Campus Comments – Guiding Principles

GP1:

GP2:

GP3:

Overall: All 3 are vague and uninformative as to what will actually be done. Reads like academic-speak. Where are the actual measures that will be undertaken?

GP1: This principle sounds impressive, however it seems to me that the principles listed have been on the table for a long time already. The problem is putting the principle into action. For example, how is the International Program Office doing with making sure all students have visas by the time they register for classes.

GP2: This principle sounds impressive, but it seems to me that we are already doing this. For example, The UC staff is undertaking a revision of University Studies to insure greater opportunities for using all university resources. I’m just not sure how you could implement this principle more effectively.

GP3: This sounds impressive, however if you ask one hundred teachers whether or not they are already doing this, I think that most would say they are trying to measure success accurately. Plus, there is a system in place for resolving problems that arise. So, I’m not sure how this will be implemented unless it involves micromanaging specific teachers.

Overall: Principles should be more implementable than the current procedures evidence.

GP1: I agree and commit to this principle in my role as academic advisor.

GP2: I agree and commit to this principle as a lecturer in *****.

GP3: I agree and commit to this principle as an academic advisor, as a lecturer, and as a person.

Overall:

GP1:

GP2:

GP3:

Overall: Curiously, the principles do not take into account the admissions and orientation processes. When we are four weeks into the term, the first exam is being administered, and some students still have not purchased the required textbook, there is little that any faculty member or university service can do to help students succeed. How many of the orientation events are used to inculcate strong learning behaviors in incoming students? Maybe if students heard BEFORE classes began what behaviors are likely to ensure success they’d get off on the right foot. Tents and colored streamers are nice, but when students think they can put off purchasing the required textbook until after they’ve failed the first exam they dramatically reduce their chances of passing the course. All the well-intentioned principles in the world cannot put Humpty Dumpty back together again.
Ask faculty who teach gen ed classes to recommend dos and don’ts for students; compile a list and schedule a workshop for incoming students during orientation–a legitimate workshop, not a mealy-mouthed session of boosterism that merely pays lip service to discipline and hard work.

GP1: In guiding principle 1, the only concern or question I have is what is meant by “access.” When reading the principle, my first thought was “access to what?” The university? Access to support? That was my only concern.

GP2:

GP3:

Overall:

GP1: “provide” not “providing” / vital “for” and not “to”?

GP2: “provide” not “providing”

GP3: “accept”

Overall: Who is defining “success?” Shouldn’t ensure access and support for these things, but shouldn’t students be allowed to define success for themselves? If we are referring to “completion,” then let’s call it “completion.” If it’s “persistence” and “completion,” then let’s call it those.

GP1: Information may have changed but one of my big problems with my daughters was leaving the parents out the 1st semester. I realize you do not need helicopter parents but the parent knows their the needs and problems their kids have. They may not can handle the load your advisers are shoving at them, they may not can take all the sciences at one time, there are a lot of issues that kids have today and only the parents know for sure. I mean what college student wants to admit he has problems? I know from experience that both daughters were put in classes that had concepts that were somewhat opposite. We need to re-think involving parents.

GP2:

GP3:

Overall:

GP1:

GP2: What is “personal success”? I agree that academic success should not be the only criterion, but unless these terms are defined, they are pointless verbiage.

GP3: Is “success” always measurable? Isn’t this what’s wrong with No Child Left Behind? Educational outcomes are not always quantifiable, particularly when genuine education is taking place. We can measure the absorption and regurgitation of factual knowledge, certainly, but it’s not such a simple task to measure whether the creativity of a painter or composer or poet. We are adopting business models that are not necessarily appropriate for education.

Overall: If anyone thinks that such bland, jargonistic statements are going to improve retention, I would be surprised. We know the real issues: having students of the right quality, having happy faculty who are not overworked, and small class sizes so that students can get the attention they need. Online courses and concurrent enrollment may raise numbers of students registered–may–but will almost certainly not be conducive to increased retention, as standards will drop. The majority of the faculty are agreed on this. Is anyone listening?

GP1: Love this and how it’s worded!

GP2: I prefer “offering…” to vary verb choice (I’m in ***** and can’t help it!).

GP3:

Overall: Thank you for asking for feedback!

GP1: Doesn’t the University already provide this information to the students? I see numerous postings, emails, events, campus programs, support services, and other information circulating around campus that addresses these topics. If the students are not seeing this information, I think the bigger question to ask is where is the breakdown in communication with the students or why aren’t they using the provided services? Are we using the wrong media channels? Are we inundating the students with so much information that much of the important stuff gets overlooked? Are we going to make faculty and staff also become responsible for trying to provide additional information on top of their current duties and responsibilities?

