During the 2018-2019 academic year, I had the honor of serving as a Special Assistant to the Colorado State University Student Success Initiatives (SSI).

SSI Overview

SSI is a set of initiatives being worked on in collaboration between both academic affairs and student affairs to assist CSU in reaching an 80% six-year graduation rate. As well as working to create equitable educational environments inside and outside of the classroom and complete elimination of opportunity gaps for first-generation students, students of color, and students from low socioeconomic status backgrounds.

CSU is currently working on the second set of initiatives known as SSI-2. SSI-2 focuses on

• Promoting engaged learning during the first four weeks of the semester  First
• Developing readiness in fundamental skills
• Scaling up proven approaches
• Identity and inclusion in the academic majors
• Faculty and staff professional development
• Intentional transformation of the All-University Core Curriculum
• Affordability of higher education

My Role

In this role, I assisted the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Affairs and the Assistant Vice President for Student Success in the work they were doing to support student success and retention. My work was primarily project and research-based.

One of my main projects was to develop and create the Student Success website. For this project, I worked with the Interim Vice President for Externa Relations on building a structure for the website and planning out what content needed to be created. Unfortunately, I was not able to see the project any further than this due to unexpected delays with the project.

In addition to the Student Success website some of the other notable projects I worked on included:

• Researching best practices related to student success and retention
• Reviewing student registration data and creating summary reports for constituents
• Assessing the impact of an event focused on supporting out-of-state students
• Piloting a new curriculum planning/mapping program
• Reviewing qualitative data and coding common themes

Reflection

Through this role, I gained a deeper and more thorough understanding of student success. While much of this work was not student-facing, I know that the work I was doing was having an impact on students because CSU is able to use the research and data I collected to improve programs and services to better support students.

More Info

More information about the CSU Student Success Initiatives can be found on the Student Success website.