iPASS Grant Recipients

iPASS II: Educational planning will provide an enhancement of advising conversations utilizing Ellucian Colleague Student Planning, Degree Map II, and Inspire for Advisors. Colleague Student Planning is a web-based solution that helps students clarify, plan, and track their course of study in order to progress more confidently to a degree. Counseling and coaching will be provided using the Civitas Degree Map tool. This is a web-based application that makes it easier for students to chart their education goals, track progress, and remain better informed about time involved and costs. Risk targeting will be piloted through the Civitas Inspire for Faculty and Advisors. These tools use a "student engagement score" based on student activity and predictive analytics to provide recommendations for faculty and advisors. Year 1 Project Update (poster)

iPASS: Bay College is ready to launch a new initiative titled Guided Pathways, which is a national movement to increase graduation rates through the development of clear, guided pathways to completion for students. A design principle of Guided Pathways revolves around integrating planning and advising systems. This work has goals of creating a proactive predictive analytics approach in combination with a dynamic early alert intervention system. Year 1 Project Update (poster)

iPASS: Integrated Planning and Advising for Student Success: Community College of Philadelphia has significantly advanced its technology resources over the past few years in support of achieving the College's student success goals. The goal of the College's iPASS project is to take the next step to fully integrate these systems providing seamless services to students, faculty and staff. The focused outcomes are a fully developed degree audit and academic planning system ( DegreeWorks); a fully utilized communication relationship management system (Hobsons Connect); and a fully implemented retention management solution (Starfish). The development of a single log-in to an integrated system environment will tie all of these systems together, allowing ease of access by students, advisors, and support staff. High level analytics through Civitas Learning will support development and assessment of the iPASS project. This fully seamless and transparent system will support students, faculty, advisors, and administrators in achieving the College's student success goals. Year 1 Project Update (poster)

iPASS STARS: Supporting Technology to Advance Retention and Success: Delaware County Community College is committed to the development of a robust advisement structure supported by technology that will enable advisors to identify at-risk students and target interventions where they will have the greatest impact on student retention and success. The College’s current reporting and analytical tool/portal, Web Focus, will be enhanced and supplemented to create a college-wide dashboard for use by students, faculty and advisors. The implementation and alignment of Degree Works with the innovative TransferCheck (a recently-developed program that supports academic planning from pre-admission through graduation/transfer) will provide planning and advisement tools to further advance the College’s Structured Pathways and enhanced orientation initiatives. The implementation of Starfish and its integration with the College’s Learning Management System will facilitate a richly integrated and seamless system to strengthen student success and completion. Year 1 Project Update (poster)

Expand the Pride: East Mississippi Community College is pleased to engage in iPASS work as a Community Member. We will use grant funding to travel to iPASS convenings and participate in other engagement opportunities. We are in our fourth year of using the DropGuard Early Alert system by Smartevals and our third year of using Student Planning by Ellucian. Our ongoing work is to continue the excellent use of DropGuard and increase faculty buy-in to Student Planning, already embraced by students. These technologies are crucial to an advising reform scheduled for Fall 2017. Year 1 Project Update (poster)

Increasing Impact of Integrated Planning and Advising Services: Montgomery County Community College's vision for this iPASS grant continues to build on the success of our initial IPAS project to meet our Strategic Plan and 2015-2016 goal to: "Continue implementation of integrated planning and advising services with a goal that every entering degree-seeking student complete an education, financial and career plan within their first semester and that this plan will lead to improved retention, progression and completion for new students." This grant initiative extends our educational planning platform to encompass career and financial planning. Predictive analytics will be deepened to integrate additional data elements, providing actionable insights regarding at-risk students and student success, into the existing early alert and predictive analysis systems that improve the accuracy and quality of successful interventions. Year 1 Project Update (poster)

Starfish Student Success Matrix: The Starfish EARLY ALERT and CONNECT systems, rolled out college-wide in fall 2014, have allowed Northeast Wisconsin Technical College (NWTC) to enhance its at-risk cohort advising by adding an outreach component based on leading indicators. Through the Starfish Student Success Matrix project, NWTC will take the support of student success to the next level by developing and using a matrix to be integrated within Starfish EARLY ALERT, CONNECT, and ADVISING. The Matrix will be based on three elements: 1) a student success score based on a student's real-time attributes, 2) predictive analytics, and 3) a student intake survey modified to allow for qualitative feedback regarding non-cognitive factors. By using both cognitive and non-cognitive indicators to prioritize resources and direct efforts to sub-populations of students who can most benefit, NWTC intends to increase student retention, beginning with a documented 10% increase among pilot participants. Year 1 Project Update (poster)

