August 7, 2019
Letter from the interim vice provost for student success
Dear Colleagues,
In late July, 125 academic department leaders initiated a universitywide relaunch of SSC Navigate, a powerful tool for academic advising, data-based decision making and coordinated care for our students.
Department heads, faculty and advisors participated in training to identify student success markers in their undergraduate programs. Success markers note courses that are most predictive of student success within a major. Updating success markers with our participants' program-specific knowledge will make SSC Navigate more intuitive for users as we identify students who miss markers and intervene to support and retain them. Participants also accessed institutional reports available within the SSC Navigate platform that can be utilized at the department and college levels for a number of programmatic planning purposes beyond identifying success markers.
The process of resetting success markers is a critical step toward the goal of every undergraduate academic program making use of SSC Navigate to support student progression and persistence to graduation. This is a key strategy of the Strategic Enrollment Management Plan, and I thank the members of the SEM SSC project team:
- Shannon Washburn, assistant dean in the College of Agriculture, academic lead.
- Chris Urban, assistant director of data analytics, data lead.
- Scott Finkeldei, interim director of the Office of Mediated Education, technology lead.
- Lynn Carlin, special assistant to the provost and executive vice president.
- Brad Cunningham, advisor in the College of Business Administration.
- Greg Eiselein, director of K-State First and Donnelly professor of English.
- Kristin Waller, assistant athletic director for Student-Athlete Services.
Updated success markers are due to Shannon Washburn at sgw@k-state.edu by Aug. 15 to be available for advisors for spring enrollment this fall.
On behalf of the SSC project team, we are excited to have this first step underway with more to come. We look forward to working with our advising community, faculty, staff, students, and college and university leadership, to relaunch and fully deploy the tools we need to help our students succeed. Thank you to all for the many ways you invest in our students' success!
Sincerely,
Mary Tolar
Interim Vice Provost for Student Success