement, both with the technology, but also with the people.
And so when I think about how did you do this? You have thousands, tens of thousands of students. How did you first get them to approach the tech and then to help them feel more engaged and supported?
SPEAKER_02
That's a very complex question, right? Twenty thousand plus students. So one thing we have to understand, what does the students' journey to our university look like? Right? The highway analogy fits very well because students come from private schools, public schools, different countries, some from accelerated programs, some traditional, some first generation and like interstates with varying speeds into our university. They come with different preparations, different majors, different ethnicities, different socioeconomic status, all very complex, right? Now, also knowing that, now this is what predictive analytics helps us with, right? We also have to understand who are students today and how has the world changed for which we are preparing them for? Very important to know how the world has changed, not only how the students have changed.
So we look at how yesterday, you know, people were when they went to work, they worked for a large company, they were one job in their life, stay in their hometown, well-paying jobs, even in low-skilled professions, and then mostly in-person jobs, right? In-person, you know, studying and jobs. Whereas today, the students are working for smaller companies with multiple jobs, move from work or career. They have low-paying jobs in low-skilled professions, cutthroat international competition, and then they have virtual options.
So we have to take all that into consideration when we talk about student engagement. We look at retention student success by subpopulation, and that is where analytics can play a big role. We try to meet the student from the entry point to the departure to provide this student experience that we say called the unsurpassed student experience that Q stands for.
You know, we look at pre-college entry characteristics, what their behaviors are, that would help or hinder them from succeeding. And then what some of the institutional conditions are and examining both students at risk and at risk processes, like I mentioned before. Remember, no one person initiative can engage 20,000 students.
We must remember there is no Hail Mary pass to touchdown when it comes to retention and student success. It's down after down after down, and it is the cumulative effect of all these multiple initiatives on campus that improve the student engagement.
SPEAKER_01
Thank you. And that sort of gives me a flashback to a chatting with a mutual friend of ours, Bernie Savaris, who referenced that the students who need you most may not be the students who come to you, right? Which is where I think that to your point, the predictive analytics and all the different data points that help you to engage and support the students to identify which students should then reach out to. One group that we've mentioned, but not really dug into is faculty.
And we know that they do more than just teach classes or faculty advise. I'm wondering, since Syracuse does have really great faculty adoption, if you could share some lessons learned on how to build bridges with this group, who sometimes student success is not their primary focus, or at least not those words.
SPEAKER_02
Of course, they do a lot more than teach, right? They play a critical role in shaping the student experience within the classroom. They are the decision makers for curriculum when it comes to designing their courses. And they help advisors have an advanced advising session by providing course feedback.
They mentor students. They work closely with other units on campus to refer students to appropriate resources. They counsel them and coach students on how to navigate the system.
I could go on and on, but like I said, they are integral to student success. We involve faculty right from the get go while implementing orange success in our pilot. And convened a faculty advisory group to guide us through the different phases of implementation.
They were critical in telling us what were the missteps we were having and what to do to engage the faculty. We share with them on a semester by semester basis, the impact that their flags have on student success, and how their participation in the mid-semester progress report has lowered the DWFs at our institution. And how mid-semester progress reports help our students bounce back if they have wavered from their journey.
SPEAKER_01
So I'm thinking like, because you have so much expertise and experience in this domain, but if you had five minutes to share like lessons that you've learned or like best aspects of advice for how to turbocharge an institution's own efforts at retention in student success, what might you share?
SPEAKER_02
For one thing, I'd be very arrogant if you thought I was an expert. If I thought I was an expert.
SPEAKER_01
I think you're an expert. I'm not. Because I know you.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, it is so challenging because there's a myriad of reasons why students leave the institutions or why they don't succeed and why someone feels a sense of belonging and someone doesn't. But the one thing I would focus on is that everybody that works at an institution is a retention year. Everybody, everything that they do with the student reflects the experience that the student has faced and adds to their sense of belonging.
And changing the culture is key. Changing the culture with or in success was sharing, you know, being transparent, sharing the information, getting all the people to understand what the system was, how the information was in one information hub and how everybody could use it. And as Peter Drucker had said, I don't know, decades ago, culture is not one aspect of the game.
It is the game, right? And we approached it with a one university perspective. Don't try to boil the ocean. That's the one thing our CIO told us.
Don't try to customize it and don't try to boil the ocean. So use it. This is what we have.
This is what we're going to work with and change the underlying business processes. And unless it's something that's a, you know, stopper, you know, then come to us and we'll work with you on it. And then one other thing is, you know, learn from your past successes and sometimes better yet from your failures because you learn more from when you fail than when you succeed.
And then once again, promote transparency, share the data back with the users. Tell them what the impact is. And we are in a new era of sharing and accountability.
And that always helps promote your initiative on campus. And then one challenge that we continue to face is the lack of integration of old systems. And, you know, that we have to navigate with caution.
SPEAKER_01
I remember one of the first times I got to see you speak. You said something very similar, but it stuck with me and I just jotted it down again. Do not let perfect get in the way of good.
And I think you then like dovetailed that with, do not forgo a Camry because you want Alexis. Absolutely. And it's stuck with me all of these years.
SPEAKER_02
So true, you know, because we cannot be everything to every student. But if we get the right information in the hands of people who are helping the students make the decision, which is what this whole early alert system is all about, then we are good to go.
SPEAKER_01
I think that's a good way to end it. I know that we could talk about this for hours. In fact, we have talked about this for hours, but I do want to be respectful of your time.
And Cal, thank you for joining today. I thank our listeners for joining and spending their time with us. And yeah, I hope everyone has a wonderful rest of their day.
Thank you, Andrina.
SPEAKER_02
This was great talking to you. It didn't feel like a podcast even because we have so many conversations about retention and student success over the years. Thank you very much for giving me this opportunity to talk about this.
Thank you for giving me this opportunity. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00
Thank you for listening. Please join us next week when we take a look at how to recruit and serve the needs of military students, both retired and active duty. Until then, thank you for your time.
Thank you.