Early Warning and Early Intervention Programs Restore Students' Hope and Increase Academic Success

Many students start university or college full of hope: They are hopeful they will succeed in their classes, hopeful they will make new friends, hopeful they are on a path toward their desired career. And yet for many students, that sense of hope is quickly dashed. A poor grade on an assignment, feelings of homesickness and isolation, experimenting with drugs and alcohol, and mental illness all can contribute to a sense of hopelessness. In fact, according to several studies, “Approximately half of students enrolled in college screen positive for mental illness” (Holmes et al. 2010). Symptoms range from feeling overwhelmed...

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Developing a Sustainable Student Retention and Success Program

According to the National Center for Education Statistics (2011) 21.6 million students are currently enrolled in colleges and universities in the United States. While approximately half of these students will graduate from the postsecondary institution at which they first matriculate, approximately 30 percent will leave within their first year. The national average six-year graduation rate is 64 percent at private schools and 53 percent at public schools. These statistics have not changed in decades. The current national and worldwide financial situation has made the earning of a college degree more important than ever. A November 14, 2011 Time magazine article on...

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COMMENTARY: New to Social Media: How a Team of Two Made It Work

Recent economic conditions—and budget cuts, in particular—have increased higher education’s interest in social media and their integration into campus culture. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Four Square and thousands of other social networking sites are being used in recruitment to keep us “connected” to prospective students at little to no cost. Some may still be considering how these tools could complement their recruitment plans while others are expert users of social media. This article is not for expert institutional users of social media; rather, it is for those who are still considering how—and whether—to utilize social media. This article focuses primarily on our...

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On the Military as Another Source of Student Diversity

Arms and the University: Military Presence and the Civic Education of Non-Military Students By Donald Alexander Downs and Ilia Murtazashvili New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012, 460 pages This is an exhaustively researched, well-argued book that traces the interaction of the military and the university in the United States, hones in on the banishment from and very recent return of ROTC to many campuses, and examines academic trends in scholarship and courses on military history and the growing number of security studies programs. Donald Alexander Downs is a professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison; and Ilia Murtazashvili is a visiting...

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