1. 13th ANNUAL
Title of this presentation: “One Recipe for Student Success”

2. An idealist is a person who helps other people to be prosperous.
Slide #1: symposium cover
Slide #2: Henry Ford quote
1. I am an idealist. I want to save the world, literally. My method is to graduate more and more diverse university-educated students, because I want them to be the ones solving problems and making decisions on behalf of our society and the planet, and I want them in the voting booth.
An idealist is a person who helps other people to be prosperous.
-Henry Ford

3. Guiding a System along a Pathways' Journey
2. I am going to present to you today one “recipe” for graduating more students. I am borrowing it from Dr. Tristan Denley, former VC of the Tennessee Board of Regents, now the Executive Vice Chancellor of the University of George System. I’ll be using, with his permission, several slides from his presentation last April to the NASH.
Slide #3: Denley’s “Guiding a System Along a Pathways Journey”
Guiding a System along a Pathways' Journey
Dr. Tristan Denley
Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs
Tennessee Board of Regents

4. 26% 42% Since 2013… University Community College 4yr Graduation Rate
Slide #4: TRB slide 33, “Since ,” for all students
Slide #5: TBR slide 34, “Since ,” for URM students
3. The TN system—5 universities and about 40 CCs and technical colleges—raised university 4-year graduation rates by 26% in less than 5 year, 51% for URM students. Think about how many thousands of students that is. Think about how many millions of tuition dollars that represents. Now think about what that could do for CU Denver students and for our ability to pay for almost whatever we want.
University
4yr Graduation Rate
Community College
3yr Graduation Rate
26%
42%

5. 51% 88% Since 2013… University Community College 4yr Graduation Rate
Under-represented Minority Students

6. TBR Momentum Year: The “Recipe”
Making a purposeful program choice
Slide #6: “TBR Momentum Year”—The Recipe, list of ingredients
4. So, what did the TBR do? Here is the “recipe,” not a menu but a recipe. In the minutes remaining to me, I will quickly summarize these five ingredients.
Creating a productive Academic Mindset
Attempting 9 hours in Academic Focus
Completing initial English and M⍺𝜏h
Attempting 30 hours

7. Making a Purposeful Program Choice
Slide #7: Ingredient #1: Making a Purposeful Program Choice
5. It turns out that just by having students choose a direction of study in itself improves student success. “Purposeful program choice” is complex, and into that phrase Dr. Denley has compacted a set of reforms each one of which is pretty big in itself. Here are just some of the components:
Footnote: From study of about 4500 students: “Only 29 percent of the students who did not select a program during their first year completed all three years, compared to a persistence rate of 95 percent of students who did find a program during their first year. In fact more than half of those students who arrived in our system not enrolled in a specific program (undecided) dropped out before choosing any particular program” (Choice 1-2)
Ingredient #1:
Making a Purposeful Program Choice

8. 01 02 03 04 05 06 Selected Ingredients of “Purposeful Program Choice”
Require all incoming students to declare a major or a meta-major . 1 02
Build Guided Pathways and Degree Maps for every major . 2
Here are just some of the components:
Slide #8: STEPS: 1. Require all incoming students to declare a major or a meta-major;
2. Build Guided Pathways and Degree Maps for every major; 3. Institute Math Pathways; 4. Create an equitable Math Placement system; 5. Train academic advisors in using these systems; 5. Build co-requisite instruction.
6. Declaring a major is a big deal, and it’s hard. Our students sit at home, still in high school, and are asked by our application form to choose from 100 majors what they will do for the rest of their lives. They couldn’t name 10 university majors, and they have no idea what someone with a degree in Geography or Risk Management does. And we currently give them almost no guidance.
Footnotes: “Despite the advantages to having a clear direction of study, . . .nationally more than 33 percent of first generation students begin college without identifying a major or program of study, whereas only 13 percent of their peers with college-going parents do so Students select their majors with little information about what is involved in successfully completing the program, and often discover too late that the picture they had of that discipline is very different from the reality Low-income and minority students express less knowledge of programmatic demands than their peers. Although students may think that they have an interest in a particular area, they have often received little information about whether their academic abilities create a realistic chance of successfully completing that program. What is more, they may associate each discipline with a limited number of careers, and often eliminate disciplines from their list of choices because those jobs are unappealing, without realizing the true variety of career opportunities that lie on the other side of graduation.” (Denley, Choice 1). 03
Institute Math Pathways. 04
Create an equitable Math Placement system. 05
Build a co-requisite instruction program, especially in Math. 06
Enlist and train academic advisors in the above.

