Undergraduate Studies
July 8, 1999
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TO: |
Provost |
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Vice President for Student Affairs |
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College Deans |
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Chair, Academic Senate |
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FROM: |
Lee Dorosz, Acting AVP |
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RE: |
I am indebted to IPAR and especially to Institutional Research for the original data summarized in the attached report. The 1980’s comparison data, as well as cohort studies for the 1991-1997 six year study period, were drawn by IR from permanent student records. I spent considerable time with those generating the original numbers and am thus reasonably confident that both the full data set (available in IPAR) and this summary are accurate.
I include "Points of Interest" for each of the six tables; the purpose is to call attention to information that I personally found challenging, surprising or worthy of special attention. Others will pick different items. If SJSU is to improve student success it is important to know where the weak spots are. Unfortunately, one message that emerges all too clearly is that significant improvement in retention and graduation rates will be a daunting task. Campus stability in such rates throughout the CSU is quite high. On the plus side, as I read the literature on retention the SJSU figures are not out of line with those of comparable campuses across the country.
All who read this will propose additional questions, perhaps the most common of which will be to take analyses to department level. This is a project that IR may be working on. However, because of the small numbers involved in many cases, and the fluidity with which students move across majors, that project may not unearth really useful data. It would also be interesting to see ethnic data segregated by college, but again the useful information payoff might not be worth the staff time.
The purpose of the report is to generate discussion about how SJSU might improve student success, and also to help AVP Burton and me set priorities for further studies. As I worked with these data, I was particularly intrigued by the roughly 20% loss of junior transfers (56 units or more at entry) during their first SJSU year. Perhaps that new student group should be a high priority intervention target, along with the efforts that need to be directed to freshmen in their first and continuing into their second year. Others may identify different targets to which specific interventions might be directed.
I welcome feedback, and expect to be discussing this information in a variety of contexts. Text and tables will be posted on the Undergraduate Studies Web Site - www.sjsu.edu/ugs. I would appreciate Chairs’ calling the report to the attention of faculty early in the Fall semester.
