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MU hopes to raise graduation rate

Catherine Couretas, Editor in Chief

Both the Student and Academic Affairs divisions at Miami University have named one of their priorities as increasing retention and raising the graduation rate to 85 percent, up from the current 83 percent rate.

John Skillings, interim provost, said the retention of students from their first year to second year is close to 90 percent, an area where Miami can still do better, but the major worry is retaining students from sophomore to junior year.

The University Retention Committee was established and initiatives have been created as part of a three-year plan for retention.

Skillings said as students come to Miami, they may be defined as "at risk." Among the initiatives are plans to analyze intervention plans already in place for "at risk" students in their first year and beyond, as well as develop more interventions for second-year academically "at risk" students.

"We try to track those students very carefully and we want to look at the support programs we have in place for those students and make sure that they're meeting the needs of those individuals," Skillings said.

Barb Jones, vice president for student affairs, said one new policy put in place this year is an intervention during the fall of a student's second year if they had been placed on academic warning at the end of their first year.

Aside from that, Skillings said he didn't believe there were as many intervention strategies for second-year students and the university should try to get a sense of why they're losing students at the end of their second year as well as come up with new intervention strategies to reduce the number of students lost.

"We're not losing lots of students at the end of the second year, but we are losing some," Skillings said. "If we're going to increase our graduation rate, not only do we have to increase the first-year retention rate, we also have to increase that second-year retention rate."

Jones said retention is part of the reason the second-year residency requirement was put in place.

"Some of the students we were losing were leaving because they simply got to that second year and still had not really connected to the campus," Jones said.

Jones also mentioned the use of AdvisorTrac, a program advisers have started using recently. Within that lies a component called MapWorks, a program that is used during a student's first three weeks in school to give indicators students might not be transitioning as well as they should be.

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"The idea is that we can look at the interactions we've had with students and see patterns that would enable us to detect that this is a student that might be at risk and then develop intervention strategies," Skillings said. "We've got that software now that we did not have years ago."

Jones said, however, the university has learned through MapWorks that a lot of first-year students leave the university for non-academic reasons.

A final recommendation presented by Skillings was for the university to look at its retake policy for what happens to grades when a student retakes a class.

Right now, when a student retakes a class, both grades count. However, Skillings said Miami may want to consider a different policy.

"We don't want to lessen our academic quality, but if there are things we could do that would make our students have a better shot if they stubbed their toe their first year, that's something that we could take a look at," Skillings said.

Michael Dantley, associate provost, presented other strategies different areas of the university already use to intervene, such as advising students on changing majors if they're on probation or consistent communication between advisers and students.

He said the strategies hinge upon the immediate focus of helping the student get through a troubled period as well as the long-range focus of helping the student make wise choices to ensure their persistence at Miami. He said most of these steps are headed by advisers and taken prior to recommending students to the Rinella Learning Center.