GP2: This is where I think having “general advisers” will not be as effective as having advisers within each department. I just spoke with a student yesterday who quit UCA and is now returning after speaking with me (I’m a faculty member of *****). I asked her why she quit the first time and she mentioned that when she first started at UCA nobody really helped her. They put her in a lot of classes that were too hard and not interesting to her and did not even ask her about career plans and goals. I was able to listen to her career goals, the personal choices she had made for her life, and provide correct guidance. She has decided to return to UCA in the Spring. I will never be convinced that general advisers housed in a central location can provide the same type of advising as a faculty member who has day to day contact with the student, experience and knowledge about the required courses, job possibilities, and ways to make the student employable upon graduation. Each department should have a faculty adviser/s with a reduced teaching load who can advise and mentor students within that department or program. Over four years I have asked numerous students about advising and very few have favorable words about the general advising provided outside of their respective degree programs. Bottom line most students want a relationship with their faculty. In my four years at UCA, I have observed more students who are looking for and desire this type of connection. They need this from the moment they step foot on our campus, not waiting until their second or third year.

GP3: Agree completely. However an efficient system needs to be in place that helps faculty recognize students within their programs that may be likely to drop out. Some of this seems to be common sense (i.e. student is missing lots of class or performing poorly) where some might not be so easily identifiable. Faculty should be trained on how to recognize students who may be like to drop out. Having a referral system in place where faculty could then send or refer a student who maybe having difficulty might help.

Overall: I’ve been appointed to serve on the Faculty Affairs Committee II (subcommittee of the Faculty Senate) and we have been charged to look at these sames issues from a faculty perspective. We will be working on developing a report for the Faculty Senate that addresses recruitment, enrollment, concurrent enrollment, and retention. At the present I feel like so much of a student’s success is based on three principles: 1) level of University involvement (i.e. feeling personally connected to UCA), 2) academic performance/success, & 3) student-faculty relationships.

GP1:

GP2:

GP3: I would like some clarification on this principle. Its great to be responsible and accountable for success, but I would like to know what the agreed upon “”evidence of student success”” is. Also, I believe its just as important to explore the reasons why students don’t succeed or leave UCA. Is not returning to or leaving UCA an indication that a student is not succeeding? Should we also accept responsibility and accountability for consistently measuring evidence of student failure?”

Overall:

GP1: No comments.

GP2: No comments.

GP3: No comments.

Overall: None

GP1: *****’s 5 Guiding Principles for achievement of a passing grade (D or better) in any course in any college @ UCA.

1. Show up
2. Pay attention
3. Take notes
4. Form a working relationship with your teacher (talk to them before you reach failure)
5. Do not wait until the last minute before turning in assignments or studying for knowledge assessments”

GP2:

GP3:

Overall: I am grateful for the opportunity to share my principles.

GP1: We have many nice systems like ORGSync and BlackBoard and MyUCA for students to be informed, but there are so many systems that it is hard to find information at times. The systems do not always talk to eaach other. Some things are not up to date. It is almost as if we need some full-time student hackers to find issues in the system.

GP2: We have many resources for students to get help: library, writing center, student success center. However, there is no substitute for one-on-one help within the college/program of study.

GP3: Students are not always aware of how much accountability is present. I am not asking for more emails, but maybe some kind of report once a year as to what has been revised and why.

Overall:

GP1: I think this principle should attempt to address the financial burden that students are under that is a big factor in retention, especially for minority and first generation college students. The current statement of principle 1 does not capture this concern. Maybe include the word resources also.

GP2:

GP3:

Overall:

GP1: While I agree that it engagement in campus life improves the likelihood for student success, I don’t believe it is necessary for success for all students. For example, we have some online programs. Students in these programs may be attending from a distance and not find it practical to be engaged in the UCA community. Also, working professionals or those with significant family obligations may only want to be involved in academic programs. Perhaps we just need to reword to say something along these lines, “providing students with the information, access, and opportunities so that they may successfully engage in the UCA community to the extent desired to meet the goals of their educational experience.”

GP2: I agree that it is a principle to provide the guidance and support for students to develop the knowledge and skills necessary to achieve academic success. I don’t believe that, as a university, we can accept the responsibility for supporting the development of personal success. Personal success is a broad concept and is uniquely individual. Whether or not a specific student has achieved personal success would be difficult if not impossible to measure and may not directly relate to their experience in higher education.

