Learning Resources

Abstract: As the country’s largest and most diverse four-year public university system, what happens at the California State University (CSU) reverberates nationwide. Each year, the CSU awards more than 125,000 degrees and one in every 20 Americans holding a college degree is a graduate of a CSU campus. Graduation Initiative 2025 is a university-wide initiative to ensure that all students have the opportunity to be successful and graduate according to their personal goals, positively impacting students’ and their family’s future and producing additional graduates to power the workforce for California and the nation. In this special session, the CSU Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic and Student Affairs will address the challenges and opportunities facing the 23-campus system’s efforts to expand authentic access to opportunity for students from all backgrounds and circumstances, eliminate equity gaps and ensure student success.

Abstract: Literature points out that big data and analytics (BDA) still fails to positively influence institutional planning—even though it's promoted as a novel approach to improving efficiency and effectiveness. What limits the usefulness of BDA? Researchers point to a lack of conceptual models that translate information into meaningful signals. Nonsense! We're using a metrics-based planning framework that's producing remarkable outcomes. We'll share our framework and how you can apply this concept at your institution.

Abstract: After a campus tragedy, the first steps for the community toward settling into the new normal often entail working through the gravity of recent events. This work includes a need for internal reflection, external processing, and collective healing. Campus communities engaged in this process often find a way to memorialize the events that have shaken them and to honor the lives of any community members lost to tragedy. This research project focuses on physical memorials that are the result of a tragic moment in institutional history.

Abstract: The City University of New York's (CUNY) Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP) assists students in earning associate degrees within three years by providing a comprehensive range of financial, academic, and personal supports. Completion rates at community colleges remain extremely low; however, CUNY's ASAP students earned their associate degrees at substantially higher rates than non-ASAP students, even when a longer timeframe was considered. In this session, you will learn about CUNY's ASAP model, how it receives operating and capital funding, and how the physical spaces that support the program were identified, designed, and renovated.

Abstract: Data is only as powerful as your understanding around it. Analytics makes possible new understandings of students and their needs, and creates an advanced ability to improve student success through use of new software being implemented on campuses around the world.

This handbook is designed to help any higher ed leader unleash the power of data that is always available but seldom leveraged. It helps to answer the questions, (1) How does a campus strategically develop a plan for use of analytics in better supporting their students? (2) Once a culture is in place, how do leaders effectively move new evidence into action? This primer walks readers through each step of the analytics adoption.

Abstract: Planners and institutional leaders need to understand the relevance of digital capabilities and IT capacity as they relate to student success. This session will improve your understanding of digital capabilities needed to achieve student success and discuss how you can inform integrated planning efforts with IT benchmarking data. You will learn how to assess your institution’s digital capacity for student success technologies so you can affect costs and improve outcomes with new analytics tools and services.

Abstract: Institutions are managing numerous student success initiatives simultaneously, but they lack the necessary data and infrastructure to evaluate outcomes. They also struggle to clearly link a particular initiative to a specific individual outcome. Using prediction-based propensity score matching (PPSM), a methodology compliant with the U.S. Department of Education’s What Works Clearinghouse’s requirements, we facilitated the analysis of key initiatives to measure efficacy, ensuring that outcomes of students participating are compared to control students with similar propensity. The recent work explored in this article helps two institutions understand the impact of their innovation and more precisely scale student support.

Abstract: This article introduces an emerging, innovative practice in higher education: Integrated Planning and Advising for Student Success (iPASS). A research-based iPASS implementation framework is examined through a case study of Guttman Community College (CUNY), which is one year into its iPASS work. This case study, which shares practices and initial findings that include high levels of student, faculty, and staff engagement, is relevant to practitioners and academic leaders considering the use of, or in the early stages of, an iPASS approach, as well as those interested in effectively integrating technology that leads to improved student success and transformative institutional change.