Like most universities today, WCU is struggling to retain students. This is because
of a pandemic-related lack of preparation of incoming students, and increasing complications
in student lives related to resource scarcity and emotional challenges, among other
things. Feedback from faculty, staff and students has driven the university’s commitment
to invest additional resources and strategies to support student success. The following
provides an overview of the data and feedback that inform the need to strategically
grow student support services.
The university assumes the responsibility of ensuring the supports and services we
offer align with the needs of our student community. This requires us to assess and
reimagine our support services and pivot them to meet student needs.
National data shows there are changes in student preparation profiles impacting all
students, not just WCU students.
Data from our EAB partners indicates that students have unfinished K-12 learning that
will impact higher education preparation for years to come.
In addition to national preparedness challenges, WCU recognizes that student expectations
and needs continually evolve and we need to be proactive in adjusting to meet their
needs. Student have experienced changes associated with behavior, connectedness, expectations,
engagement, housing, inflation, etc. that all impact how they engage in school and
what supports they need. The Academic Support & Advocacy Center is aimed at strategically
coordinating resources and supports in a way that aligns with students’ evolving needs.
WCU faculty and staff continue to provide incredible supports to students in and out
of the classroom. However, we recognize additional personnel are needed to proactively
connect students with high-touch supports. This work cannot simply be absorbed within
the existing supports provided by faculty and staff. Therefore, the University is
committed to providing more personnel resources via the Academic Support & Advocacy
team.
Data from WCU’s new Navigate Student Engagement platform provides visibility into
the opportunities the university has to connect students with support services. Information
provided via cases and alerts in Navigate indicates where additional hands can better
support student success.
During Spring 2023, WCU was able to provide more supports to responding to navigate
cases/alerts by reinstating the Student Success & Engagement Team (SSET). This team
comprised of faculty & staff engaged in direct student outreach to ensure more Navigate
cases resulted in student support. From this, we see strategically incorporating additional
personnel into this work has a direct impact on student engagement with support services.
The following data provides a snapshot of how engagement grew with the onboarding
of SSET.
| Fall 2022 |
Spring 2023 (Data as of April 2023) |
| 3,445 Kudos |
1,856 kudos |
| 5,620 Cases |
4,196 Cases |
| 18% closed with support |
60% closed with support |
Moving forward, the University is committed to further aligning personnel resources
to directly connect students with support services, and ensure more Navigate cases/alerts
result in student support.
The implementation of Navigate, WCU’s student engagement platform, provides the technology
and data necessarily to understand the supports students may most benefit from. This
technology provides the university an opportunity to pivot from a reactionary care
model toward a more proactive support. The predictive data helps the university identify
ways in which we can better support students, breakdown roadblocks, and champion their
engagement and support. Instead of connecting students with greater supports after
they encounter academic difficulty, the university aims to connect students with supports
from day one as a more preventative approach.
Navigate provides predictive analytics that inform how the university can better support students,
it provides progress report data to monitor how students are doing during the semester,
and allows support teams such as that ASA advocates and SSET easy ways to identify
students who may most benefit from support.
