NERCOMP 2008 Enhancing Retention: A Tool for Communication between Faculty and Advisors

1. NERCOMP 2008Enhancing Retention: A Tool for Communication between Faculty and Advisors Kostia Bergman Vanessa Ritz

2. Introductions • Kostia Bergman Associate Professor Biology – College of Arts and Sciences Northeastern University k.bergman@neu.edu • Vanessa Ritz Lead – Customer Relationship Management Information Services Northeastern University v.ritz@neu.edu

3. About Northeastern University • Founded in 1898 in Boston • 5th largest private university in the United States • Northeastern is renowned for: • Experiential Learning (#1 in Coop per US News and World Report) • Interdisciplinary Research (over $70 million sponsored annually) • Urban Engagement in the heart of Boston

4. Project Background • Northeastern lacked the capacity to effectively identify and intervene with students who showed signs of poor academic performance, attendance, or other issues in a timely, consistent manner across campus • Every percentage point increase in the rate of graduation is worth $1 million to the University • A solution was needed to help identify and intervene with students who matriculate and then find themselves unable to adjust to the academic rigors of higher education

5. Project Background, cont’d • The College of Engineering (COE) developed a system in 2001 to provide a safety net for freshman engineering students • Technical and security issues made scaling this to a university-wide solution impractical if not impossible • A basic pilot application was put in place for Fall 2005 across all colleges for select freshmen-level courses • Faculty were asked to use both the university-wide (feature poor) and engineering applications (feature rich) for students • The university chose to deploy a new, expanded application for the Fall 2007 term to cover all undergraduate students • Received a grant from the Davis Educational Foundation • Salesforce.com was chosen as the application platform

6. Project Background, cont’d • Salesforce.com provided the platform to meet many of the critical success factors as defined by a user task force made up of faculty, advisors, and administrators • Web-based, user-friendly tool that is highly customizable • Easily integrated to provide visibility to near real-time data updates • Ability to track and view student interactions • Allow for the ability to increase communication between faculty and advisors • Automatic email based on database triggers, customizable by college • Easy-to-use, real-time reporting

7. Project Approach • Project coordinated by an Information Services resource • User task force created from a key user base of faculty, advisors, and administrators that met regularly to review deliverables and development efforts • Followed methodology to allow for iterative development

8. What is FACT? • “Faculty/Advisor Communication Tool” • Name selected to demonstrate expanded functionality • Replaced/expanded on former “Early Warning” systems • Includes progress reports for select students as well as non-participation concerns in the beginning of each term • Incorporates two-way communication between faculty and advisors • Consists of two applications: • Faculty J2EE Web Application for submission of cases • Salesforce.com front-end for advisors and administrators

9. Demonstration • Custom faculty application • Web-based • Accessed through the Northeastern Faculty Portal • Accesses Salesforce.com data via the API (only references data from Salesforce.com) • Salesforce.com for advisors • Web-based • Requires license and Northeastern credentials (authenticated through Northeastern LDAP) • www.salesforce.com/login

10. Analysis • We are currently in the second active term using FACT across the university • We had very strong compliance in the first term among courses that were a part of the former early warning program • Compliance constitutes submitting cases, or stating that no cases exist for a course • Overall compliance was not as strong due to a variety of factors – more senior-level courses, decreased “marketing” efforts, resistant faculty

11. Analysis, cont’d

12. Next Steps • Feature enhancements planned for each term • Spring 2008 included new functionality for first month and mid-semester reporting for athletics • Future versions may include special reporting for students on scholarship and academic probation • Formation of a steering committee • Regular meetings to be scheduled around releases made up of members from the original user task force and other champions • New “marketing campaign” targeting both faculty and advisors with the benefits of the tool

13. Q & A