Copyright Northeastern University, Northeastern University Confidential NERCOMP 2008 Enhancing Retention: A Tool for Communication between Faculty and Advisors Kostia Bergman Vanessa Ritz

Copyright Northeastern University, Northeastern University Confidential Introductions  Kostia Bergman Associate Professor Biology – College of Arts and Sciences Northeastern University  Vanessa Ritz Lead – Customer Relationship Management Information Services Northeastern University

Copyright Northeastern University, Northeastern University Confidential About Northeastern University  Founded in 1898 in Boston  5th largest private university in the United States  Northeastern is renowned for: Experiential Learning (#1 in Coop per US News and World Report) Interdisciplinary Research (over $70 million sponsored annually) Urban Engagement in the heart of Boston

Copyright Northeastern University, Northeastern University Confidential Project Background  Northeastern lacked the capacity to effectively identify and intervene with students who showed signs of poor academic performance, attendance, or other issues in a timely, consistent manner across campus  Every percentage point increase in the rate of graduation is worth $1 million to the University  A solution was needed to help identify and intervene with students who matriculate and then find themselves unable to adjust to the academic rigors of higher education

Copyright Northeastern University, Northeastern University Confidential Project Background, cont’d  The College of Engineering (COE) developed a system in 2001 to provide a safety net for freshman engineering students  Technical and security issues made scaling this to a university-wide solution impractical if not impossible  A basic pilot application was put in place for Fall 2005 across all colleges for select freshmen-level courses  Faculty were asked to use both the university-wide (feature poor) and engineering applications (feature rich) for students  The university chose to deploy a new, expanded application for the Fall 2007 term to cover all undergraduate students  Received a grant from the Davis Educational Foundation  Salesforce.com was chosen as the application platform

Copyright Northeastern University, Northeastern University Confidential Project Background, cont’d  Salesforce.com provided the platform to meet many of the critical success factors as defined by a user task force made up of faculty, advisors, and administrators  Web-based, user-friendly tool that is highly customizable  Easily integrated to provide visibility to near real-time data updates  Ability to track and view student interactions  Allow for the ability to increase communication between faculty and advisors  Automatic based on database triggers, customizable by college  Easy-to-use, real-time reporting

Copyright Northeastern University, Northeastern University Confidential Project Approach  Project coordinated by an Information Services resource  User task force created from a key user base of faculty, advisors, and administrators that met regularly to review deliverables and development efforts  Followed methodology to allow for iterative development

Copyright Northeastern University, Northeastern University Confidential What is FACT?  “Faculty/Advisor Communication Tool”  Name selected to demonstrate expanded functionality  Replaced/expanded on former “Early Warning” systems  Includes progress reports for select students as well as non- participation concerns in the beginning of each term  Incorporates two-way communication between faculty and advisors  Consists of two applications:  Faculty J2EE Web Application for submission of cases  Salesforce.com front-end for advisors and administrators

Copyright Northeastern University, Northeastern University Confidential Demonstration  Custom faculty application  Web-based  Accessed through the Northeastern Faculty Portal  Accesses Salesforce.com data via the API (only references data from Salesforce.com)  Salesforce.com for advisors  Web-based  Requires license and Northeastern credentials (authenticated through Northeastern LDAP) 

Copyright Northeastern University, Northeastern University Confidential Analysis  We are currently in the second active term using FACT across the university  We had very strong compliance in the first term among courses that were a part of the former early warning program  Compliance constitutes submitting cases, or stating that no cases exist for a course  Overall compliance was not as strong due to a variety of factors – more senior-level courses, decreased “marketing” efforts, resistant faculty

Copyright Northeastern University, Northeastern University Confidential Analysis, cont’d

Copyright Northeastern University, Northeastern University Confidential Next Steps  Feature enhancements planned for each term  Spring 2008 included new functionality for first month and mid-semester reporting for athletics  Future versions may include special reporting for students on scholarship and academic probation  Formation of a steering committee  Regular meetings to be scheduled around releases made up of members from the original user task force and other champions  New “marketing campaign” targeting both faculty and advisors with the benefits of the tool

Copyright Northeastern University, Northeastern University Confidential Q & A