A-nother Proposed Solution for Tracking Academic Program Success Rates Nicholas J. Wagner, Ed.D. Director, Institutional Research MI-AIR 2017

Outline Why is this important again? How are we defining success in this case? Practical solution that works for us. How to create Is it useful?

Why is This Important? Numerous requests for program success/retention data. A general university understanding of how students are tracked. Accreditation, Accreditation, Accreditation! Grant proposals which lead to grant assessment/evaluation. Campus wide student success committees. A general interest and understanding of what is happening across different academic programs. My boss says so. Does anyone track this at their institution?

How Are We Defining Success? 6 Year Grad Rates? Just FTIC? 1st to 2nd Year Retention? Tracked Over Multiple Terms?

Solution (For Now) All FTIC (First-Time Full-Time) who start in Fall Define success as 1st to 2nd year retention Retained is just coming back (staying enrolled) from one fall term to the next regardless of academic program Create a crosstab in excel showing where that student starts and where that student finishes, by program, after a full-year. Produce a larger sample by combining multiple years for incoming FTIC. Idea generated from an AIR publication.

Components – How to Create Crosstab Simplistic File – Excel Yearly snapshot and cumulative (over time) Runs from a pivot table and Vlookup Easy to read – shows retention and/or migration and attrition.

General Format Starts with a Pivot Table & Raw Data

General Format: 1 Year

General Format: Increase the Sample Start to add in additional first-year cohorts Still looking at 1st to 2nd year but just combining them. Two-dimensional VLOOKUP (=IFERROR(SUM(VLOOKUP($A2,'FA12'!$A$1:$AP$79,MATCH('Acad Program Dept'!C$1,'FA12'!$A$1:$AO$1,0),FALSE),VLOOKUP($A2,'FA13'!$A$1:$AP$79,MATCH('Acad Program Dept'!C$1,'FA13'!$A$1:$AO$1,0),FALSE),VLOOKUP($A2,'FA14'!$A$1:$AP$79,MATCH('Acad Program Dept'!C$1,'FA14'!$A$1:$AO$1,0),FALSE), VLOOKUP($A2,'FA15'!$A$1:$AP$79,MATCH('Acad Program Dept'!C$1,'FA15'!$A$1:$AO$1,0),FALSE), VLOOKUP($A2,'FA16'!$A$1:$AP$79,MATCH('Acad Program Dept'!C$1,'FA16'!$A$1:$AO$1,0),FALSE)), 0) For formula to work, the row and column headers must match on all the tables.

Limitations Does not include every student group (part-time, non-degree students, new transfer, etc.) Does not provide information for tracking the student after year one. For now, extremely simplistic with no real data visualization or filtering capability. Helps, but does not satisfy all the needs associated with reporting student success for some academic departments. Just covers fall-to-fall…what about winter/spring (one term?)

Is it Useful? Takeaways There has been some general interest from the Provost and Deans but nothing really strategic has come out of it. The evidence has satisfied some needs associated with accreditation at the college levels and program assessment / self-studies. These data have been used to support successful grant proposals on a very generic level. There are secondary steps that need to take place between student success committees with regard to intervention strategies or perhaps between academic programs for some cross-disciplinary work.

Thank You! Questions and/or Feedback Nicholas J. Wagner njwagner@svsu.edu 989-964-2468