Goal 1 – Student Success

Provide learning experiences that promote student success, achievement, and academic excellence and prepare students to contribute to a dynamic society.

Objectives:

1. All undergraduate students will participate in at least three High Impact Practices (HIPs) by graduation, starting with the fall 2015 cohort of incoming first-year students, preferably including one HIP within the context of each student’s major.
2. Adopt the Institutional Learning Outcomes and use the assessment of them to guide continuous program improvement.
3. Conduct annual surveys to assess students’ sense of belonging, engagement, and inclusion. Establish baseline measures and then design programming to ensure continual improvement.
4. Increase student success by maintaining high academic standards while reducing the overall DFWI (D, F, withdrawal, incomplete) rate through improved course learning conditions and enhanced co-curricular support. Aim to reduce the rate in lower division courses from 13% to 10%, and aim to reduce the upper division rate from 8% to 6%, particularly through providing additional supports for students in courses with the highest DFWI rates.
5. Stay on track to meet or exceed the CSU’s Graduation Initiative 2025 targets with a four-year graduation rate in 2020 of 15% or higher, a six-year graduation rate of 52% or higher, and an underrepresented minority (URM)/non-URM achievement gap of 0%. For transfer students, by 2020 achieve a 36% two-year graduation rate and a 72% four-year graduation rate. Reduce by half the achievement gaps for males and Pell-eligible students. Decrease average time-to-completion for students who enroll as freshmen from 5.6 to 5.0 years by 2020. For transfer students, decrease average time-to-completion from 3.1 to 2.7 years by 2020.
6. To foster the success of graduate students, by June 2017, the campus will complete a program evaluation of graduate education at CSUSB. From 2017 through 2020, these recommendations will be implemented.

Strategy 1:

Contributes to objectives 1, 2, 4, 5, 6

1. Intentionally offer additional administrative support, stipends, re-assigned time, etc., to encourage and reward faculty as they continually improve their classroom teaching through integrating evidence-based and/or equity- based pedagogical strategies that enhance student learning and success.
2. Create a campus-wide HIPs Community of Practice to support the implementation of HIPs.
3. Create student Learning Communities (residential and non-residential) designed around evidence-based best practices that may include cohorts, block scheduling, intentionally connected courses, peer mentoring, and structured learning supports (e.g., tutoring and Supplemental Instruction).
4. The orientation for new tenure-track faculty hires will include a substantial component on effective pedagogy in higher education.
5. In decisions about hiring new tenure-line faculty, consider what our institutional patterns and the research literature tell us about where decreased class size could have the greatest impact on teaching effectiveness and on student success.

Strategy 2:

Contributes to objectives 1, 3, 4, 5, and 6

1. Provide evidence-based academic and social support programs to help students succeed.
2. Ensure that student support programs are systematically delivered effectively and efficiently.
3. Intentionally and explicitly connect learning across curricular and co-curricular experiences so that students better understand the purposes of higher education and learn strategies that promote resilience and success beyond graduation.
4. During the process of semester conversion, ensure that the Institutional Learning Outcomes are included among the guiding principles in curriculum redesign.

Strategy 3:

Contributes to objectives 2, 3 and 6

1. Conduct a graduate studies needs assessment that includes feedback from graduate students and graduate programs.
2. Develop, implement and disseminate a graduate studies strategic plan.
3. Explore, develop and implement effective practices in graduate education (potentially to include HIPs at the graduate level) that promote retention, graduation and time to degree.