Nuts and bolts session

Title: Promoting an Integrated Campus-wide Approach to
First Year Student Retention

Cathy Stone and Sarah O’Shea

Abstract

Higher Education institutions increasingly are looking at ways of improving the first year experience for students and reducing student attrition. However, first year retention programs can lose their effectiveness when they exist alone, rather than as an integrated, campus-wide strategy. This presentation draws on the experience of both presenters – both working in student support services at a small campus of a regional university – in developing a whole-campus approach to first year student retention. This approach aims to integrate academic, administrative and support strategies, in order to improve the student’s entire first year experience, across all areas of the campus. Discussion will focus on ways in which strategies such as peer mentoring, orientation programs, learning development programs and so on, can be developed and integrated within the academic framework of the student’s program, involving the commitment of both academic and support staff in the planning and delivery of such strategies.