9. Meta Major Declaration
7. One way to overcome “choice overload” and “decision paralysis” is to require all incoming students to declare a Meta-major, or a major if they really (think they) know which one they want.
Footnotes: “The TTP degree maps were all constructed along a holistic harmonius-pathway [sic] design which used a discreet optimization design to ensure that students who change from one pathway to another experience as little credit loss as possible. These paths were also constructed to recommend that the student attempt at least 9 hours of credit in their academic focus area” (Denley, Choice 5)
“This system-wide analysis suggested that student success would be enhanced if we were able to enable more students to identify a direction of study as early as possible. That said, the behavioral economics research on the effects of choice-paralysis suggested that we would need to create a modified choice architecture for these students in which they could initially select from a smaller number of possibilities. . .rather than requiring them to choose a single program from the array of possibilities” (Denley, Choice 2)
Purposeful Program Choice =
Meta Major Declaration

10. Health Professions Applied STEM Technology Humanities
Academic Foci:
Meta Majors
Health Professions
Applied
Technology
STEM
Slide #10: TBR slide 7, “Academic Foci”
8. These are the TN meta-majors, which they chose to call “Academic Foci.” These are for all 45 institutions, and every student entering the TN system is required to choose one of these.
Humanities
General Education
Business
Social Sciences
Arts
Education

11. How did the existence of academic foci affect student program choice?
Why did you pick your program or academic focus?
9. How do students feel about declaring a meta-major? Tristan Denley surveyed 1000s of students, and he found that only 1% of those students said they made a choice just because they were made to. Meta-majors helped students make a purposeful program choice A crucial value of meta-major declaration is that it allows assignment of students to Math Pathways, the primary ones of which are Quantitative Reasoning, Stats, and STEM.

12. Slide #12: “Meta-Majors and Math Pathways at CU Denver” – This are simply Franklin’s draft and have no authority whatsoever.

13. Purposeful Program Choice
Slide #13: “Purposeful Program Choice = Math Pathways”
10. I cannot overstate the importance of guiding students toward the correct Math Pathway. Failure in Math is “the most significant [academic] barrier to degree completion for all fields of study,” nationwide and at CU Denver (Dana Center).
Purposeful Program Choice =
Math Pathways

14. Slide #14: Math as the biggest Rock in the road for students in all majors.

15. ( +Proactive Advising )
The Components for Building Math Pathways
Math Pathways
part of
requires
11. Components of Math Pathways: I cannot full discuss all of the pieces of this figure. Suffice it to say that a) Math Pathways require every single major to be utterly clear on what Math they was their majors to have (no “unspecified”); b) Math Pathways require a robust Math Placement System that at once considers preparedness and non-cognitive factors such as student aspiration; c) Meta-major declaration takes those non-cognitive factors into account, and therefore works against perpetuation of structural inequalities that may keep URM out of the STEM fields; but, d) in order help underprepared students who aspire to STEM fields to succeed, one needs a well-developed co-requisite instruction program. Fortunately for us, our Math Department is working on these things.
Co-requisite
Math Placement
Instruction
( +Math in 1st 30 hours)
requires
requires
Meta Major
Declaration
( +Proactive Advising )

16. Creating a Productive Academic Mindset
Slide #16: Ingredient #2: Creating a Productive Academic Mindset.
12. This topic is more complex than I will be able to discuss. It includes metacognitive learning and instilling a “growth mindset,” first in faculty and then in students. Here are some of the components of a productive academic mindset. Tristan Denley conducted a study that applies statistical analysis to student survey data--n’s in the 1,000s--and demonstrates that having a productive academic mindset significantly impacts student performance, retention, and completion. For example, students who are clear on the purpose of their course requirements have GPAs 15% higher than students who do not.
Footnote: “Walton and Cohen (2011) demonstrated an intervention as brief as one hour with college freshmen, which was aimed at decreasing their fears about social belonging, that is correlated with improved GPA over the subsequent three years and decreased performance gaps by nearly 80% for African American students who participated in the intervention in comparison to African American non-participants” (Building 20).
Ingredient #2:
Creating a Productive Academic Mindset

