Recruiting & Retaining Students: Your Role as Faculty: Fall 2024
Program Description and Goals
This Recruitment and Retention Series is designed to empower faculty with the knowledge and tools they need to play an active role in student success. Through informative sessions, faculty will learn why their involvement in recruitment efforts is essential and will explore research-based strategies for improving student retention. By fostering a shared responsibility for enrollment and student persistence, this series aims to create a supportive academic environment that enhances the overall student experience.
- To understand the critical impact faculty engagement and outreach has on student recruitment, including strategies for effectively communicating the value of their programs to prospective students.
- To highlight how faculty can contribute to enrollment growth and program success through personal interactions, program visibility, and community engagement.
- To develop a deeper understanding of the factors influencing student retention, informed by current research and data on student success, engagement, and persistence.
- To equip faculty with evidence-based practices and interventions that they can implement to improve student retention, from enhancing the classroom experience to providing support and mentoring outside of class.
Meeting Locations, Dates, and Times
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October 9 |
EAB Navigate Presentation: Faculty's Role in Student Success |
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October 15 |
Recruitment & Marketing Lunch & Learn: Why Faculty Recruitment Matters You're invited to join us for a Recruitment and Marketing Lunch and Learn on October 15th at 12:15 PM! We’ll be overviewing Jax State’s overall brand and recruitment strategy, exploring how each of us can play a vital role in sharing the message—whether during official school visits, at campus events like Preview Day, or even while chatting in the aisles of Walmart. This session is designed to empower you to be a Jax State recruiter in a way that suits you best, helping to spread the word about the incredible opportunities our university offers. Led by Office of Admissions & Marketing and Communications Gamecock Dining Room, New Cafeteria 12:15 p.m. - 1:15 p.m Lunch Session |
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October 30 |
Keys to Degrees: Faculty, Retention, and the Imperative of Department and Classroom Culture for Teaching Success - Part I According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES, 2020), public institutions have an average graduation rate of 63%, and because of this and other factors, higher education has come under scrutiny to improve outcomes. The pressure to retain and graduate students extends across all facets of a university community but none have been more challenged than the faculty who are charged with teaching, research, and service. Increasingly, students' mental health has emerged as the number one threat to retention, and most faculty are ill prepared to teach and mentor students who are struggling with serious mental health issues. Financial stressors have been a common recipe for potential stop outs for years, and faculty do their best to direct students to available resources but may feel frustration about not being able to do more. Since the Covid pandemic, faculty have faced a myriad of challenges from students such as poor motivation and class attendance, learning deficits, and basic classroom decorum that may befuddle faculty who expect young adults in the classroom who are prepared to learn. In this session, the presenter will offer participants practical suggestions from research, best practices, and emerging trends to create and maintain department cultures that foster teaching success and improved retention rates.
HCL-Room 10-B 12:00-1:00 Lunch Session |
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November 20 |
Keys to Degrees: Faculty Student Success Center Partnerships are the Ingredients for Student Success - Part II The mission of the Student Success Center (SSC) is to provide an integrated network of support to facilitate the academic and personal success of students. Through certified services, accredited programs, and data that demonstrate the effectiveness of its offerings, the SSC has emerged as a critical support unit for students and faculty alike. While the SSC had over 17,500 check-ins during the 2023-24 academic year, too few students are taking advantage of SSC programs in a timely and consistent basis. Moreover, faculty may not realize that the SSC can tailor specific learning supports to their needs, provide them with research opportunities geared towards improved learning support outcomes, retention, and/or graduation rates, and offer them technical assistance. Moreover, the SSC hosts an event each year aimed at providing faculty with opportunities to learn more about the efforts of the SSC, the Student Success Summit. This academic year, the Student Success Summit will take place February 4th and 5th , 2025. In this session, the presenter will provide an overview of SSC services and supporting effectiveness data, discuss partnership opportunities for faculty, mention touch points to ensure faculty understand how to initiate collaborations, and briefly describe the theme and keynote speaker for the 2025 Student Success Summit.
HCL-Room TBA 12:00-1:00 Lunch Session |
Upon registration for a workshop session, you will receive a calendar invite at your JSU Outlook email. Calendar invites are manually sent by Brandy Roberts. Please allow up to two hours to receive the invitation during regular business hours. After accepting the invitation, the event will appear on your Outlook Calendar. If you cannot see it, please contact Brandy Roberts at broberts@jsu.edu.