Working with College Students who Face Academic Challenges: One Step Further

While we are in the middle of the summer, some of us may start to think about preparing for the upcoming academic year. College student retention and persistence is often a focus in higher education and is essential for sustaining enrollment. More importantly, it is about student success.

To support students experiencing poor academic performance and progress, my colleague and I created a Student Excellence and Persistence System to support students after being reinstated following academic dismissal. We developed a series of factors to determine which academically dismissed students to reinstate after an appeal process initiated by students. Following a decision to reinstate them, we are obligated to support them and are hopeful they can complete their degrees. In addition to counseling students to attend classes, complete assignments on time, and advising them on the final course grades and grade points averages they shall earn to maintain their active student status, the components of Student Excellence and Persistence System also include: (a) hosting an initial interview with students to learn about their student habits, lifestyle, use of time, and challenges related to their academic progress, (b) learning about the students’ academic performance and any other related issues from faculty, student affairs, housing, and athletics (if applicable); (c) providing guidance for establishing short-time academic goals and action plan designed in alignment with time management skills; and (c) scheduling weekly or bi-weekly proactive advisement (though sometimes perceived as intrusive by students) to follow up on their progression. During its first term in operation, the system resulted in a 20% retention rate among the reinstated students who were previously dismissed due to dissatisfactory academic performance.

A major lesson learned from the observations of this experience underscores the importance of building trust with students at the very beginning to facilitate effective communication. Instead of getting right into a discussion about academic performance, I often start with casual conversation about their interests and passions; then asking them about their lifestyle, use of time use, and barriers for attending classes and completing assignments on time. I found that many students are informed about the resources available on campus, but they feel intimidated to reach out and do not always know how to ask the right questions, at the right time, and to the right individuals on campus. They often have good experiences communicating with their peers and families, but not with adults and authority figures on campus who they don’t know. They tend to suffer in silence. Helping students to look at one task at a time, for example, one assignment, or one test, instead of thinking about certain final grades and grade point averages, and providing tips on how to stay focused, aid in reducing their stress and sense of feeling overwhelmed. Introducing students to the use of automatic reminders through their cell phones, instead of emails, for deadlines and meetings is also very effective. Students who used automatic reminders were less likely to miss meeting with me, for example. Here are some of the high-impact advisement strategies of the system I would like to share with you:

1. Find Out Root Causes: Students’ Absences and Missing Deadlines

We all know that not coming to class or missing assignment deadlines causes dissatisfactory academic performance, but this is also an outcome of other things happening in students’ lives. Unearthing the root causes of their absences or not completing assignments on time is crucial. When students tell me they sleep through the alarm in the morning, this is an outcome, not the root cause. Root cause concerns why they sleep through the alarm. Is that because of health issues, socio-emotional issues, or lifestyle?

2. Cultivate Academic Ownership

Behavioral change is better achieved through self-motivation. Enthusiasm and earnest interest when conversing with students helps. I normally start a conversation with students about their out-of-class interests and help them to relate those back to their academic majors, class assignments, and personal lives, directly or indirectly. I find this to be a very effective way to build trust with students and to help them explore their purpose for attending college, relating academics to their interests and lives after college to cultivate their academic ownership. Once they have academic ownership, they will be better self-motivated and able to internalize a drive for academic engagement. This can help them with academic goal setting and action planning for behavioral change toward academic improvement.

3. Develop Time Use Inventory

Many students I have encountered think that time management is about meeting deadlines. From their perspective, putting deadlines on their calendars is time management. Naturally, it is too late for them to realize that they have an assignment due on the next day. Starting with their current time use, completing a time use inventory often surprises students about how much time they spend on their cell phones for non-academic activities, such as entertainment, and not enough out-of-class time on academic pursuits. They discover the need for changes in time allocation to inform their new action plan.

4. Identify Lifestyle and Extenuating Barriers

Learning more about students’ lifestyle to better understand their barriers helps when factoring in goal setting and action planning approaches. Students’ current familial situation usually is the major factor related to support from loved ones and financial constraints regarding the use of time. By helping student to identify their barriers, we can better help them to set realistic academic goals and a plan of study for graduation.

Recommendations

Asking a few more questions can build trust with students for learning about their out-of-class lives. Academics is a part, but does not account for the full range, of their lived experiences during college life. Empowering students with academic ownership can help for goal setting, self-motivation, and persistence. Helping students to understand how they use their time before designing academic action plans and the time management of such plans will better support students for academic success. I am hoping all of our students have positive experiences in their college lives.

About the Author: Dr. Anita N. Lee is a professor and founding faculty of Health Sciences Department, and was Special Assistant to the Dean, School of Education and Professional Studies/Graduate Division at Eastern Connecticut State University. An appointment under which the Student Excellence and Persistence System was developed and administered. She received a Certificate of Merit for the Outstanding Advising Award (Faculty Academic Advising) from National Academic Advising Association (NACADA) in 2018.