December 2, 2005
Dr. Keith Boyum
Associate Vice Chancellor, Academic Affairs
The California State University
401 Golden Shore – 6th Floor
Long Beach, CA 90802-4210
Dear Keith:
I am pleased to submit the enclosed summary of the progress and plans that California State University, Northridge has made to address retention and graduation issues. As you surely know, we have been engaged with these issues for some time. In 2002 Jacquelyn Kegley, Chair of the Academic Senate CSU, and Louanne Kennedy, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at Cal State Northridge, co-chaired the CSU's Initiative, "Facilitating Student Success in Achieving the Baccalaureate Degree."
Improving graduation rates has been one of my top priorities since my appointment here as president in 2000. In Spring 2001, I appointed a Graduation Rates Task Force which was charged to study these issues on our campus and make recommendations for improvement. Following intensive study and campus-wide consultation, the Task Force in January 2003 submitted a Final Report, which I accepted. Since that time, several groups on campus have been charged to further study and implement the Task Force’s recommendations, and many of the achievements summarized in the enclosed report are the result of that work.
Student success continues to be our highest priority. In August 2003, I used the occasion of the President’s Fourth Annual Convocation Address to launch a university-wide initiative to make Cal State Northridge a more learning-centered university. Appropriate resources have been allocated to support the initiative, and I have renewed my commitment to the effort in each subsequent convocation address and during my numerous interactions with faculty and the campus community.
While the enclosed report summarizes our efforts to improve retention and graduation rates, I want to cite several additional imperatives that drive our work in these areas since they do not necessarily appear in the attached document. These imperatives also reflect our strategic approach to these issues:
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We firmly believe that decisions must be driven by evidence. Thus, we have commissioned our Office of Institutional Research to evaluate, in 2005-06, the methods that the colleges and departments are using to increase retention so that we will know more precisely what works. We believe that this approach converges with the Board of Trustees’ effort to collect "best practices."
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Data indicate that 50 percent of the freshmen who do not persist to graduation actually leave us between the second and third semester. Hence, we have redoubled our efforts, as shown in the document that follows, to improve the freshmen experience. Such initiatives as linked courses, classes in residence halls, orientation and success seminars, and living learning communities reflect our effort to assemble students in small cohorts, under the guidance of a mentor, so that they are enmeshed in connections to our community from the start. We have stepped up efforts to get grade and attendance information to advisors by the 3rd through 5th week of the first term, since that early period is crucial to a student's decision to persevere or not.
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We have made major strides in curriculum reform, and again evidence drives this effort. We saw that, on average, freshmen take more credits to get their degree than transfers; this trend is unique to the CSU. So, we reduced our GE program substantially and increased the writing requirements in it to compensate for the relatively poor skills that many students have upon entrance.
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We are auditing our complete advising system, so that we can make changes based on evidence. The three administrators who are most knowledgeable about advising practices at CSUN are contacting all faculty, staff, directors, and representative students so that we can identify and remedy any inconsistencies in policies, needs for training, and gaps in practices.
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Given our size and complexity, we believe that efficient technology is a must. We have brought up a robust, automated advising system that capitalizes on PeopleSoft data and presents information in graphic form that can be grasped easily. We are striving, this year, to establish a culture and practice in which electronic communication is the norm. This will allow us to alert students about prerequisites that they must meet to stay in school and make progress toward graduation. Of course, technology is ineffective if the information that it carries is either incorrect or confusing. So, we have commissioned a committee to simplify and synchronize the university’s communications with students, and assure that all communications are clear, accurate, timely and friendly.
In sum, we are gathering evidence, analyzing it, and then implementing solutions. Of course since the subjects—college students—are a moving target, changing demographically all of the time, it is a challenge to find a solution that works for everyone at all times. Nonetheless, we believe that this approach—strategic management, tactical deployment, scrutiny of evidence— is the most effective way to achieve improvement in retention and graduation rates.
Sincerely,
Jolene Koester
President
JK/rr