GP3: Excellent principle.

Overall: Great work by the committee. The link and web site are very user friendly and well designed. Thank you to the committee for the effort to improve the student experience at UCA.

GP1:

GP2:

GP3: At some point, you may need to be more specific about what ‘evidence’ is most appropriate to measure “student success” and retention.

Overall: Do you have specific plans for outcome evidence of ‘success and retention’? How are data to be collected? managed? analyzed? reported?

GP1:

GP2:

GP3:

Overall: I think that we should first identify the main reasons why students withdraw from the university and address them. If there is a correlation between admission standards and retention, we should set those standards high enough that students are likely to succeed if admitted. Likewise, we should address financial aid if lack of money is a significant stumbling block for students. (The steady decline of the lottery scholarships may well be a factor here.) The three proposed principles might help us lessen student drift and alienation, but practical responses work best if based on concrete, specific knowledge of the problem’s causes. Does UCA have hard data gained from interviews with students who have left the university?

GP1:

GP2: What do we have in mind when we say “personal success”? Is that the best terminology?

GP3:

Overall:

GP1: UCA has plenty of information available as long as the internet is available. I do think the library has a card catalogue that operates without the internet, but I haven’t actually checked in person, and if the library doesn’t have one, we are in big trouble. I think we need to get stable, reliable internet, especially since personal routers are prohibited.
Campus buildings should stay open longer, especially the cafeteria. It would be nice if they even just left a snack bar open. I rarely get to eat dinner because my day doesn’t slow down until night-time, and then it’s too late to eat supper. I don’t have the money to be paying the cafeteria and buy additional food for the night. I just don’t get to eat until the morning.”

GP2: Guidance at UCA is good. I like the professors.

GP3: Everyone should be held responsible for their own actions.

Overall:

GP1: Students first

GP2: Preparation for the real world

GP3: Be honest

Overall:

GP1: I believe that in order to provide every student with the information, access, and opportunities vital to successful engagement in the UCA community, we would have to concentrate our resources and efforts towards creating a more inclusive environment. We could work more closely together to promote and encourage the sharing and learning of the diverse perspectives within our campus community.

GP2: In order to provide guidance and support for students to develop the knowledge and skills necessary to achieve academic and personal success, we must ensure they are knowledgeable of the various resources we have to offer; then continue to encourage and recommend they utilize those resources. Having the understanding that anyone who has contact with students, has the ability to point them in the right direction is an important aspect. Also, students need to be given a voice in the planning and implementation of their learning – whether it be in the classroom or during co-curricular activities.

GP3: When accepting responsibility and accountability for consistently measuring evidence of student success, we have to have a clear and unified definition of what constitutes student success. Then we must also remember that achieving that goal is not the responsibility of an individual, department, or division. Each area can identify specific goals, tasks, and duties associated with achieving that success, but it will take open, honest communication and collaboration to achieve it and successfully measure it.

Overall:

GP1:

GP2: I believe that helping students reaching “personal success” is a principle that is overlooked by many other universities, and if we were to increase our efforts to help all of our students reach both academic and personal success. A personal success could be anything from being able to just go to college, all the way to something such as my personal goal: to become a specialty doctor and help others. Personal success should be a value that is held very high on our campus.

GP3:

Overall:

GP1:

GP2:

GP3:

Overall: I applaud these efforts to improve student success and retention. Not only from the perspective of the university’s finances, enrollment and prestige, improved student success and final student outcomes will be a great benefit to our students. I do have some concerns about these efforts, though. What are the primary issues that cause students to drop out of UCA? We need to have a good understanding of the causes of the problem before we can adequately look for solutions. From my experience, most of my students drop out of UCA for personal reasons – personal health issues, personal finances, family situation. Some of my students struggle because they were not adequately prepared for college either with their academic knowledge or their study skills or time management.
For some of these issues, we as faculty can impact, but most of these issues are outside of our control, as faculty and as a university. I think that we need to assess these factors and determine which ones we can reasonably expect to improve upon.

GP1: “successful engagement in the UCA community” makes it sound like the staff must strive to make it easy for UCA students to party… Maybe ‘engagement’ should be reconsidered. Maybe something a little closer to the reasoning like, “…opportunities vital to SUCCESS AT UCA”

GP2: I understand the good-hearted tone of this one but it’s a little subjective. I imagine that it could be more difficult for some faculty over others. I feel that the end goal is too demanding. The success of the student will ultimately rely on the student and what they decide to go to school for. Maybe “providing guidance and support TO THE BEST OF THEIR ABILITIES TO HELP develop the knowledge and…” It’s too much to make the assumption that a faculty member WILL develop this in a student.