NECC IPAS: Northern Essex Community College is committed to building a system that truly integrates the student success strategies, processes, and technology tools we have already embraced. We will improve technological integration and, more fundamentally, change our processes and organizational structure. We will connect a new data warehouse and data analytics package with existing tools like Starfish Early Success, DegreeWorks, and TutorTrac. Most important, students will experience our student success strategies in a clearer, more consistent way. Year 1 Project Update (poster)

iPASS - Retention and STEM: Patrick Henry Community College in Martinsville, Virginia is pledging to utilize its iPASS system called SAILS (Student Assistance and Intervention for Learning Success), a product of Starfish, in order to increase by 10% the fall-to-fall retention rates for all students. Moreover, it also pledges to increase the annual retention rates for students enrolled in STEM pathways by 10% by the end of the three year grant. To accomplish these goals, the college will focus on strengthening its Guided Pathways approach to advising and will add a STEM coach to the cadre of coaches working within the institution's Student Success Center. The college will also maximize the use of SAILS across all discipline and curricular areas in order to utilize the software's risk targeting and just in time intervention strategies. Year 1 Project Update (poster)

Queensborough Academies Roadmap: QCC has created a visual "Roadmap" for students that will identify critical milestones in a student's college career and point to both college and student strategies that will help students successfully navigate and complete that career. Our goal is to make advisement a college-wide enterprise with key offices and departments stepping in at appropriate points along the student roadmap, reaching out to students as they approach credit milestones, and assisting them in taking the appropriate actions at each stop. We wish to adopt a learning-centered advising paradigm with specific learning objectives centered on what students should learn to do as a result of academic advisement and continue to redefine the role of academy advisers so that they become relationship managers by developing a set of goals for the advising relationship that is centered on connecting students to college personnel to assist them in accessing the resources they need to succeed.

Integrated Planning and Advising for Student Success: Seattle Colleges plan to build on the success of our past and current innovative initiatives dedicated to improving student success. iPASS grant resources will be used for further development and refinement of tools that support educational planning and advising. The two technology tools are an Advisor Dashboard and My Education Plan. Separate resources are supporting Completion Coaches at each college and the purchase of ILLUME from Civitas. The work of these two initiatives will be integrated with the homegrown technology tools to complement our existing systems as well as foster organizational and cultural changes needed to realize the benefits these tools will bring to students. With this grant we will enhance our educational planning systems, increase efficiency in student coaching and advising and improve proactive advising strategies. Year 1 Project Update (poster)

iPASS - Technology Enhanced Advising: Our strategic goal is centered on student pathways to completion based upon best practices and involvement in Achieving the Dream and Texas Completes. The key to this strategy is student-specific data and systems that are able to help identify where every student is in the pathway. We will implement Hobsons Radius and Starfish Early Alert systems so that we may better communicate with students and enhance data management so we can target the best intervention for each student at the most appropriate time. The implementation of an early alert system will require that the college review and reengineer its current advising processes and procedures to ensure response to students' needs is quick and effective. We will collect data through these systems in order to better inform our Predictive Analytics project with Civitas Learning as we strive for the goal of completion for all students. Year 1 Project Update (poster)

GAPP - Guttman's Advising and Planning Project: Guttman Community College's Advising and Planning Project (GAPP) will enhance and integrate our current technology solutions to meet the challenge of building integrative systems as we grow to our target enrollment of 5,000 students. Digication, our ePortfolio platform, is used by all students and is integrated across the curriculum; we want to utilize it further for educational planning. We recently deployed Starfish Early Alert to systematize feedback to students and help them refine those educational plans; we want to build on that feedback, using analytics for more effective academic coaching and counseling and risk targeting and intervention. The acquisition of Starfish Connect and Predictive Analytics will allow us to integrate academic advising and educational planning through the development of Digication ePortfolio modules and analytics reporting. Through GAPP we will increase our capacity to provide student support, develop proactive strategies, and systematize effective advising, coaching, and support practices. Year 1 Project Update (poster)

