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UMaine adopts programs to increase first-year retention

Posted on Thursday, November 19th, 2009, 2:11 am

The University of Maine System is working to increase the first-year retention and graduation rates during the next six years by engaging first-year students more actively on campus and implementing programs and resources aimed to increase students’ academic success.

Alan Kezis, chair of the Graduation Rate and Retention Improvement Team, said two years ago first-years were mixed with upperclassmen in campus dorms. As part of the effort to increase the first-year retention rate to more than 80 percent and the graduation rate to more than 59 percent, first-year students now live in the Hilltop region on campus. Kezis said this makes a difference in rates because students feel happier and have others to work with while learning how to become a college student.

“Upperclassmen and freshmen were mixed. It’s a fairly large change over the last couple of years, since we’ve put all the freshmen together and tried to concentrate all the efforts on them right there,” Kezis said. “I think we’ve learned over the years that being engaged makes you happier. It gives you a peer group to work with, helps you set the goals and learn how to become a college student. I don’t think there’s any doubt about that.”

Kezis said the university moved the new students into the dorms a few days early at the beginning of the academic year to engage them in the first-year program, which continues throughout the year.

“Here at this college, we run a number of programs with our freshmen where we take them away for a number of days before school starts to basically get them indoctrinated with the academics,” Kezis said. “System campus-wide, we’re also running the Academic Recovery Program. … It’s basically putting our staff around them to find out what the issues are. Grades are bluntly a signal, and more often than not it’s [bad grades.] Not because they don’t have the academic capability, it’s because something else is going on that’s a major problem. So basically they just meet once a week. We make sure they go to classes, we find tutoring for them and all those kinds of things. Persistent rates increased dramatically this year by doing that.”

AnneMarie Reed, associate director of Residence Life, said there are a wide range of first-year programs the university runs to increase first-year student involvement on campus.

“For example, if there are issues on a particular floor that students are facing, like somebody’s done some vandalism along the way, we would then provide training opportunities and information to the students about that, what that involves when there’s clean up costs and so forth. So we spend a lot of time providing information in that way to our students,” Reed said.

Residence Life offers academic support along with dorm-wide programs, according to Reed.

“We also coordinate and run the academic study tables, which are five nights a week in the Hilltop commons. Students can go there for some individual tutoring. We already have a list of roughly 100 students who have attended study tables this semester,” Reed said.

All the programs incorporated into the first-year experience are part of a much larger plan the board of trustees approved Nov. 16, called the “New Challenges, New Directions Initiative.”

The plan has three main goals: to measure up to the changing education needs of the public, businesses and organizations; to keep the cost of baccalaureate and graduate education low for students by moderating tuition increases; and to bring spending in line with available resources.

Some of the sub-goals in the plan aimed at retention and graduation rates at the University of Maine system include allowing students to obtain their baccalaureate degree in three years rather than four, doubling the number of students enrolled in online degree programs and increasing the number of allied health profession programs graduates by 20 percent.

Kezis sees the outline of the plan in more basic terms.

“It is a major plan system wide, basically, to try to bring [retention and graduation rates] in line with the reality of what our budgets are,” Kezis said.

The Kennebec Journal recently compared the university to private institutions, two of which were Harvard and Yale. Kezis said this is an unfair comparison. Because UMaine is a public university, it has a better chance to bring in students with issues outside of education.

“This is a public institution where we are providing [public] access, so we have much more diverse population in terms of all kinds of different things,” Kezis said. “If you took our students who match up to the students at the private [institutions] academically, you will find that our retention rates are just as good. So it’s not a rational comparison.”

Kezis said regardless of the numbers, there are outside factors UMaine needs to consider before it can compare its retention and graduation rates to a private institution’s.

“If you take a look at retention rates and graduation rates, they are distinctly different based on the student’s academic profile, income of the family, all those types of things. If you compare our students to comparable students, they actually do better here than other peers,” Kezis said.

Dean of Students Robert Dana said that while the university has not seen an increase in retention rates, 20 percent of first-year students used to leave the dorms by the end of the year. Now first-year students are more likely to remain in the dorms because of first-year programs.

First-year student Kevin Dube said his experience is going well, but believes — despite the programs — a student’s decision to leave will be made on their own terms.

“I feel like UMaine has a bunch of great programs and has a very welcoming community. Freshmen like myself typically find it easy to find friends and things to do most nights, but the classes are in the hands of the individual, and if they choose to transfer or drop out due to the classes, that is out of the hands of the school.” Dube said.

Kezis believes there is no reason retention and graduation rates have to take the back seat to nonacademic issues.

“We are always seeing what we can do to help retain students and help them to graduate. Our rates right now are above what you would expect with our student profile, but that doesn’t mean we still aren’t trying to improve it. We’re always trying to see what works and what works better,” Kezis said.