Susan Sciame-Giesecke, director of IUK's new Freshman Seminar, believes the effort will positively impact retention.

Transforming the freshman year
IU Kokomo takes aim at attrition with a fresh look at its new students

Related Link: IU Kokomo Campus

In those first awful weeks of school the engine blew in the old Chevy that had gobbled most of her earnings from the nursing home job; the car she borrowed from her mom ran out of gas on a campus parking lot; she forgot to bring any money with her and went 10 hours one day without food; the math quiz during her third week wasn't at all what she expected; her English prof liberally red-penciled her first college essay. And no one on campus seemed to know her name.

Susan Craig, an Indiana University freshman from Farmland, says the above scenario doesn't precisely match her own experience after enrolling at IU Kokomo this fall, but it comes pretty darn close.

One of two children whose father is transportation director for Monroe Central High School and whose mother is working to help with college expenses, Craig graduated from Monroe High last June. She knew two things. She wanted to become a nurse and she wanted to go to IU.

After deciding that she wasn't quite ready for large campuses like Bloomington or Indianapolis, Craig turned to Kokomo. A campus visit convinced her that IUK had the kind of warm and caring atmosphere she was looking for.

"I thought it would be too far to drive 75 miles from home every day, particularly in the winter," says Craig, "so I rented a small apartment in Kokomo and moved my things in just before school started."

While the Farmland freshman IS driving mom's automobile (while her father is replacing the car motor that died), Craig says there ARE people on campus who know her name.

Though Craig may not be typical of most IUK freshmen who commute from home each day, she and her classmates do share an important characteristic. As university freshmen, they are extremely dropout-prone.

"Studies tell us that the first semester, particularly the first eight weeks, is the most critical and vulnerable period for new students in the university," says Mahmoud Saffari, IUK's new assistant vice chancellor for undergraduate education. "This is the period when students feel the most isolated, and this is when they are most likely to give up on the university and drop out. Some return later; many never come back."

The situation at IUK is not unique. Across the country, as high school graduation rates have flattened and enrollments at many universities have steadily declined, campuses have begun to search for ways to make the undergraduate experience more meaningful and to create the kind of supportive and nurturing environment that empowers students like Susan Craig to succeed in reaching their goals.

About two years ago, after seeing its attrition rate climb completely off the charts (it rose past 50 percent), IUK took a long hard look at what was happening and began asking, "Why?" and "What can we do to turn things around?"

In the spring of 1995, using a survey instrument designed by IUPUI, the campus went right to its consumers to discover student attitudes toward and satisfaction levels with instruction and academic support services, IUK's impact on the students' learning and student life.

The good news from the survey was that students expressed a high level of satisfaction with the overall quality of their academic experience. They also thought faculty and staff were helpful, classes were challenging, and that IUK had helped them hone their critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

The not-so-good news was that students said they weren't always getting the courses they needed in the sequence they needed to take them, that they wanted better academic advising and they needed more information about careers and job opportunities. They also wanted more amenities (nicer classrooms) and added recreational opportunities.

With results of the survey in hand, IUK began developing plans to meet expressed student needs. But still, the most important question remained unanswered. Why, if students were generally pleased with IUK's academic programing and with the helpfulness of faculty and staff, were large numbers of them continuing to drop out?

Some argued that because they attract a large number of students who work and have family obligations, commuter campuses are bound to have high attrition rates. Others insisted that by conditionally admitting students whose SAT scores and high school performance records were below average, IUK was creating its own retention problems.

Both points of view have validity, says Susan Sciame-Giesecke, an assistant professor of speech and acting assistant vice chancellor for academic affairs.

"Many of our students do 'stop out' for various reasons such as financial problems, family obligations or added work responsibilities," says Sciame-Giesecke. "We also admit about 60 students a year whose SAT scores and high school performance records place them in a high-risk category with regard to success in the university."

But as IUK's leadership studied the problem, one conclusion became evident. Even the annual loss of all its admitted high-risk students, coupled with a commuter stopout factor, could not account for a 50 to 60 percent annual bleedoff in students.

"We looked at the first tenet of the Strategic Directions Charter, which places student learning, intellectual exploration, persistence and attainment first in the university's mission, and we confirmed our commitment to that goal," says Chancellor Emita Hill.

By the start of fall, IUK had laid the groundwork for an ambitious program designed to reach that goal. It reallocated funds to set up a new office dedicated to student retention (Office of Undergraduate Education).

A new curricular program, the Freshman Seminar (S104), developed with faculty input and piloted during spring and summer sessions, was institutionalized as a required course for all incoming freshmen.

The personal counseling center, campus climate office and peer mentoring office all geared up to support the new retention push.

With the help of Strategic Directions funding, the campus launched three new projects to improve instruction.

Marcia Gillette, lecturer in chemistry, introduced The World of Chemistry (C100), a course designed to make chemistry more relevant and easier to understand for students who are not science majors.

In mathematics, where new students often falter, lecturer Barbara Sehr received Strategic Directions funding to introduce Elementary Mathematical Skills (M006), a course that uses programmable graphing calculators as a learning aid to increase student success rates in math.

The most ambitious project underwritten by Strategic Directions funding is IUK's Teaching Learning Center, which was first established in 1993. Initially, the center offered consultation services, peer review and classroom feedback. Now, the SDI grant has enabled the center to add instructional technologies.

Acting Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Susan Hannah says IUK has taken inventory of what it is doing and can do. "Faculty and staff are working together toward a common goal‹to see our students succeed."

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