Retention or Engagemant?

Recommendations for Increasing Retention in Ontario Colleges ...

Saw this today at http://www.senecac.on.ca/quarterly/2004-vol07-num02-spring/drea.html

NOTE: ALL schools and organizations wanting to engage (retention sounds like we're tying them to a desk ...) Hmm. :)


1. Establish and Maintain a Student Success and Retention Committee.

2. Provide New Student Orientation which is open to families and partners of students.

3. Provide information on all learner support services that will be available to students including counseling, mentoring and tutoring. Introduce students to peers, faculty, advisers and counselors at this time.

4. Correctly identify at-risk students.

5. Use freshman surveys for all students entering college for the first time and for returning adult students to ensure that students have declared majors/degree goals and to identify students who are academically underprepared for college. Provide follow-up in subsequent years.

6. Improve service quality to students by improving peer interactions, being responsive to student complaints and expressed needs and by improving the quality of financial aid advising and career counseling/clarification services.

7. Have a common first year where students and faculty get to know one another. Use block scheduling to build learning communities among students and keep professors with the same students (Tinto, 1996).

8. Establish and market academic and social interaction opportunities.

9. Accurately determine attrition rate by tracking individual students. Establish an institutional research department capable of tracking students.

10. Conduct exit surveys to determine why students leave.

11. Conduct an institutional self-study to determine where improvements are necessary and where the institution is successful in retention strategies.

12. Institute a tangible reward system for good teaching and faculty advising.