There hasn’t been another Senate meeting yet, so I don’t have anything new and bulky to report. However, the October 18th Senate meeting’s agenda has just been released, and contains a very in-depth report on student retention (pages A28-A47) titled “Undergraduate Student Retention Issues, Opportunities and Initiatives”. Due to the release of this agenda coinciding with the IW deadline, I will admit I have not been able to review it thoroughly, but have skimmed the relevant sections. I highly recommend you check it out, at least to skim the report on student retention. There is also a really interesting report on the newly proposed “Associate Provost Student Services” and the newly proposed “Office of Student Success” (A17-A27). The full senate agenda can be found here: http://www.secretariat.uwaterloo.ca/governance/Senate/20101018oagsen.pdf
Regarding the Transition Program / Orientation changes, there are still a variety of ideas/options being considered, and all the Student Senators are trying to get as much feedback as possible for the next time we meet with Bud Walker and crew to discuss/learn more. I have learned from Bud that it is more likely that upper year students will not start classes until the Monday after Labour Day, under the new Transition Plan. Considering much of the feedback I have received regarding the new transition program, I imagine that many students will be quite happy about this development. I am not sure how this will play into the 60 teaching day issue, or how the Faculty will respond to having first-year professors starting earlier than non-first-year professors.
In addition, I can now report that the 2008-2009 retention of first year students at UWaterloo was 89% (recall that retention is a pretty significant driving factor in regards to the new student transition program reported on last time). This is behind Queen’s (94.9%), Western (91.5%), UofT (90.3%), UGuelph (90.4%) and WLU (89.4%), McGill (91.6%). The goal is to raise this rate 1% annually to 93% which would position us to be 2nd in Ontario, after Queen’s (and then we would continue to try to increase it, but not at the same pace). The increase (comparing 2001 to 2008) in withdraw rates in Engineering after year one is the second highest at UW, second only to Math. The increase (comparing 2001 to 2008) in withdraw rate in Engineering after the year three is the highest at UW.
RECOMMENDATIONS FROM THE REPORT OF STUDENT RETENTION:
The committee recommends that central units of Waterloo in 2010-2011 take action to:
(1) improve provision of accurate and realistic information about support services to undergraduate students
(2) provide a one-stop portal service, especially to help students who decide to change academic programs
(3) ensure specific needs of international visa students are identified, and appropriate support is available
(4) initiate exit interviews for all students who leave Waterloo before completing a degree, as well as for a sample of students who graduate from Waterloo, to inquire about issues that challenged or supported their retention
The committee also recommends that Faculties in 2010-2011 take action to:
(1) improve provision of accurate and realistic information about Faculty-specific support services to their undergraduate students. This will require coordination with central units providing other information
(2) introduce early warning and intervention initiatives to identify and help students at risk in their academic programs
(3) facilitate a student focused learning environment, including enhanced student engagement. A key component will be to provide more and enhanced mentoring, by faculty, staff and senior undergraduate students.
Finally, the committee recommends that Waterloo needs to give attention to
(1) developing capacity for routinely monitoring progress related to retention
(2) designating responsibility for oversight for retention management
(3) determining incremental resources required to allow enhancement of existing support or introduction of new support activities
(4) designing specific activities to deal with retention issues
The more I hear from you the better I’ll be able to represent all of us! Shoot me an email at j4shah@engmail with concerns/questions/ideas!
Good luck on midterms (and be glad we don’t have any on Saturday:))!
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