Veenstra’s Views

Zingerman’s Deli is well-recognized for its service quality in its restaurants in Ann Arbor. Recently I had the pleasure of eating at Zingerman’s Roadhouse.  From the time we sat down, it was obvious that this going to be a different eating experience.  The waitstaff were well-trained. Our waitress explained how the meals we were ordering were special and made  every effort to make our eating experience a great one. She was enthusiastic and cheerful and made sure the food was what we wanted.  In other words, both great food quality and service quality! A “delight the customer” experience!

What if we could do the same thing for advising in colleges?  As freshman enter college each fall, they need positive experiences and a positive advising session.  Seeing an advisor is one of the first experiences on campus. Even more, what would it take to have a student say that it was a “delight the customer”  and welcoming experience.  What they experience early on will determine their attitude towards the advising office and whether it can provide help.    The advice a student receives about courses and other issues,  in some cases, will determine the success of a student in the first semester.  Just as a successful restaurant trains their employees, colleges need to train their advisors to deliver both quality advice and quality service.  Advisors  need to both be very welcoming and engaging and very knowledgable about the advising strategies that work.    Too many times  I have heard of an opposite experience.  In addition, if faculty are serving as advisors, they need some training also!

How can advisors deliver a “delight the customer” service quality? Something to think about.

Cindy

In the STEM research literature, two models for recruiting students into STEM majors in college are often discussed.

The Pipeline model suggests that students drop out from considering a STEM career as a “leaky pipeline”;  from middle school to college graduation, only a very small percent of a middle school population actually achieve a Bachelor’s degree in science and engineering. An eye-opening statistic is that only about 5% of the Bachelor’s degrees granted in the U.S. are in engineering.

The “Pathways” model suggests that students may decide they are not interested in a STEM career, but later on they may develop an interest in STEM as a result of life’s experiences or conversations with their pees.  For most STEM careers, this is very feasible.  In colleges and universities that have a student-centered culture,  there will be  programs that attract and engage  students into STEM majors, and pathways for accommodating deficiencies in academic preparation.  More colleges and universities need to adopt  a “pathways’ philosophy.  If  universities make it difficult for students to enroll in STEM courses, they automatically will have fewer students graduating in STEM, at a time when we need them in our workforce.

In my visits to university campuses, I see too many universities with a pipeline paradigm when we need to be transitioning to a pathways paradigm! As the new school year approaches, let’s think about pathways that could work to enable students to pursue their career choice in STEM.

Cindy

How complete is your mentoring program? The fall semester is completed.  Students have received their grades and some are doing poorly. They now recognize that college may be tougher than they thought it would be.   Mentoring programs implemented at the beginning of the second semester have been found to be very successful.   A successful mentoring program can bring together students who have not performed well in the first semster and help them identify the problem area, whether it is not enough time studying,  a need for tutoring,  or learning better study habits.   Regular meetings, student-oriented goals and strategies for student succees have been found to help students show significant improvement in their academic progress.   Contact us (cindy@veenstraconsulting.com ) if you would like more information on mentoring programs.

Cindy

The Sept. 8th issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education leads with an article on   Crossing the Finish Line: Completing College at America’s Public Universities by William G. Bowen, Matthew M. Chingo and Michael S. McPherson.  It is an exciting and worthwhile book to read.  It shows that for 21 public flagship universities, the 4-year graduation rate was only 49% with a much higher six-year graduation rate of 77%.  The authors present the discussion that family income matters, that for low-income families a little increase in tuition can lead to a  higher drop-out rate.  As we have read in the news, even in this past year in the current economic recession, faculty have received raises and the tuition has increased, placing more financial pressure on families to keep their son or daughter in college.   Colleges need to assume a greater level of accountability on containing tuition and the cost of college.

In their analysis,  the authors found that the high school GPA was much more predictive of the six year graduation rate than the SAT or ACT scores for the universities they studied.    

Based on my research,  I would like to suggest that the results may be different for engineering colleges.   Several studies of engineering studies have shown a significant relationship between the ACT or SAT Math score and upper class retention or graduation rates of engineering students.  Each college should conduct their own study and make an evidence-based decision on whether the high school GPA or SAT/ACT scores  (or both) are significant predictors for student retention. 

As the book suggests, more focus on timely completion of degrees is needed.  More focus on higher four-year graduation rates and systemic interventions that help student success are needed. We can have higher 4-year graduation rates! 

Cindy

Sources: 

“For Certain Types of Students , an Ever-Receding Finish” by D. Glenn, Chronicle of Higher Education, September 8, 2009; Crossing the Finish Line:Completing college at America’s Public Universities by W.G. Bowen, M.M. Chingos and M.S. McPerson, Princeton University Press,2009.

In the August 24 issue of Forbes Magazine, West Point came out on top for the best college using a new ranking system developed by the Center for College Affordability and Productivity at Ohio University. According to information on Forbes’ website  (article: America’s Best Colleges 2009) , the college ranking has the following component metrics:  25% on evaluation of instructors and courses from the website RateMyProfessor.com, 25% based  on average salaries reported by Payscale.com and entries in Who’s Who in America, 20% based on estimated average student debt, 17% on  a 4-year graduation rate, 13% on number of faculty and students who have won awards like the Rhodes Scholarships or Nobel Prizes.   According to the article, West Point came out on top because all cadets have full scholarships and West Point graduates start at $69,000 as second lieutenants.  

Is this the right criteria?  Can we measure success by how much of a salary you draw as a graduate?  Is it sufficent to measure success for a college that graduates a high percent of students in four years?  The students at West Point are a very select group to begin with. Should not a metric encourage colleges to mentor students who have a tougher academic path and give colleges credit in the rankings for mentoring and providing student success programs for those students, especially when  it takes longer to graduate?  On the other hand, a metric on the average student debt is an excellent metric to include in the a ranking of colleges.

Lastly, to base instructor ratings from the website RateMyProfessor.com is very biased since dissatisfied students would be more inclined to use the website than satisfied students.  Is  this  the best metric for measuring teaching quality and engagement with students?  There must be others to consider.  

 Cindy

In the past three years there has been more awareness by engineering colleges that they need to do more to recruit high-quality students into engineering.  The percent of freshman women and minority students in engineering continues to be signifcantly less than that of the overall population and colleges in general.  Only about 15% of the high school graduates are sufficiently prepared in math and science for the engineering college curriculum.  To address these concerns, many engineering colleges now have mentoring programs with specific high schools and school systems to discuss engineering careers and mentor students on applying to their colleges.

Yet this is not enough. Very few are using their engineering college leadership to help school systems develop systemic change that will increase the academic preparation of students and also decrease the K-12 drop-out rate.  What could systemic change look like and how do you go about it? What are best practices related to systemic change?  In this month’s ASQ Primary and Secondary Brief, school leaders who attended the ASQ Leadership Summit for Superintendents  discuss their ideas on systemic change. The article is available at http://www.asq.org/edu/2009/07/continuous-improvement/in-their-own-words-feedback-from-the-leadership-summit.pdf

If  the U.S. is to graduate more engineers into the workforce, we must seriously consider working with school systems to help them with continuous improvement and systemic change.  More prepared students for college are needed both in engineering and non-engineering fields. Read this article and perhaps it will help guide some of your own K12 outreach efforts and discussions with the school leaders in your community.

Cindy