John N. Gardner keynote address at Bristol Community College Professional Day Conference, March 27, 2013

1. The First-Year
Experience….
College Success
Strategies: “What’s it all about?”
John N. Gardner
Conference on the First-Year Experience
and College Success Strategies
Bristol Community College
Fall River, MA.
March 27, 2013

2. Each of us has a story, including and especially your students
Many of them love to tell their stories but are rarely asked
Let me tell you mine…

3. Story Time
Once upon a time…
I came to Fall River, 1981, to honor
my first mentor in higher education.
Let me tell you his story
because his story becomes
my story.

4. This is where it all began…
The USC Horseshoe
Story Time
And the wall
surrounding
the Horseshoe

5. Big Picture Background
Civil Rights Act (1964)
Voting Rights Act (1965)
Higher Education Act (1965)

6. Presidential Leadership
Background Story
USC’s 21st President,
Thomas F. Jones, 1962-1974 –
an electrical engineer who became
a human social engineer
Formation of University Associates as
town/gown network to lay basis for
peaceful integration
First TRIO grant:1966, Upward Bound

7. Student Social Activism
Background Story
February 1968: The “Orangeburg Massacre”---
-Congress adopts Omnibus Crime Control Act
US invasion of Cambodia as a trigger for
campus demonstrations

8. Student Social Activism
Background Story
The shootings/deaths at Kent State and
Jackson State
May 1970 protest at USC dispersed by SC
National Guard—no students shot at USC

9. Occupation of the President’s
office building leads to:
Background Story
Moving the University Treasurer’s office
to an impregnable fortress
Doing what presidents do when faced
with a crisis…
Form a committee!

10. Form a Committee
Background Story
The Committee crawls along and “While
Congress debated I took Panama”
President comes with a proposal
The University 101 proposal adopted by the
USC Faculty Senate: July 1972—one year
trial, 3 credits, pass/fail; plus a mandatory
faculty development preparation program

11. The public agenda
Background Story
Reengineer the beginning college experience
Teach students to love the University
Therefore, prevent riots
Do you teach your students to love being in
college and at your institution?

12. The hidden agenda
Background Story
Use the course to mandate faculty “training”,
using pedagogies from NTL, and the Human
Potential Movement
Change the faculty culture and therefore the
campus: make more student-centered
Get faculty and Student Affairs to work
together
Are any of these your objectives today?

13. Background Story
University 101 ran as a presidential initiative until
President Jones “resigned” in 1974
University 101 restructured as an
academic department, directed by
a faculty member, John Gardner,
reporting to the Provost

14. Background Story
On the morning of the same day
I last came to Fall River my then current President and I met with David
Riesman at Harvard, the founder of Harvard’s first-year seminar in 1959.
So if Harvard’s students need to
be taught “student success”,
what about yours?
What is student
success?

15. Whatever you say it is
Student Success Is:
Something that can be taught
Something that can be learned
A body of knowledge, skills, attitudes,
behaviors
Learned in groups (especially peer groups)
Multi-dimensional, holistic

16. Start with your institutional
mission statement…
…then the needs of your students,
the community, state, region, and country.

17. So the question then becomes,
“How do you teach student success
at your college?”
Implicitly
Explicitly
Intentionally
Serendipitously
Through sink or swim

18. Let’s look at my definition of
first-year student success
Academic Success/GPA
Relationships
Identity Development
Career Decision Making
Health & Wellness
Faith & Spirituality
Multicultural Awareness
Civic Responsibility
Retention – the baseline

19. What is the First-Year Experience?
The totality of all experiences
our students have
A specific program
(most commonly a first-year seminar)
An educational philosophy about the
first year
A registered trademark owned by USC
Whatever you want it to be

20. So this is all about the
purposes of the first year.
HISTORIC PURPOSES
Make money
What are
your
Weed out purposes
for the
first year?
Allow the most senior people to
avoid the lowest status students

21. The first year in the community college
is particularly unique because:
It often isn’t a “year”
It often is multiple first-year experiences
(ESL, DE, +matriculated first 30 credits)
It may also be a transfer experience
(in or outward bound)

22. Focus on the first year now has
different labels:
First-Year
Student Success Experience
College Success
Retention
The College Completion
Agenda

23. Some basic assumptions underlying
focus on student success
Students can be taught to be successful
Many of them will want to learn this
Institutions have to take more responsibility
for student learning
Stop blaming the victim
Focus on what we, the institution, control
Have to reduce tolerance for failure

24. Some basic assumptions underlying
focus on student success
The first year matters
The first year needs to be reengineered
Developmental education needs to be reengineered
Have to rethink when the first year begins
(and hence connections with the pipeline)
Student success efforts require a partnership
(of faculty, academic and student affairs professionals)

25. The greatest influence
on student learning…
…is that of other students.

26. Two Main Prongs of Attack!
What can the
What can I do?
institution do?

27. What can the institution do?
Practices
The operationalizing of policies
Rituals
Pedagogies
Behaviors that support or detract from success

28. Policies
What can the institution do?
Application for admissions including
policies for late admissions?
Who performs advising?
Is academic advising required for initial
and/or continuing registration?
Is placement testing required and are the
results enforced?
Is Orientation required?

