Early Bird

On the CAESS

Five minutes of your time can mean a continuous road to success for your students.

By Lunden MacDonald, Ph.D., on behalf of the Council for Academic Excellence and Student Success

December 2, 2020

This fall has been especially difficult for some Metropolitan State University of Denver students. The health concerns of the COVID-19 pandemic, financial strains, caring for family, helping siblings with homeschool, learning how to navigate the online school environment – all of this on top of the regular challenges and stresses of university study has made for a rough ride. Many students are fatigued and considering taking time off by not registering for spring classes.

When students “stop out” with the intention of returning at a later date, they lengthen their time to degree. This can cause negative impacts on financial-aid status and prevent them from taking advantage of time-sensitive opportunities such as internships or specific course offerings. At a school such as MSU Denver, only about 30% of students who leave are expected to return after one semester, and only 50% come back after one year. While those might seem like encouraging numbers, we must remember that the rest of the stopped-out students may not return at all.**

The negative impacts of decreased enrollment also impact the University. For each 1% of student-enrollment decrease, the institution loses about $1 million in its operating budget. This obviously has intense and immediate effects on staffing, programming, etc.

How can faculty help? We are busy, and the end of the semester is a particularly hectic time.

Simple ways you can help that take five minutes (or less)

• Use Who’s Registered to see how many of your students are registered for spring.
• Ask students in synchronous or face-to-face classes if they have registered and offer to help those who have not.
• For online asynchronous classes, post an announcement in your Canvas shell encouraging students to register and offering to help those who have advising questions.
• When replying to student emails, include a quick note asking if the student has registered for spring yet.
• Explain to students why registering now is important. Students might intend to register closer to the start of the spring semester, when they have more free time and when the pressure of finals is off. But they often do not know that classes might become full or may be canceled over the winter break due to low enrollment. If the classes and schedule that they want are not available, they might not return next semester at all. Encouraging them to get something on their schedule now will help chairs to more effectively schedule classes and will help “hook” students into their spring schedule.
• Share the contact information for your departmental advisor and announce their walk-in appointment hours to your students. Encourage students to sign up for virtual appointments.
• Consider offering a few extra office hours yourself, if that is possible. Sometimes students have a simple question that holds them back from registering. Your quick input might be just what is needed to help them persist.

Multiple reminders might serve to nudge students toward immediate registration if one message reaches them at the right moment. Your five minutes could literally mean millions of dollars for the University and a continuous road to success for your students. Thanks for taking the time!

**For more information on stop-out student trends, see this article from EAB or this EAB article that details dropout trends and other barriers to graduatio