Connect: Start Smart; Finish Strong: Connections matter. That’s why Texarkana College’s Quality Enhancement Plan, Connect: Start Smart; Finish Strong, will connect students with faculty advisors who know their programs and fields of study, understand the barriers and challenges they face, and are committed to helping them succeed. These connections, combined with a core Learning Frameworks course and an early alert system, will help ensure that students are starting their college experience by making smart decisions and then finishing strong with a degree or certificate from Texarkana College. Texarkana College’s QEP will enhance student success, retention, and completion rates using three primary strategies: Faculty Advisors, Learning Frameworks Class, and Early Alert System. Our goals are to (a) Help students improve academic performance and earn higher GPAs; (b) Make sure students come back from semester to semester; (c) Help students earn a degree/certificate and transfer if they wish to continue their education; and (d) Provide professional development opportunities to meet these goals. Year 1 Project Update (poster)

iPASS: As part of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s IPAS grant in 2013, Whatcom Community College (WCC) implemented a student-facing online degree planning tool and a campus-wide early alert system. The technology has allowed WCC to significantly reduce paper-based forms, streamline the degree planning process, make advising appointments more effective, and provide support to at-risk students. As an iPASS Community Member, Whatcom will continue to scale up efforts in educational planning, counseling and coaching, and risk targeting and intervention. Year 1 Project Update (poster)

Roadmaps for U. Direct: We will implement U.Direct, a student-friendly education planning tool. Our use of U.Direct will combine degree roadmaps for our six largest majors with our student database (PeopleSoft) to provide students in these majors with dashboards demonstrating progress towards degree and requirements that remain to be completed. This will be coupled with a schedule planning tool to determine a student's course-taking pattern. Campus planners should also be able to use this to estimate the future demand for various courses. As we implement U.Direct, we will roll out GradesFirst to enhance communication among faculty, advisors, and students. It will be a component of an early warning system identifying students who need support and then alerting the appropriate offices. Finally, we will expand our use of Tableau to the student level, using historical and demographic data to predict the likely grade students will earn in a particular course based on their past performance. Year 1 Project Update (poster)

iPASS - Increasing Impact of Integrated Planning and Advising Services on Student Success: Colorado State University is implementing a set of data and information tools, including u.direct (College Source), Student Success Collaborative-Campus (EAB), Ellucian Mobile (Ellucian), and Beacon (Campus Labs) all for the purpose of informing and guiding students and advisors in ways that engage interest and motivate action. The iPASS project aims to 1) integrate the data tools into existing or new processes so that they can be used efficiently by users; 2) roll out the systems to students and advisors, first through pilot activities and then for universal use; 3) train advisors on the concept, procedures, and strategic use of tools; 4) train advisors and department heads on the value and use of curriculum and aggregate data tools for curriculum and student pathway analysis; 5) create dynamic student and advisor landing pages that illuminate the pathways to graduation, and 6) assess the cumulative impact of project activities on student success. Year 1 Project Update (poster)

iPASS@FSU: iPASS @ FSU is an initiative to clarify the path to degree completion, coordinate the campus services that facilitate degree completion, and assist students along the path to degree completion at Fayetteville State University (FSU). As an HBCU, FSU serves a population that is less well prepared, less familiar with the college experience, and less wealthy than the national average. The students we serve need excellent academic support and other services. They must also take the most direct path to a high-quality degree. New technologies, beginning with Starfish, will allow FSU to integrate advising, academic support, and other student services into a more powerful success network for each student. Restructuring advising and student services will ensure they work together to promote student success. Training and professional development will guarantee our student success professionals have the skills and knowledge they need to provide the excellent service our students should expect. Year 1 Project Update (poster)

