Replicating Impact

Today, we’re returning to our “SCALERS: Round 2” series. Originally created by Paul Bloom, the SCALERS model identifies seven organizational capacities that support the successful scaling of a social enterprise: Staffing, Communicating, Alliance-building, Lobbying, Earnings Generation, Replicating Impact, and Stimulating Market Forces. (You can read an introduction to each driver in our first SCALERS series.) Now, we’re asking DEI colleges about how particular SCALERS drivers have contributed to their scaling efforts. We’ve looked at staffing. communicating, alliance-building, lobbying, and earnings generation. In the post below, Becky Ament, associate dean for developmental education at Zane State College, discusses how Zane State went about replicating the impact of their intrusive advising approach for developmental education students.

When Zane State College joined Achieving the Dream in 2005, initial data analysis suggested interventions with two groups of students had the greatest potential to improve the year-to-year retention rates:

• Students who tested two levels below college level math, but failed to complete at least one developmental class during their first year in college; nearly 100 percent of students who fell into this category were not retained from one fall to the next.
• Students most at risk for dropping out as measured by the Noel-Levitz College Student Inventory (CSI); students scoring highest (7, 8, or 9) in “dropout proneness” on the CSI were significantly less likely to be retained from one fall to the next.

The resulting interventions were:

• Developmental math advising: Developmental student outcome data indicated strong course retention and successful completion rates as well as strong success rates in targeted gatekeeper courses. Confident that the curriculum was well aligned and meeting students’ needs, new intervention strategies focused on intrusive advising. Academic advisors developed an unmet prerequisite intervention process that monitors students’ participation in developmental mathematics through enrollment and completion of a college-level math course. Any student not attending or dropping out of a developmental mathematics course was targeted for intervention advising and required to continue the appropriate sequence of developmental and college-level math courses. In two years this intervention resulted in a 5 percent increase in students successfully completing developmental math courses within their first year. By 2008, the increase grew to 10 percent.

• Advising for students most at-risk: This program provides personal contacts and individual support to students scoring in a high profile range for “drop-out proneness.” Advisors interpret the CSI results for the students immediately upon completion during the placement test session and discuss support options for counseling, tutoring, and communicating with a contact person who cares about the student’s entire experience and success. Student Success Center personnel maintain contacts within the first three weeks of the student’s first term and then at least quarterly throughout the student’s first year to assist them with support plans as needed. Analysis of the 2007 cohort showed a 16 percent increase in fall-to-fall retention of the high-risk group as a result of this intervention. 

Coupled with both of these approaches are early alert referrals from faculty to initiate intervention advising during the course of a term.

The Developmental Education Initiative afforded Zane State the opportunity to build on these initial successes and scale the intrusive advising program. The comprehensive intervention program touches all developmental students in some way, from the initial group placement test and CSI interpretation sessions to the intrusive interventions. Despite significant enrollment growth, the CSI case management style intervention has been maintained by employing three part-time paraprofessional advisors in the Success Center to make the personal student contacts and refer students to professional support services as needed. Their work frees time for the professional advisors to focus on the other interventions. To ensure quality service delivery, advisors and paraprofessional advisors participated in orientation sessions with the director of the Student Success Center. The academic advisors in the Success Center who had been working with the various interventions then trained the new advisors. Additionally, the new academic advisor attended a National Academic Advising Association event for further professional development. The unmet prerequisite intervention for math has been expanded to developmental reading and English with the addition of another academic advisor.

Collectively, all of these initiatives are contributing to the goal of improved first year fall-to-fall retention rates: data have shown that students who began one fall and returned the following fall had a three-year graduation rate of 87 percent.