High-impact Educational Practices


Book Description

This publication¿the latest report from AAC&U¿s Liberal Education and America¿s Promise (LEAP) initiative¿defines a set of educational practices that research has demonstrated have a significant impact on student success. Author George Kuh presents data from the National Survey of Student Engagement about these practices and explains why they benefit all students, but also seem to benefit underserved students even more than their more advantaged peers. The report also presents data that show definitively that underserved students are the least likely students, on average, to have access to these practices.




Faculty Involvement in Student Retention


Book Description




Academic Advising


Book Description

One of the challenges in higher education is helping students to achieve academic success while ensuring their personal and vocational needs are fulfilled. In this updated edition more than thirty experts offer their knowledge in what has become the most comprehensive, classic reference on academic advising. They explore the critical aspects of academic advising and provide insights for full-time advisors, counselors, and those who oversee student advising or have daily contact with advisors and students. New chapters on advising administration and collaboration with other campus services A new section on perspectives on advising including those of CEOs, CAOs (chief academic officers), and CSAOs (chief student affairs officers) More emphasis on two-year colleges and the importance of research to the future of academic advising New case studies demonstrate how advising practices have been put to use.




Academic Advising Approaches


Book Description

Strong academic advising has been found to be a key contributor to student persistence (Center for Public Education, 2012), and many are expected to play an advising role, including academic, career, and faculty advisors; counselors; tutors; and student affairs staff. Yet there is little training on how to do so. Various advising strategies exist, each of which has its own proponents. To serve increasingly complex higher education institutions around the world and their diverse student cohorts, academic advisors must understand multiple advising approaches and adroitly adapt them to their own student populations. Academic Advising Approaches outlines a wide variety of proven advising practices and strategies that help students master the necessary skills to achieve their academic and career goals. This book embeds theoretical bases within practical explanations and examples advisors can use in answering fundamental questions such as: What will make me a more effective advisor? What can I do to enhance student success? What conversations do I need to initiate with my colleagues to improve my unit, campus, and profession? Linking theory with practice, Academic Advising Approaches provides an accessible reference useful to all who serve in an advising role. Based upon accepted theories within the social sciences and humanities, the approaches covered include those incorporating developmental, learning-centered, appreciative, proactive, strengths-based, Socratic, and hermeneutic advising as well as those featuring advising as teaching, motivational interviewing, self-authorship, and advising as coaching. All advocate relationship-building as a means to encourage students to take charge of their own academic, personal, and professional progress. This book serves as the practice-based companion to Academic Advising: A Comprehensive Handbook, also from NACADA. Whereas the handbook addresses the concepts advisors and advising administrators need to know in order to build a success advising program, Academic Advising Approaches explains the delivery strategies successful advisors can use to help students make the most of their college experience.







Killing the Spirit


Book Description

In contrast to the neo-conservative critique of academic leftists (see LA227), Smith, author of the eight-volume A People's history of the United States, goes for the right target--the institution, not the individual. The problems: academic fundamentalism; the flight from teaching due to tenure requirements; the worthlessness of most research and the mediocrity of most monographs; the narrowing of the disciplines; the dominance of the "scientific" approach--dispassionate, distant, objective. No bibliography. (RC) Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR




Rethinking College Student Retention


Book Description

Drawing on studies funded by the Lumina Foundation, the nation's largest private foundation focused solely on increasing Americans' success in higher education, the authors revise current theories of college student departure, including Tinto's, making the important distinction between residential and commuter colleges and universities, and thereby taking into account the role of the external environment and the characteristics of social communities in student departure and retention. A unique feature of the authors' approach is that they also consider the role that the various characteristics of different states play in degree completion and first-year persistence. First-year college student retention and degree completion is a multi-layered, multi-dimensional problem, and the book's recommendations for state- and institutional-level policy and practice will help policy-makers and planners at all levels as well as anyone concerned with institutional retention rates—and helping students reach their maximum potential for success—understand the complexities of the issue and develop policies and initiatives to increase student persistence.




Completing College


Book Description

Even as the number of students attending college has more than doubled in the past forty years, it is still the case that nearly half of all college students in the United States will not complete their degree within six years. It is clear that much remains to be done toward improving student success. For more than twenty years, Vincent Tinto’s pathbreaking book Leaving College has been recognized as the definitive resource on student retention in higher education. Now, with Completing College, Tinto offers administrators a coherent framework with which to develop and implement programs to promote completion. Deftly distilling an enormous amount of research, Tinto identifies the essential conditions enabling students to succeed and continue on within institutions. Especially during the early years, he shows that students thrive in settings that pair high expectations for success with structured academic, social, and financial support, provide frequent feedback and assessments of their performance, and promote their active involvement with other students and faculty. And while these conditions may be worked on and met at different institutional levels, Tinto points to the classroom as the center of student education and life, and therefore the primary target for institutional action. Improving retention rates continues to be among the most widely studied fields in higher education, and Completing College carefully synthesizes the latest research and, most importantly, translates it into practical steps that administrators can take to enhance student success.




Leaving College


Book Description

In this 1994 classic work on student retention, Vincent Tinto synthesizes far-ranging research on student attrition and on actions institutions can and should take to reduce it. The key to effective retention, Tinto demonstrates, is in a strong commitment to quality education and the building of a strong sense of inclusive educational and social community on campus. He applies his theory of student departure to the experiences of minority, adult, and graduate students, and to the situation facing commuting institutions and two-year colleges. Especially critical to Tinto’s model is the central importance of the classroom experience and the role of multiple college communities.




The Strategic Management of College Enrollments


Book Description

Building comprehensive enrollment management systems, understanding and designing information systems by Nick Vesper. Case study: how information systems support enrollment management by Mariea T. Noblitt. Enrollment management in action by Barry Abrams, Marsha Krotseng, Don Hossler. Tailoring enrollment management to institutional needs : advice to campus leaders by John P. Bean, Don Hossler.