Navigating the Crossroads: Refining an Integrated Student Success System: George Mason University's plan involves flipping academic advising and student support services in the same way innovative faculty have flipped the classroom. We intend to create a central web and mobile application portal. Our decentralized academic advising system now is united by a shared vision and mission and shared expectations for academic advisors. An Academic Advising Effectiveness Specialist promotes excellence in academic advising and supports initiatives designed to improve retention and student success. We are invested in several technologies including Student Success Collaborative, Degree Works, and Campus Labs products (Beacon, Baseline, and Collegiate Link). Academic advisors and university life colleagues have multiple systems and different sign-on requirements. We expect our iPASS solution to put the student at the center of our activity and improve workflow for advisors and university life staff by integrating our existing systems or recommending an alternative system. Year 1 Project Update (poster)

iPASS: Building upon the success of Georgia State University's initial adoption of integrated planning and services using the EAB platform (and branded the Graduation and Progression Success—GPS—system on our campus), the next step for GSU will involve the development and implementation of a cross-institutional model to support transfer pathways from community colleges into undergraduate programs at four-year universities. A three-year iPASS grant will support the expansion of GSU's existing integrated planning and advising system to include student data and academic program information, and nightly student data uploads from GSU's largest transfer partner, Georgia Perimeter College (GPC). The proposed deployment of a single system across multiple institutions will support transfer pathways between the institutions, and generate evidence in support of best advising practices for cross-institutional integrated planning and advising services implementations. Year 1 Project Update (poster)

iPASS as a Cornerstone for MTSU's Quest for Student Success: MTSU's Quest for Student Success was formed in 2013 to focus the collective efforts of the campus to improve student retention and completion rates. Four primary strategic initiatives were adopted: the hire of 47 additional advisors, the redesign of several high-enrolled general education courses, the delivery of extensive tutoring offerings, and the creation of key performance metrics communicated regularly to leaders across campus. MTSU's iPASS project is integrally linked to the four strategic initiatives noted above and include: (1) implementation of SSC Campus, and (2) the addition of DegreeWorks. SSC Campus will permit additional functionality in tracking referrals to tutoring and other campus support programs, and provide enhanced predictive analytics to target and intervene with at-risk students. Application of DegreeWorks will enhance advising, better inform students, provide user-friendly information for degree planning, and reduce time to degree. Year 1 Project Update (poster)

Morgan's "STAR" Enterprise [http://www.morgan.edu/academic_affairs/office_of_student_success_and_retention/starfish.html]: In 2013, Morgan State University applied for and was awarded a $100,000 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for the implementation of IPAS technology. Morgan identified Starfish Retention Solutions for implementation by Spring 2014 and named the new initiative Morgan's STAR (Student, Technology, and Retention) Enterprise. The Starfish Early Alert and Starfish Connect products purchased with the IPAS funding assisted Morgan in two focused areas: counseling and coachin, and risk targeting and intervention. The goals of Morgan's Starfish adoption and implementation were: 1) to increase faculty triggered early alerts; 2) to increase students' utilization of campus resources; 3) to provide seamless, transparent, and user-friendly monitoring and tracking of students in high-risk cohorts; and 4) to provide one online resource where faculty, staff and students can access feedback and action plans for student success. iPASS technology has enhanced advising and provided sophisticated yet user-friendly tracking and monitoring systems for Morgan State University. Now in its 5th semester of implementation, Morgan's STAR Enterprise continues to exceed projections and drive retention rate increases. Year 1 Project Update (poster)

iPASS - Elevating Advising: With the support of the iPASS grant, Northern Arizona University (NAU) will transform student advising and mentoring via unification of our student information streams into a single system that will inform and coordinate faculty and staff interactions with students. Currently, NAU has several independent student information systems including academic advising notes, student affairs records, faculty alerts, a curriculum planner, and Predictive Analytics Framework risk scores. We have purchased a customer relations management software to host all of this information in a single system. A business analyst will be hired to work with ITS, IR, and other personnel to accelerate the technical work. The transformational aims of this project will be reinforced by project leadership, modeling a team approach to student support. The expected results are elevation of our institutional standard for student support and improvements in student progression and graduation achievement, across all sectors of our student population. Year 1 Project Update (poster)

Comprehensive Student Success Program: Paul Smith’s College’s project focuses on integrated technology for advising, student support, and data analytics. The goals are to use data analytics to identify at-risk students early to develop individual success plans; increase our capacity for improved counseling and planning by adding degree planning and course-level competency assessment tools; and provide professional development for advisors and support staff for current and new technologies. Our strategy is to fully optimize existing iPASS technologies currently used for risk targeting, intervention, counseling and coaching (Starfish Retention Solutions®, Ellucian PowerCampus®, TargetX®, AccuSql®, Focus2®, SALT®, MOODLE®, among others) and add a degree planning program to the suite of tools available to improve education planning. Year one of the project will be used for evaluation, optimization, and new product selection.

