University of Akron says its “success coach” program will be ready for freshman students

By Jim Mackinnon

Beacon Journal

AKRON

The University of Akron says its “success coach” program will be ready for freshman students by the end of the month.

Trust Navigator LLC, the startup Cleveland company hired by the university for the student assistance program, said Friday it has hired 15 coaches and will be up to a full complement of 17 shortly. Two coaches will be part-time.

The university and Trust Navigator signed a one-year contract effective Friday that will pay the company, via monthly installments, a total of $840,000 for one year.

The coaches, 90 percent of whom are University of Akron alumni, will be paid salaries between $28,000 and $32,000 plus benefits, according to Rob Reho, of Trust Navigator.

Starting Aug. 31, the success coaches will meet with their students and work with academic advisers and others at the university to help the freshmen. The coaches are not university employees.

Each full-time coach will be responsible for 275 students, based on an expected freshman class of 4,100, and will be expected to meet once a month with each freshman, Reho said. The coaches are expected to regularly stay in touch with each student via multiple methods, including social media.

The coaches are expected to get to know each student and to follow up to ensure that students are doing what is necessary for them to succeed, Reho said.

Success coaches are not tutors, said Stacey Moore, the university’s associate vice president for student success. The coaches will work “in complement with” other academic offices and help students “connect the dots” among other responsibilities, she said.

The coaches will help students with life skills and such things as social integration, financial planning, career planning, time management and making progress on goals.

“Some students will need more time, some less,” Moore said.

The goal is to improve student retention and graduation rates.

The university and Trust Navigator have worked out in the contract how they will measure success.

“This is really a true partnership,” Reho said.

It is difficult for an institution the size of the University of Akron to figure out why a student left, Moore said. The success coach program is intended to get ahead of any issues that would cause someone to drop out of the university, she said.

Cleveland-based Trust Navigator LLC beat out InsideTrack, a 14-year-old business in San Francisco that wanted a $1.3 million contract with the university.

Moore said that a university committee rejected InsideTrack in part not just because of the higher cost but also because the California company would have used its current staff and not have University of Akron alumni as coaches.

Critics have questioned the hiring of untested Trust Navigator at a time when the university says it is under financial stress. UA President Scott Scarborough has said that UA has a $60 million “financial problem.” The university earlier this year announced it was going to eliminate more than 200 jobs.

The university said Trust Navigator’s success coaches are not replacing the 54 people who lost jobs in the university’s Division of Student Success.

Reho said Trust Navigator anticipates providing services and programs on as many as five Northeast Ohio campuses this year. Those programs will be different from success coaching, he said.