29. Policies
What can the institution do?
How “late” is “late registration”?
How late into the term may students start
classes?
Are certain students required to participate in
certain interventions? E.g. first-year seminars?
How late in the term may students drop a course
without a penalty?
Do you permit the use of “peer leaders” in
instructional settings?

30. Policies
What can the institution do?
Do you enforce an attendance policy?
How do you integrate adjunct instructors into
departmental cultures and support their
professional development?
How do you evaluate and reward employee
practices that promote student success?
May new students take their first college
courses on line?

31. Programs: What’s the status of
these initiatives?
What can the institution do?
First-year seminars
Learning communities
Supplemental Instruction (SI)
Early alert
Orientation (and other welcoming
ceremonial rituals)

32. Programs: What’s the status of
these initiatives?
What can the institution do?
Summer bridge
Financial aid counseling and early awarding
Teaching financial literacy
Intrusive and developmental advising
Counseling
Career planning

33. Programs: What’s the status of
these initiatives?
What can the institution do?
Redesigning developmental education
Academic support/tutoring
On-campus employment
Student activities
Athletics
Child care
Initiatives to include families

34. A few guiding questions about the
institution’s first year…
What would you have to do to have an excellent first year?
How do you define success for your new students?
Do you have a plan for new student success?
If so, how is the implementation coming?

35. Retention

36. Retention

37. Retention: Private Institutions
Private Institutions’ Change in 1-yr Retention Rates
Post FoE Plan Implementation by Level of Implementation
13
12
11
10
9
8
7
6
5
high degree
4 medium degree
3 limited degree
2
1
0
-1
-2
-3
-4
Implement 1yr post 2yr post 3yr post 4yr post 5yr post
Year

38. Retention: Two-Year Institutions
Institutions’ Change in Part-Time 1-yr Retention Rates
by Length of Time Post Self-Study
2.25
2
1.75
1.5
1.25
1
0.75
0.5
0.25
0
1-year post 2-years post 3-years post 4-years post

39. Retention: 2-Year Institutions
Institutions’ Change in Full-Time 1-yr Retention Rates
by Length of Time Post Self-Study
4
3.5
3
2.5
2
1.5
1
0.5
0
-0.5
-1
-1.5
-2
1-year post 2-years post 3-years post 4-years post

40. A few guiding questions…
Is the first year in your institution’s strategic plan?
Do you have an advisory/stakeholder/advocacy group for
the first year?
What are your high enrollment courses and what are your
efforts to improve student performance therein?
What are your high failure rate courses and what are your
efforts to improve student performance therein?
What is the current status of academic and student affairs
administrators/faculty partnerships?
What is current level of faculty ownership
for the first year?

41. Your locus of control
Translate the institutional mission to your
What can you do?
campus, unit, and individual role.
Focus on your individual locus of control and
what you can do to influence student success.
Focus specifically on:
- Your interactions with students
- Your influence on others who interact
with students
-Your ability to leverage institutional policy
and practice

42. Your locus of control
Have a personal philosophy of education.
What can you do?
Start with your core values/beliefs.
These are the basis of everything you do.
Translate that philosophy into a definition
of student success and a philosophy
about how to achieve that.

43. I suggest each of us needs a
personal philosophy of education.
Here is mine…

44. 1. Successful access to and attainment in higher education is the
principal channel of upward social mobility in the United States.
2. Rates of failure and attrition are unacceptable and represent an
enormous waste of human resources and capital. The largest amounts
of failure and attrition during the college experience take place during or at the
completion of the first year (or the equivalent thereof).
3. Necessary changes in pedagogies, policies, and curriculum
must be based on sound assessment practices and findings, but
this assessment must be mission-related and must pay
appropriate respect to the vast diversity of American
postsecondary institutional types. Institutions want and need to be able to
compare their performance in the first college year with peer institutions and/or with
aspirational groups in terms of learning outcomes vis a vis recognized, desirable
standards.
4. The public demand for accountability is increasing and will
continue to do so. In order to satisfy this demand, campuses must have more
data on their student characteristics, what those students experience in college, how
and what they are learning, and whether they are improving and receiving value-
added knowledge and experiences.