GP3: Oh… Now this one is a real problem I’ve seen on campus. Unfortunately, subjectivity is not something that can’t easily be removed. Maybe if UCA implemented a campus-wide standard with corresponding software? I don’t know. Either way, with regards to the statement, ‘evidence’ seems too CSI and is a subjective word. How about “…consistently measuring ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE TO GAUGE student success”?

Overall: The idea of “guiding principles” is nice but it’s just a title and a few words. Passing this around to the faculty and staff is not exactly something that changes behaviour. I feel that just creating some words for them to know is not an effective strategy. Thier mindset also needs to be tuned to it. Maybe hold some SHORT seminars (too long and people will get irritated with it. Maybe 5-10 minutes.) that are held in their work environment (To show the issue existing in their comfort zone) every month of other month as a friendly reminder and to keep people on track. Most people are UCA are pretty helpful but there are a few, and that may be unavoidable, that can be a pain. Hopefully, this will help alleviate that issue. But, I wouldn’t hold my breath. Thank you for the opportunity to comment!

GP1: “providing every student with the information, access, and opportunities vital to successful engagement in the UCA community.” You give them tools to learn, like every other university.

GP2: “providing guidance and support for students to develop the knowledge and skills necessary to achieve academic and personal success.” You guide students to learn, like every other university.

GP3: “accepting responsibility and accountability for consistently measuring evidence of student success” You grade and measure students, like every other university.

Overall: These are all trite buzzwords. This bureaucratic gobbeldygook is exemplary of everything wrong with this university. Stop saying “We should teach students” and teach students.
How is this stuff different from any other university? By adhering to these guidelines, you’re simply engaged in pedagogy, as I expect. As I hope.
This stuff is pandering. It’s simple to the point of being meaningless. I’m an undergraduate who feels insulted by this stuff. How do you think your faculty, many of them with PhD’s and years of experience in their given fields, feel?
You’re like the boss in Office Space saying, “Think of what’s good for the company.”
The amount of bureaucratic glut in this institution is astounding.

I’m aware that this all sounds incredibly caustic. And that I sound like yet another disenfranchised jerk. Both statements are true. I doubt you’ll include these comments in your evaluation. But I’m sick of being pandered to. AVID, SSRC Guiding Principles, ugh.

GP1: How do you plan on doing this for students that commute? As a commuter in my second year I feel completely disconnected to what is going on on campus. If the council wants all UCA students more aware and involved then the first step I would take is making the website easier to view and access information for students. Receiving information takes too much time because the least important things are at the top while the timelines, and student information have be dug for beneath several layers of windows.

GP2: The guidance I have personally received from the four advisors I have had has been muddled and frustrating. Initially I had a freshmen advisor that made my schedule, then a department advisor, then I changed my major and was reassigned, and now I am grouped in with a freshman advisor who I have wrongly received emails from asking me to attend “mandatory freshmen group meetings”. UCA needs to stick with an advising program so that students don’t feel like they are just being shuffled around to whoever is available that day. It is frustrating and confusing to students.

GP3: I think the grading system is fine I wish that there was an easier and across the board way that teachers could communicate with students because several professors I have had refuse to use the awful blackboard program that is like a minefield for students.

Overall: Thank you for caring about what students have to say and giving us a forum to keep our concerns in mind while shaping these guiding principles. I hope this has been taken into consideration, so that future and current students can enjoy a more stress free university that has streamlined principles all for the betterment of students. Go Bears!

GP1:

GP2:

GP3:

Overall: This is a waste of time; “Guiding principles” are nothing more than a meaningless PR/HR gimmick.

GP1: good review

GP2: excellent

GP3: perfect

Overall: good organization

GP1:

GP2:

GP3:

Overall: I firmly believe in the statements made and understand why it is necessary and important that we share this with our student body, but we are continually competing for students attention and should strive to provide them with this information in the most direct manner. Instead of providing them several links to additional information I feel that it would be beneficial to provide them that information below the three main statements. Although it is not intentional I think that it would meet the student body where they are, if we are indeed able to get students to review these informational statements that describe what we as an institution are aiming for in regards to student success.

Thank you.

GP1: UCA provides students with interesting and helpful information through email.

GP2: UCA has many resources available for students to be successful.

GP3: Many digital resources are available for students to monitor their academic status.

Overall: