RETAIN

TRUE BELONGING

Students rely on MTSU academic advisors, who work tirelessly to guide them toward a successful educational future, even if that means countless appointments, emails, and phone calls. The 47 new advisors MTSU hired (a significant investment made during a period marked by budget tightening) restructured a patchwork system that had offered mostly transactional relationships between advisors and students. With an ideal 300 students, advisors now have time to get to know advisees and offer interventional support at the first sign of a problem. For example, if the tough STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) curriculum still threatens to derail their graduation, there are options to recalibrate. Advisors have been training on Degree Works, new software that gives students a “roadmap” to graduation and lets advisors gauge the impact of changing course. 47 new advisors

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TRUE ENCOURAGEMENT

Adopted by MTSU as part of the Quest, Supplemental Instruction is another datainformed strategy: Regular SI participants historically see a half to a full letter grade improvement on their exams. The program has worked so well at MTSU that the University expanded it from 21 to 70 course sections over just two years. The Supplemental Instruction leaders, who are students paid to attend highDFW (Drop/Fail/Withdrawal) courses in which they themselves have excelled, utilize voluntary review sessions to help classmates understand and retain challenging material. Supplemental Instruction has quickly become a core component of our system of learner support, and MTSU’s SI efforts have been recognized nationally.

TRUE BENEFIT

Free tutoring through the Tutoring Spot in Walker Library, with satellite locations that include the College of Basic and Applied Sciences, is now offered for more than 200 courses each semester. In 2017, students spent 15,557 hours in tutoring, a 120% increase over 2015. MTSU’s tutoring program was highlighted nationally in an article published in EDUCAUSE Review.

200 FREE TUTORING FOR MORE THAN courses each semester

15,557 hours in tutoring IN 2017 STUDENTS SPENT

120% over 2015 TUTORING INCREASED

TRUE PROGRESS

Considering the cost of college, students can’t afford not to graduate, especially if they have student debt. Yet, American universities suffer from chronic attrition. About a third of college freshmen don’t return for a second year. Universities have tried various strategies to keep students on a path to graduation, but nationally the six-year completion rate hovers at 57%. Attrition isn’t just expensive for students. Universities take a hit too—especially in Tennessee, which in 2010 began using outcomes rather than enrollment numbers to calculate higher education funding. At that time, a 3,000-student freshman class at MTSU could expect to lose 900 students the first year. Only half the class would graduate within six years. The Quest radically rethought the University’s approach to attrition.

Since the launch of the original Quest, MTSU has witnessed unprecedented outcomes on key student success measures. For example, the full-time freshman retention rate has increased from 69% to 76.8%. Similar increases in retention have been observed for every student category (sophomores, juniors, seniors) and across all colleges. Accomplishments like these have drawn national attention, and MTSU’s student success initiatives have been highlighted in the New York Times, Washington Post, Chronicle of Higher Education, and more than a dozen other national publications.

Input is being solicited from across the University for the revised plan, Quest for Student Success 2025. During the reporting period, a group of dedicated academic advisors began meeting to devise a comprehensive professional development and training plan. Through their efforts, the Advisor Mastery Program (AMP) was created and implemented. AMP provides our advisors with access to a wide-ranging series of professional development and training opportunities. This includes anything from webinars and lunch-and-learns to sessions led by advisors and others from across campus and workshops featuring nationally recognized student success experts. Twenty-nine advisors were recognized for completion of the Advisor Mastery Program at an advisor annual retreat. retain 29

TRUE TRAINING train: “to teach a particular skill or type of behavior through practice and instruction over a period of time . . .

Whether it’s state-of-the-art facilities, world-class teachers and leaders, or new and innovative academic endeavors, MTSU’s focus is exposure to and training in the jobs of tomorrow.

TRUE GROWTH

Facility planning at MTSU is always done with an emphasis on students and with modern training techniques and methodologies top of mind.

A long-term lobbying effort led to legislative budget approval funding for the desperately needed College of Behavioral and Health Sciences building, a 91,000-squarefoot, $38 million facility to house classrooms, lab space, and faculty offices for Criminal Justice Administration, Psychology, and Social Work. One of the primary centers of our new building will be a simulation fusion center that will offer students opportunities in homeland security, emergency management, and disaster relief operations. These are areas of increasing importance and will further enhance employment opportunities for our graduates. Dedicated lab space and labs in the same building will allow more graduate and undergraduate students to engage in research. The recommendation actually provided $35.1 million in state funding, thereby requiring the University to raise $2.9 million through other sources.

Also during the reporting period, $924,000 in renovations were made to Peck Hall, including new lighting at corridors and refinishing of terrazzo flooring on the second and third levels, new ceilings and lighting at breezeways, and new furnishings for the courtyard area. train 31

TRUE ANALYSIS

TRUE MASTERY

MTSU provides students the opportunity to interact with and be guided and trained by some of the nation’s leading educators and practitioners. At the administrative and staff level, MTSU has become a true talent magnet, attracting the best and the brightest professionals to top posts in the academic, administrative, and athletic spaces.

Here are some examples of faculty/administrative/staff and athletic/coaching members at MTSU who achieved deserved recognition during the reporting period and whose work and profile are key to retaining students who wish to learn from the best.

Usually the researcher chooses the research. Sometimes it’s the other way around.

In 2004, while volunteering with a voter registration drive at a Nashville housing project, Pippa Holloway (pictured at left) noticed that a large number of the residents she met had prior felony convictions.

Holloway, now an MTSU professor of History, has spent much of her academic life since then unraveling the relationship between voting rights and our legal and penal systems, and their combined effect on minority voters.

Her early interest in the subject might seem prescient now that voting rights are such a hot-button issue.

Holloway’s Living in Infamy: Felon Disfranchisement and the History of American Citizenship describes how white southern Democrats in the Jim Crow era limited AfricanAmerican political power by tying voting to criminal history. The parallel trends of draconian prison sentences and high-visibility punishments, like forced labor, fed the public perception that felons couldn’t be rehabilitated and shouldn’t be allowed to vote.

While the Voting Rights Act of 1965 eliminated poll taxes and literacy tests, it did not prevent majority-party lawmakers in the South from limiting voting through felon disfranchisement. Even today, in four Southern states including Tennessee, one in five African-Americans cannot vote due to a felony conviction, Holloway said. And the ripple effect of disfranchisement has spread far beyond the South.

Holloway’s research has been cited in court cases in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, and Iowa. She also has become a sought-after speaker at universities and legal symposiums.