Advising Initiative

Student retention is an area of concern in higher education. With diminishing resources and the current economy institutions are finding it harder to retain first year students. Retention and graduation rates are used to assess a colleges overall success and it is also used to gauge future funding.

Root problems for retention can be related to any number of issues such as enrolling anyone who wants to attend college, lack of communication plans for faculty, staff, students and the community, lack of retention efforts, and a lack of a comprehensive advising team. Students need to be engaged early and often, academic advising needs to be stressed to students especially at risk students, offer developmental classes to at risk students and prepare students for college, and the college itself must become more engaging with events and student organizations (Engage community college students to retain them. Enrollment Management Report, 2006, p 7).

“Community colleges tend to lose about half of their students by the start of their sophomore year”. Colleges need to implement engagement efforts from the start and perhaps even before the start of the academic year (Enrollment Management, 2006, p7). New students should be offered ‘new student’ orientations and seminar programs that offer information on student support services that are available to boost their success. Reduce runaround for new students that can be a barrier for students seeking help, offer a one-stop ‘customer service’ function that makes seeking help easier. Pathways for student success should be easily accessible, students need to know what steps they must take to meet their goals by providing high quality academic advising (Create retention strategies based on new college survey results. Enrollment Management Report, 2009, p5).

Academic advising is a significant component in the retention of first year college students. To increase retention rates academic and faculty advisors...