45. 5. Any efforts to improve the beginning college experience must be
more connected to the K-12 pipeline than they are today. Although
there are many notable efforts, the pre-college and college experiences are still
largely unconnected.
6. Any effort to more seriously improve academic success during
the first college year must involve more of the faculty and must be
legitimized by the disciplinary cultures and bodies which measure
and determine the criteria for success and advancement of faculty
in their subcultures. A central issue is faculty resistance to change and the
resulting need to vastly increase faculty buy-in to these proposed first-year
initiatives.
7. The roles of campus chief executive, chief academic and chief
financial officers, and trustees are also critical for mobilizing
institutional change, for determining priorities, and for finding and
allocating necessary personnel and fiscal resources; more attention
must be paid to the knowledge of the first college year possessed by these four
leadership categories and how they act upon this knowledge. In addition all
important campus middle managers—deans and department heads—who either
promote or inhibit change, must also be addressed in like fashion. Another key
cohort is the institutional research professionals and other colleagues who are
responsible for assessment and reaccreditation self-studies.

46. 8. The most dominant perception held by the public and its elected
representatives in terms of where responsibility for college student
learning/failure rests is that the problems we face in higher
education attainment are most fundamentally due to the failure of
college students to take sufficient responsibility for their own
learning.
9. The first college year should be transformational; pedagogies
of engagement are known, necessary, and desirable, and student
learning in the first year also must be tied to issues of civic
concern.
10. The foundation of all the outcomes we desire from American
higher education, for better or worse, is laid in the first college
year. Unfortunately, most campuses have very little research-based data on
the effectiveness of their first college year, and thus more assessment of that
year (and the tools to do so) is in order.

47. So What Can I Do Directly With Students?
Think globally, act locally.
This means incorporating into your
practices the research based
knowledge we have accumulated
about what practices lead to student
success in your setting.

48. Be approachable, practice appropriate self-
disclosure (builds trust)*
Success strategies for faculty
Come to class early/stay afterwards to be available
to talk to students
Use your syllabus as a teaching tool
Demystify what it takes to be successful in
your course
Require attendance
Teach your students how to study in your course
* For staff, too

49. Learn and use student names**
Success strategies for faculty
Test early/test often
Implement your own “early alert” system
Encourage students to participate in Supplemental
Instruction (SI) (if applicable), first-year seminars,
learning communities, and other high impact
interventions*
Give prompt and explicit feedback to students on
tests, assigned work
Inform students of helping resources*
* For staff, too

50. Solicit regular feedback from students and share
with them (e.g. one minute paper)*
Success strategies for faculty
Use multiple teaching modalities to accommodate
different learning styles
If you require a text, then actually use it.
(Teach your students how to use the text.)
Create/facilitate study groups
Encourage faculty/student and student/student
interaction outside of class*
Suggest requiring early term out-of-class
office visits * For staff, too

51. Encourage/require/reward students for using
helping services – especially your Learning
Success strategies for faculty
Centers*
Encourage/reward students for joining co-curricular
groups*
Leverage peer influence; if possible use peer
leaders
Give students opportunity/reward for taking initiative
Explain where your course fits in to the
Core Curriculum
* For staff, too

52. Additional success strategies for staff
1. Maximize teachable 5. Make your unit’s space
opportunities from your inviting
role as supervisor of 6. Advise a student
student employees organization
2. Practice developmental 7. Teach a college success
academic advising – course
informally or formally 8. Lead the horse to water
3. It’s all about 9. Be available to students;
relationships invite them to your office
4. Adopt some mentees

53. Indirect ways to increase impact
on students…

54. Impact strategies
Pass the good “intelligence” you get from them up the line
Review the rules and policies that you either control or can
influence in your own unit’s “sphere of influence”
Be an advocate for policies, practices, and people that
influence student success
Volunteer to serve on College committees, tack forces that
may influence student success

55. Impact strategies
Open doors for people less powerful than you and give
them feedback and opportunities
Consider going over to the “dark side” (for a while!)
Be active in campus governance activities – if you don’t self
govern, you will be governed: power abhors a vacuum!
Take assessment seriously; it’s not a flash in the pan: use
the results of assessment for planning and decision making

56. So many ideas, so little time…
…Discussion anyone?

57. Contact
John N. Gardner, President
828-233-5874
gardner@jngi.org
www.jngi.org

58. FIRST YEAR EXPERIENCE & COLLEGE
SUCCESS STRATEGIES
Town Meeting with John N. Gardner
• What was your learning today?
• What affective or gut reactions did you
experience?
• What will you do in your work settings as
a result of this day?
• What are your hopes for future discussion?