2008 Woodie Awards
Addressing retention
Looking for new solutions to an old problem
Sarah Trent
Issue date: 3/17/08 Section: News
In 2004, 862 freshmen enrolled at USM. Now four years later, it can be estimated that only between 80 and 130 of those students will graduate this May.
By May '09, it's likely that only between 215 and 240 of the original 2004 cohort will have graduated.
What happened to the other 600 students? About half of them, roughly 290 students, left USM before they could enter their sophomore year.
One of the greatest challenges facing USM, according to Interim President Joe Wood, is retention - or "persistence," the more pc term - which is defined as the percentage of full-time first-year regularly admitted degree candidates who finish their freshman year at this university and come back for their second.
According to an October "Moving Forward" letter to the university community, he says that while the national average of retention for our peer institutions is 75 percent, USM's is 68.
And while improving retention has been a concern for more than 20 years, the current climate of financial crisis - which relates in part to decreasing enrollment - has drawn even more attention to the effort.
The new Entry Year Experience (EYE) courses and general education curriculum; the new Office for Early Student Success; and the development of an advising handbook are all recent attempts to stem an old problem.
In 1985, USM's retention rate was closer to 60 percent.
This rate remained steady until 1994, when a series of efforts were made to improve the academic experience of students with a focus on community building, early intervention, and expanded advising.
For the past ten years our retention rate has been hovering around the current 68 percent, meaning each class loses about a third of its students between their freshman and sophomore years.
Last week, Syracuse University's Dr. Vincent Tinto, a nationally renowned expert on issues of retention and student success, was invited to speak at USM in several forums, including at the meeting of the Board of Trustees and for a workshop titled "Creating Conditions for Student Success," which was televised across the University of Maine System.
By May '09, it's likely that only between 215 and 240 of the original 2004 cohort will have graduated.
What happened to the other 600 students? About half of them, roughly 290 students, left USM before they could enter their sophomore year.
One of the greatest challenges facing USM, according to Interim President Joe Wood, is retention - or "persistence," the more pc term - which is defined as the percentage of full-time first-year regularly admitted degree candidates who finish their freshman year at this university and come back for their second.
According to an October "Moving Forward" letter to the university community, he says that while the national average of retention for our peer institutions is 75 percent, USM's is 68.
And while improving retention has been a concern for more than 20 years, the current climate of financial crisis - which relates in part to decreasing enrollment - has drawn even more attention to the effort.
The new Entry Year Experience (EYE) courses and general education curriculum; the new Office for Early Student Success; and the development of an advising handbook are all recent attempts to stem an old problem.
In 1985, USM's retention rate was closer to 60 percent.
This rate remained steady until 1994, when a series of efforts were made to improve the academic experience of students with a focus on community building, early intervention, and expanded advising.
For the past ten years our retention rate has been hovering around the current 68 percent, meaning each class loses about a third of its students between their freshman and sophomore years.
Last week, Syracuse University's Dr. Vincent Tinto, a nationally renowned expert on issues of retention and student success, was invited to speak at USM in several forums, including at the meeting of the Board of Trustees and for a workshop titled "Creating Conditions for Student Success," which was televised across the University of Maine System.
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