The chapter worked with campus administration including the Campus President and Deans to develop a College Project called the Retention Initiative for Student Success (RISS) to increase retention rates. RISS included two initiatives - a Community College Completion Initiative and Ask Phi Theta Kappa events. The chapter met regularly with administration to determine objectives, which included increasing usage of support services and registration rates. A week-long event series and leadership training helped achieve a 6-10% increase across key metrics and provided lessons for future collaboration.

1. Briefly describe your College Project and who from the chapter and the college
administration was involved in determining it?
The Retention Initiative for Student Success (RISS) is a program designed to encourage and
educate students about the importance of degree completion. It was founded with direct input
and participation with our College Administration to help increase retention rates and program
completion not only on our campus, but within our community college overall. This program
consisted of two initiatives: Community College Completion Initiative and Ask Phi Theta
Kappa.
We worked with campus administration and faculty which included the Campus President, the
Dean of Academic Affairs, the Dean of Student Services, Department Directors, and Academic
Advisors. Through a series of meetings with these groups, it was revealed that approximately
61% of all first time college students do not return for a second semester. We all agreed that
these retention rates were far below what we desired.
As a chapter, we determined that this was an unacceptable number, and we decided that
improving retention rates was a challenging and worthwhile effort to undertake as a college
project. We came up with a leadership team that would oversee the project, and subsequently
presented ideas to our administration about how we could improve retention. After more
meetings with our campus administration, RISS was designed and initiated.
Summarize your objectives for the College Project and the process by which the chapter
and college administration set these objectives.
We set the goals of the RISS program early on as we worked closely with our Campus
Administration. We met many times with the Dean of Academic Affairs, Dean of Student
Services, the Campus President, the Coordinator of the Student Success Center, the Coordinator
of the Career Center, and many of the student Academic Advisors. At these meetings, we always
heard that low retention was the result of many issues such as low student esteem, low
attendance of Student Life Skills classes, and low attendance at the various support services on
campus. The problem was not on the side of our school, because they have all the programs in
place. However, students were not reaching out to take advantage of these programs, or they
lacked knowledge of them altogether. The solution proposed by our administration was to reach
out to students directly. After the meetings, we aligned our objectives: Increase awareness of
student development opportunities and options while in college and after graduation by
increasing the use of the Student Success Center by 5%, the Career Center by 10%, raising the
fall – spring retention rate of first time in college students by 5%, and increasing fall – spring
registration by 5%.
Our second set of objectives included creating events to reach out to the students, rather than
having the students reach out to us. We met again with all administrators as a group and

2. presented ideas to suit our combined objectives. We examined the different options, and they
gave us their approval and support for the project, “Ask Phi Theta Kappa”.
Describe the planning process and strategies developed to complete the College Project.
The planning process of RISS began by working with our Administration. We assembled a
leadership team with the responsibility to identify the core issues that pertained to the low
retention rate. We also determined that our first course of action was to implement the
Community College Completion Initiative. However, instead of the traditional one-day event or
pledge campaign, we felt that a week-long event with various daily activities benefitted the
campus more.
The first day of our event was our Rally Day. We hired a DJ, set up a booth in the heart of our
campus and invited the campus to come and inquire about the Initiative. The second day was a
larger continuation of the first, taking place alongside the Student Government’s Welcome Back
Bash. A majority of the campus came out to participate. The third day was our Completion
Champion Day, when we recognized faculty and staff who went above and beyond in helping
students complete their degrees. The fourth day was School Spirit Day. Students wore their
future universities’ colors and were given an introduction to CollegeFish. The final day was a
Post-Completion Workshop. Representatives from advising, financial aid, career services, and
student success hosted workshops geared toward transitioning to a four year college. Throughout
the week we stressed the importance of retention, and ultimately, degree achievement.
To facilitate leadership development when it came time to host the Ask Phi Theta Kappa events,
we worked closely with the administration offices that deal directly with retention: The Student
Success Center and the Academic Student Advisors. We had a Friday training session with the
Student Success Center Coordinator and three Academic Advisors on how to interact with
students, what information to give out, what we could and could not say, how to read the basic
advising material, where to find information, and how to make referrals to advisors if students
needed more assistance. We then created pamphlets and handouts with a summary of
information given to us by the Academic Student Advisors as well as data gathered from other
resources.
What were the quantitative and qualitative outcomes of your project, including the lessons
learned by your chapter members and others?
Immediately after our one-week Community College Completion Initiative, we received instant
feedback from the Academic Success Center, as well as the Academic Advisors. The Academic
Advisors informed us that students were beginning to ask the “right questions”; concerning
themselves less with what classes to take, and instead asking “how will this decision impact my
major/future?”

3. Over the course of the first two Ask Phi Theta Kappa events, we were able to serve
approximately one hundred students. We spoke with them about how to effectively complete
scholarship and transfer applications. We shared over forty printed transfer applications to local
state colleges, and distributed pamphlets with information to sixty more students. After just the
first event, we began receiving feedback from Administration, the Academic Advisors, and the
Student Services Coordinators. We also had students stop our members and thank them
personally for their guidance, advice, and support in shaping their future.
Specifically, there was a 10% increase in the number of students who visited the Student Success
Center and 15% increase in the number of students who visited the Career Center. Additionally,
unduplicated data showed a 6% increase in fall – spring registration when compared to the last
academic year, and 69% of our first time in college students returned for the spring semester.
As a chapter we learned that the administration was eager and willing to go beyond expectations
at each step of the project, but did not know the most effective way to do so. By collaborating
with us, they were able to see firsthand the communication gap between students and the
administration and subsequently, were able to see the gap narrow.
What is left undone or what opportunities remain for the future?
We accomplished our numerical goals set for the Retention Initiative for Student Success.
Further, we accomplished the goal of communicating with our administration and with our
student body on how to improve retention. We succeeded in our goal of coordinating a series of
events dedicated to identifying the causes of low retention and reducing them. Opportunities for
the future include returning to our administration to review the data we collected during the year,
as well as reviewing data from the Office of Institutional Research in order to identify how we
can improve the RISS program moving forward. Although we saw a statistical and significant
increase in our retention rate by 8%, our next goal will be to double our efforts to raise that
number. Our college president has revealed that our college is now funded based on student
retention, thus providing motivation to develop RISS further.