STUDENT SUCCESS

MTSU continues to be recognized as a national leader for its Student Success initiatives.

MTSU was recently invited to join the 2022–25 cohort of institutions in the Student Success Equity Intensive (SSEI) coordinated by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. This program, supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is focused on achieving equitable outcomes for Black, Latino, Indigenous, and low-income students.

This opportunity occurs as we complete our work on the Intermediaries for Scale (IFS) project, coordinated by the Association of Public and Land Grant Universities (APLU), with funding from the Gates Foundation. This two-year project has focused on improving supports for all students, with an emphasis on underrepresented, low-income, and first-generation populations.

As examples, MTSU’s early arrival programs, Scholars Academy and Student Transition and Academic Readiness (STAR), have become integral components of our student success efforts. Both programs serve students new to MTSU. Students enrolled in Scholars Academy arrive two weeks before the start of the fall semester to participate in workshops, team-building exercises, leadership training, and service-learning projects. Students in the STAR program arrive one week early and are also involved in structured experiences to prepare them for a successful college start.

Students who participate in Scholars Academy and STAR have higher rates of success, including retention and graduation, than students who do not. First-year retention rate projections are at 80% for participants in the Scholars Academy. The STAR program retention rate projections are 73%.

The Scholars Academy welcomed its newest cohort of 123 students last fall. Fifty-four percent of these scholars achieved a grade point average of 3.0 or above. Twelve percent achieved grade point averages of 4.0. Finally, the persistence rate for this cohort is currently 93%.

Learner support programs, including tutoring, also continue to be key elements of our commitment to improve graduation rates and close outcome gaps.

Of the students who went for tutoring during the Spring 2022 semester, 94% passed the course. This is an impressive 4% increase from the Fall 2021 semester. Of the students who passed the course, 57% passed with grades of A and B, and 29% passed with the grade of A.

We were excited to launch summer tutoring this year for a limited number of courses, including in physics, accounting, recording industry, media arts, and computer science.

Focused on our goal to eliminate the achievement gap, we saw a significant increase (66%) in Black males who attended tutoring in fall 2022 compared to the previous fall; there was a 44% increase in Black females who attended tutoring in fall 2022 compared to the previous fall. Overall, for fall 2022, there was an astounding 53% increase in the total number of Black students who attended tutoring compared with fall 2021. We will continue to focus on increasing the participation of students of color as tutees and tutors.

In fall 2022, tutoring usage overall (6,517) saw a 47% increase compared with fall 2021.