When the champions met to launch this initiative, our first agenda items was to brainstorm a new, less cryptic name. When the community developed the strategic plan, voices resonated around the idea that finding one’s purpose would motivate the drive to refine skills that support fulfilling that purpose. Experiential learning and career connections were discussed as mechanisms for honing students’ purpose. Ultimately, all of these efforts would lead to student success, which in the plan’s objectives, was identified as an overarching or rising above the others.

Chancellor Feyten called Objective 4 of the plan’s Learn imperative the university’s “big hairy audacious goal” following the parlance of Jim Collins who wrote about it in his book, From Good to Great. So as the champions weighed all this context along with current voices from the community who were not privy to all this background, we settle on a new name for the initiative, the Student Success Initiative, as that name would start with the end in mind. 

In evaluating the current landscape of the university, we identified four primary groups at Texas Woman’s whose work intersects with the sentiments behind this initiative:

1. the Strategic Retention Council
2. Career Connections
3. the Quality Enhancement Program (QEP), part of our accreditation plan, that focuses on experiential learning
4. identifying each program’s marketable skills, a task that aligns with the state’s 60x30 strategic plan.

With these entities doing the bulk of the lifting, the scope of Student Success Initiative will stay away from developing new programming or tactics and instead focus on fostering collaboration between these groups and primarily reporting to the community on the holistic strategies, tactics, and outcomes associated with student success. 

The real work that drives the scope of this initiative is well underway. The QEP has already been institutionalized per our five-year report to Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS), our accrediting body. The Strategic Retention Council has been working for well over a year, refined its scope and direction with broad input and has identified strategies and tactics, many of which are in progress including a website on success with inclusive metrics. The Career Connections Center hired a new director who has led the department through development of its strategic plan and with tactics underway. All undergrad programs have marketable skills and published these to the web. A few highlights of strategies and tactics from these groups in progress include: 

• The Strategic Retention Council has focused its work on transitions throughout the student lifecycle including how to best support part-time and transfer students
• In 2018, 3,737 students enrolled in courses designated as experiential learning courses
• Incorporated marketable skills into career development workshops and classroom presentations to help students articulate their skills with employers or graduate schools
• Developing Career Readiness Pathway in Campus Labs Engage, which will include a marketable skills component
• Acquiring and promoting online mock interview software to help students learn how to articulate marketable skills with employers or graduate schools
• What we need help partnering with faculty/getting into classrooms to present on marketable skills and how students can articulate their skills with employers

Questions about this initiative may be directed to Joshua Adams or Christopher Johnson.

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Written by the Strategic Plan Design Team