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Graduation rates are the focus of the UL System with $99 million in its new funding doled out to campuses to help students graduate.
But retention and graduation go hand and hand - if students don't stay in college, they're not going to be any closer to graduation.
At UL, new programs are focusing on retention, including spending about $500,000 on hiring more instructors to open up more high-demand courses and training advisers who help students map their college courses.
And UL's retention rates from freshman to sophomore year are improving since 1998, the last fall with open admissions.
Since then retention has improved by about 10 percentage points, with 75 percent of fall 2006 freshmen returning this fall.
It's expected that retention rates will continue to climb as the university continues to add students admitted since full selective admissions were enacted in 2005, said Carolyn Bruder, director of UL's academic planning and faculty development.
<center><p><a href="http://www.theadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071029/NEWS01/710290319/1002" target="_blank">The rest of the story</a>
Marsha Sills
msills@theadvertiser.com
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Though students need a certain GPA and ACT scores to be admitted, the state allows for a certain percent - no more than 15 percent - to be admitted by committee.
This fall, UL reduced the number of students admitted by committee from 15 percent to 7 percent.
UL's trying to improve retention in that cohort of students, as well. Last fall, it started a mentoring program that matched admitted by committee students with faculty or staff members.
It's modeled after a mentoring program begun by the university's Black Faculty and Staff Caucus years ago to improve retention and graduation rates among black students on campus.
The new program is showing signs of success.
In the first year of the new mentoring program, the option was offered to the first 100 students, with only 76 participating.
Of those students, 74 percent stayed in college for the next fall, as opposed to only 64 percent of those not mentored.
But even those mentored students who did not continue onto their sophomore year had a higher college GPA than those regularly admitted students who did not continue.
"That to us demonstrated some promise as well," said Dewayne Bowie, UL registrar and past president of the Black Faculty and Staff Caucus. "It tells us even though they were not staying, they do have the credentials to be readmitted to the institution or to another school. We felt that as well showed that the program is showing a lot of promise because of what's happening in the mentoring program."
It's unclear if those students not retained transferred to another institution.
This year, all students admitted by committee were included in the mentoring program. With more than 100 mentors - faculty and staff - building relationships with the freshmen. The talk goes beyond "Are you going to class?"
"First things first, we do talk about school," said Joey Pons, UL's safety director, who meets with his student at least every other week and they talk by phone between meetings. "I try to make sure that he knows where his resources are - where the help in the library is, where the tutoring center is. I tell him don't wait until your rear end is in flames to find a fire extinguisher."
But they also talk about their common loves of football and fishing.
"It's fun," he said. "He's focused and I have no doubt that he'll succeed. I tell him that studies show if we can get you past the second semester and into the third semester, you have a real good chance of graduating. I'm doing this because I enjoy spending time with you, but I'm doing it for selfish reasons, too. You ware what I consider my customer, if you guys leave, we have no customers and we won't be here."
UL is also spending more money this year to serve those "customers." Its used about $500,000 to hire new instructors to teach high-demand courses at all levels.
"The university spent half a million hiring faculty in key areas where student demand for classes was greater than where we could meet before, particularly for freshmen," said Bruder.
The university has also focused more on advising, even rewarding advisors for their work.
Advising can make or break a student's academic career. It's the point where a student sits down with an advisor, typically a professor in their discipline of study, and charts out courses for the next semester.
"National studies show that advising is the single most important factor in student satisfaction with their college," Bruder said.
Students typically are assigned the same adviser during their college career, allowing time for a relationship to develop. That relationship is important as a student faces outside factors that may prevent them from completing their goals in school.
"You'd be surprised how often we talk about personal issues during advising," said Deborah Moorhead, a sociology and anthropology instructor. Moorhead was named one of the university's outstanding advisers earlier this year.
"People may have an ailing parent or they don't have flexibility in their job anymore or they didn't get the raise they needed," Moorhead said. "They're a million problems that they walk through the door with. I always encourage them to stay in school and I always let them know it is not about the length of time it takes to get the degree, it's that you get the degree. That you're steadily working toward that goal."
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