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Completion is aim of YSU and EGCC plans
By Denise Dick
YOUNGSTOWN
New plans submitted by Youngstown State University and Eastern Gateway Community College to the Ohio Board of Regents focus on course and degree completion.
The plans, approved by YSU trustees this month and EGCC trustees in May, are a requirement from the Ohio Board of Regents for all of the state’s colleges and universities.
YSU wants to increase course-completion rates to 82 percent each semester, according to the plan submitted to the board of regents.
“Our course completion rate was 77.3 percent in fall 2011, and it’s now up to 80.6 percent,” said Jack Fahey, vice president for student affairs.
The plan says the university wants to increase course-completion rates to 82 percent each semester and to increase freshmen course-completion rates to 86 percent each semester. That rate already has increased from 78.4 percent in fall 2011 to 83.3 percent in fall 2012.
Course completion dovetails with retention and graduation rates.
If a student withdraws or fails a course, it can set them off-kilter for completion, Fahey said.
“Sometimes they have to wait a semester” to take the course again, he said.
Another element of the completion plan is ensuring that courses are available when needed. Fahey said the position of director of degree audits that had been vacant has been filled, and that person will work toward ensuring course availability.
EGCC’s plan also addresses the need for student completion.
To increase term-to-term and year-to-year retention, the strategy outlined in the plan calls for assigning each student a professional adviser/coach who will “offer intrusive advising, interventions and academic planning” and monitor students’ success and failure rates.
Another focus in EGCC’s plan is to streamline the pathway to degree completion.
To “remove barriers to graduation,” the plan calls for having professional and academic advisers identify potential graduates and the registrar identify students who have completed 45 or more credit hours — students who currently must apply for graduation.
Jeff Robinson, Ohio Board of Regents spokesman, said the office will review the plans submitted by all of the colleges and universities to determine if there are any trends. A summary and the plans themselves will go on the board of regents’ website.
The plans won’t be evaluated or approved, but each institution will update them in two years to determine what worked well and what may need to be re-evaluated, he said.
Fahey expects the plans to be one of the items on the agenda at the fall meeting of vice presidents of Ohio’s public universities.
“I’m sure if one of the universities comes up with a successful plan for course completion, we’ll all steal it,” he said. “We all learn from each other.”