Between March 23 and March 30, President Susan M. Donovan and her Cabinet, staff from the Student Success Center, Student Affairs, Student Activities, the Office of Identity and Inclusion and the Accessibility Resource Center, and a dozen faculty members called 2,402 undergraduate and 471 graduate Bellarmine students to check on their well-being during the coronavirus (COVID-19) situation. Some graduate programs handled their own outreach.
While making personal phone calls to nearly 3,000 students might seem extraordinary, it’s not that different from what would be happening during a regular semester with students on campus, says Dr. Elizabeth Cassady, associate dean of Academic Services and co-chair of the Student Success Task Force with Jessica Lynch, director of orientation, and Dr. Patrick Englert, associate vice president for Student Affairs.
With registration for the summer and fall semesters underway, “we would be touching base with students this time of year anyway,” she said. “At any time of transition, we know that some students are going to struggle.”
"We would be touching base with students this time of year anyway."
Such outreach is consistent with Bellarmine’s Strategic Plan, “Tradition and Transformation,” which promises each student a distinctive and transformative experience that will uniquely prepare him or her for lifelong success. This experience begins with application and carries through graduation, with highly personalized advising and student support along the way.
Notably, Bellarmine’s Student Success Center uses a nationally recognized technological tool called the First-Year Predictive Model to predict which incoming students will struggle, and how, and which students might not return for their second year without intervention.
Dr. James Breslin, dean of student success at Bellarmine, developed the model with Dr. Cassady, Dr. Kristen Wallitsch, associate dean of student success for academic support, and Drew Thiemann, director of institutional research and effectiveness.
The team drew from three years of Bellarmine student-outcome data to select the variables for the model, which include behaviors such as attending orientation and accessing course websites in addition to demographic information.
The First-Year Predictive Model assigns a risk factor to every student in the incoming class. The class is then broken into five groups ranging from those who are at extremely low risk of dropping out to those who are at extremely high risk.
This allows the Student Success Center and other support staff to target the students who really need help and to pinpoint what will be the most effective, whether that’s the Tutoring Center, the Writing Center, the Testing Center or another resource.
Sometimes it’s as simple as having a personal advisor that students know will always be available.
With everyone off-campus during the coronavirus pandemic, “students were happy to hear from us,” Dr. Cassady said about the personal calls staff and faculty made to them. “They are used to being able to just stop by and get a warm answer to their questions. This is simulating that.”