17. Productive Academic Mindset: Selected Ingredients
+15%
GPA
Perceived purpose of coursework
+12pp
URM
Retention
Feel connected to their institution
and that they belong…
Slide #17: “Productive Academic Mindset” components and impacts
Slide #18: “Perceived Purpose of Coursework” [This slide was shifted out of the presentation to the end of this slide deck.]
Footnote: “Four essential practices,” based on survey data analysis, for positively influencing academic mindset and, therefore, performance: “Building self-efficacy in students; Building a sense of belonging in the institutions; Developing a more growth oriented mindset in students and faculty; and Developing a perception of relevancy in coursework.” (Denley)
+19pp
Earned SCHr %
Believe they are capable of learning the material…
+6pp
Earned SCHr %
Confidence interacting with Faculty and Staff
+9pp
MathCoReqSSuccess
GRIT and Perseverance

18. Attempting 9 hours in Academic Focus
13. Ingredient #3: Attempting 9 hours in Academic Focus or meta major.
Slide #19: “Ingredient #3: Attempting 9 hours in Academic Focus”
Footnote: “The work of Jenkins and Woo (see [1]) established a clear impact on the success rate of community college students when they earn at least 9 credit hours in their program during their first academic year We too found that the graduation rates of those students who earned 9 hours in their focus area were greatly increased” (Denley, Choice 4)
Ingredient #3:
Attempting 9 hours in Academic Focus

19. Incoming Freshmen who successfully completed at least 9 hours in their focus during their 1st Academic Year
56 % increase
81% increase
Slide #20: 9hrs in focus, “Incoming Freshman who successfully complete at least 9 hours. . . ”
In Tennessee, between 2012 and 2015 the number of university freshman who successfully completed three courses in their meta major increased by 81%. This was a significant factor in the increase in completions.

20. Complete Initial English and Math
Slide #21: Ingredient #4: Complete Initial English and Math
14. Ingredient #4: Complete initial English and Math. This often is referred to as “Math in the first 30” or “Composition in the first 30.” It is a matter of not allowing student to put off their Math or English, which they need to have under their belts to succeed in their subsequent courses. This is a matter of changing the requirements for the CU Denver Core and then providing CLAS with the additional instructors to teach the increase in number of sections required to meet demand.
Footnote: “The structural curricular analysis suggests that improvement in student learning in these “hub” classes will reach across the student body very quickly, and will also influence student success across the breadth of the curriculum. This analysis has informed a variety of approaches to help improve student learning” (Denley, Student 2).
Ingredient #4:
Complete Initial English and Math

21. ENGL1010 ENGL1020 HIST2010 MATH1530 HIST2020
Top 30 most enrolled classes comprise 50% of TBR enrollment
ENGL1010
ENGL1020
Slide #22: TBR slide 12, “Top 30 most enrolled classes comprise 50%. . . “
Slide #23: TBR slide 14, “The Graduate Transcript Graph” (scatter plot), ENGL 1010 and Math 1530 [This slide was removed from the presentation and appears at the end of this slide deck.]
HIST2010
MATH1530
HIST2020

22. Graduate Rates for Community College English and M⍺𝜏h
1st yr - Did not pass English or Math
Slide #24: TBR slide 17, “Graduate Rate for Community College English and Math”
1st yr - Passed both English and Math

23. Ingredient #5: Attempting 30 hours
15: Ingredient #5: Attempting 30 hours. This has come to be called “15-to-finish.” The idea is to provide a tuition incentive and an encouragement campaign to get students to go to university full time. There is plenty of national data to demonstrate that students who do that are more likely to complete their degrees. At CU Denver, it probably would be more responsive to the demographics of our students to put on a “30 a year, all clear” campaign, since many of our student cannot do 15 hours in spring and fall but may be able to do 30 hours if winterterm, Maymester, and summer are included.
Slide #25: Ingredient #5: Attempting 30 hours.
Ingredient #5:
Attempting 30 hours

24. 16. This is just one recipe for scaling up student success dramatically. And it isn’t just idealism. They did it. It worked. They have the data to prove it. We could do it too, if we have the will to do so.
Thank you.

25. Additional Slides

26. Natural order Global centrality Major centrality Grade prediction
Productive Academic Mindset: Perceived Purpose of Coursework
Low Perception
High Perception
Difference
Effect size
Math
Co- Requisite Success Rate
60.2%
66.5%
6.3pp
2.08
Writing
Co- requisite Success Rate
61.3%
70.8%
9.5pp
3.73
Earned Hour%
65.1%
72.5%
7.4pp
4.85
Fall to Spring Retention Rate
72.4%
77%
4.6pp
2.62
Natural order
Global centrality
Major centrality
Grade prediction

27. The Graduate Transcript Graph: The Importance of Completing
Math and English Composition
MATH1530
ENGL1010