Rachel Barreca is the Manager of Strategic Initiatives of Student Success at Toronto Metropolitan University.
What kickstarted your recent efforts into boosting retention?
We've been doing this for a while in different ways at TMU, but recently, most of our efforts have been towards collecting more organized data.
Our whole partnership with CRI has been about intentionally gathering more information and then having a plan to do something with that information. We want to coordinate our efforts in student affairs, specifically, and then throughout the whole University, so that we are supporting student persistence and student success the best we can - in our programming, in our services and in the way that our staff interacts with students. We're thinking about student success at all times, but we want the data to help us do that.
“we have to understand what students need. The thing is, those needs are shifting all the time. which means we need to talk and listen to students, gather information from students and most importantly do something with that information.”
What role do you see retention playing in the university ecosystem?
We really take a student-centered perspective on this, so we mostly think about this as student persistence and success, instead of student retention, but I think it's that all those are all wrapped in together, they're all interconnected.
Our responsibility is to help students succeed, right? And we need to keep our promises, as an institution, to the people who choose to go on their higher education journey with us. So retention efforts are actually efforts to provide equitable access to relevant support services, like programs, events, activities and more.
We want our students to persist from semester to semester and year to year and towards the completion of whatever attainment they're looking for and whatever goals they've set for themselves. Whether that's a certificate or a degree or one course in our Continuing Ed school, we really just sort of see those retention efforts as getting students towards their goals as simply as possible.
That means we have to understand what students need. The thing is, those needs are shifting all the time and changing all the time. And certainly, over the last two years, everything has changed so much, which means we just need to talk and listen to students, gather information from students and most importantly do something with that information. That really leads to better support.
And I think we have to share that data as well. It's not just about us in student affairs gathering and analyzing that data, but also sharing what we learn across the institution. What that means is we're actually sharing the student experience and then that hopefully allows us to coordinate our efforts across the institution.
What about the impact or benefits of retention from an institutional perspective?
If you're doing it right, it gives you clarity of purpose. Because when you're focused on student success and student retention and student persistence - you know exactly what you're working towards. That means you can coordinate your efforts and not duplicate them.
So I think that's another big benefit, which means that impacts budgets, it impacts the academic reputation. You could bring it down to the nuts and bolts of efficiency and efficacy, I suppose. But when you're retaining those students, you have a more stable budget, you have a more predictable budget.
It means that you've got more happy customers so to speak, which could really impact the reputation of programs and departments, schools, faculties, and research. These have knock-on effects, right?
“If we're doing this retention and persistence work right, every door for them is the right door because everyone on campus is invested in a positive student experience for every single student and that, that turns into their persistence and that turns into retention.”
Do you see any sort of knock-on benefits for students?
Well, this sort of work can be seen from the perspective of “revealing and explaining the hidden curriculum”. Meaning all those things that students need to know about their experience at our institution that are not necessarily in a syllabus, aren't in a promotional brochure, aren't in the academic calendar or website.
These are things that are really important for their experience at the institution. So when you support a student’s way though those elements, their transition is smoother, their experiences are more positive, and they walk into a more inclusive, welcoming, supportive environment.
If we're doing this retention and persistence work right, every door for them is the right door because everyone on campus is invested in a positive student experience for every single student and that, that turns into their persistence and that turns into retention.
So TMU basically undertook a major promotional effort around getting students to participate in the research and then afterwards to consult the readiness reports. Can you talk a bit about that?
Yeah, we decided to survey all of our first year full-time undergraduate students to be able to get some good data from them and see how we could improve it for the future.
So our intention was to get as many students to participate as possible and benefit from the experience and help us really push our persistence and retention efforts forward. So, in terms of how we promoted it, we took a multi-pronged approach which I would imagine wouldn't surprise anyone.
Social media was important. In student affairs, we have a whole brand called RU Student Life that is very much “for students, by students”. It’s focused on different social media platforms. Instagram is our big one right now - though the channels have changed throughout time as students' habits have changed. So we promoted the survey through there and also through the central TMU channels, including our recruitment channel, which is called Why TMU?. And this year there is a brand new first-year experience at TMU called Navigate. We also promoted the survey on that website, as well through our orientation program and summer transition program - that included everything from banners and posts [on those programs’ online platforms].
Also, our Student Success Navigator team went out and did a whole bunch of promo appearances at different Orientation events. And then we did a bunch of staff communications as well, so that staff and faculty were aware of what was going on and could promote it to students personally.
So definitely an all-angles approach! We had an amazing 50% response rate, so over 5300 students filled out the survey. We just couldn't believe what was happening. It was quite astounding. And so then that same group of respondents got Readiness Reports - so that shared information about a variety of support resources on campus.
The analysis of the results told us that there were about 1400 students that had been placed at the highest or high risk of stopping or dropping out before their second year. So that's about 26% of our respondents. And every single one of those students were contacted by a Student Success Navigator in the fall term. So there's a lot of data for us to go through at this point, but we know at the moment that we've had some good impact on students.
“There were just over a hundred emails, and we did not get a huge response. We did get some response, but we didn't get a huge response. But as soon as we started making phone calls, the response rate went way up.”
So as we’re talking about intervention, what are the measures that you've personally seen to be effective?
Well, initially we didn't have phone numbers in yet from the registrar's office, so I said to my team “Why don't you just do an email invite to folks to get in touch with you?” And applying that approach to our highest risk group.
There were just over a hundred of them, and we did not get a huge response. We did get some response, but we didn't get a huge response. But as soon as we started making phone calls, the response rate went way up. We just were able to get in touch with students.
So just cold calling them really, really works. And we approached the phone calls very much from a relational perspective, it was very much simply “Hi, how are you doing? Just checking in to see how you're doing and ask if there's any questions you might have about the university that I can answer.”
It was really about reminding students about the fact that they got into the institution in the first place, which meant they had what it took to be successful. And that sometimes just asking for a bit of help is all we need to push us in the right direction. My team tried to remind students not just of their strengths and why they got there, but got them to self-reflect in those phone calls, and ask them about the one success that they feel proud of so far, or the one thing that they’re really enjoying about the experience.
We've got them in a kind of positive mindset, but at the same time, honoured their struggles. We sought to normalize help-seeking behaviors and ensure they knew that reaching out for help was not a sign of weakness. Even though there were many calls, it wasn't clinical. It wasn't a checklist.
Our Student Success Navigator team recently sent those students follow-up emails just to do a quick check-in and now we're getting another round of requests for follow-up conversations from some of those students.
So have you noticed any common obstacles that tend to hinder retention efforts?
Sure, but these are hardly surprising: Not sharing data across the institution and having siloes get in the way of progress. It's a function of organizations and administration, but when you don't have practices that counteract the siloing you run into problems.
Final question, do you have any advice for schools that are looking to bolster their own retention efforts?
Well, I think it's the opposite of those obstacles. So: work on really effective internal communication and find effective ways to share data across institutional departments. And always keep students first in mind.