iPASS: Over the last five years, Ramapo College of New Jersey has undertaken significant initiatives to enhance academic advisement. The receipt of the iPASS grant will allow Ramapo to further enhance its efforts in three key areas: implementing a degree planning software that responds to the myriad of pathways that students follow towards a four year degree, putting greater focus on transfer student advisement through intentional planning earlier in the process and expanding early alerts used with full-time first-time students to transfers, and lastly through enhanced predictive modeling that will allow Ramapo to identify at-risk students earlier and tailor outreach to them. Ultimately through faculty and staff partnerships, Ramapo believes these goals can lead to increased retention of targeted populations towards overall college averages. Specifically, we aim to see increased first-year retention of Hispanic males as well as an increased retention rate of transfer students. Year 1 Project Update (poster)

Integrated Planning and Advising for Student Success in Higher Education (iPASS): The University of Central Florida (UCF) is at a pivotal point of long-term planning. The realization of implementing a mapping and tracking solution will address three functionalities by integrating them into a single, comprehensive IPAS system. The UCF degree audit system communicates requirements (education planning); the analytic instrument (risk targeting and intervention); and the mapping and tracking system (counseling and coaching) will extend UCF's existing degree audit into a more sophisticated real-time structured system. This extension will bring information to students, advisors, and faculty in a more holistic and timely manner. The University anticipates improving engagement, retention and graduation rates of at risk undergraduate students in the 2.0 to 2.59 GPA range by providing: 1) a collective snapshot of progress and a road map to planning for successful degree completion, 2) increasing interventions and alerts for students displaying certain risk factors, and 3) minimizing excess hours to successful graduation. Year 1 Project Update (poster)

Integrating Risk Analytics Tools: Early Alert, Graduation Probability, and Time to Degree: UNC Charlotte's iPASS project seeks to integrate risk information currently siloed in three different systems to better enable advisors to target interventions where they can have the greatest impact. In particular, we will develop protocols to integrate "in-semester" early alert and mid term grade risk information based in Hobson's Starfish system with graduation probability risk data generated by EAB's SSC platform, and time-to-degree assessments derived from Ellucian's Degree Works system. The project will also undertake 'second-order' analytics to better understand the predictive power of this combined risk information and identify risk combinations that are actionable. Finally, the project will analyze how best to convey risk information to students in a manner that changes outcomes for the better; this includes both providing actionable data to advisors and empowering students to assume responsibility. Year 1 Project Update (poster)

iCAN: The University of North Dakota iPASS project, iCAN (Integrated Counseling and Advising Network), will improve academic planning and enhance our ability to advise students and target risks. Our ultimate goal is to significantly increase our retention and graduation rates by providing comprehensive advisement throughout the student lifecycle. This enhanced student experience will start at our summer orientation program, where students will begin to chart their path to graduation. Students will be kept on track throughout their career via automated flagging and implementation of corresponding interventions that are based on vetted methodology and utilize streamlined technologies. This system will begin in the summer of 2016, after UND completes the integration of several technological platforms geared towards predictive analytics, lifecycle management, and student intervention tracking. Year 1 Project Update (poster)

Advanced Tracking Leading to Academic Success (ATLAS): The six-year graduation rate at the University of South Florida has climbed from 48 percent in 2009 to 67 percent in 2014, a rate of improvement that few premier research institutions can match. However, USF intends to drive its student success initiative even higher by fully implementing the Advanced Tracking Leading to Academic Success (ATLAS) system, a suite of tools and practices that will allow advisors to intervene before students veer off track. ATLAS will empower undergraduate students to develop customized academic plans leading to the degrees of their choice. With these plans in place, as well as the predictive analytics platforms developed by Civitas, USF will move from data-driven advising activities that are built from historical reports to interventions based on "live" data. USF will complete ATLAS by incorporating recently implemented predictive analytics platforms into its advising practices and/or adding an additional degree mapping tool into ATLAS. Year 1 Project Update (poster)

UTSA Advising iPASS Project: With the assistance of a prior Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation IPAS grant, we began implementation of several systems to improve advising for both students and campus advisors. This project will continue and expand the capabilities of the EAB SSC Campus and DegreeWorks system to improve the student path to graduation. iPASS will continue improvements with tool usage, streamline our processes, and provide both the student and advisor current data to make informed collegiate career decisions.

Key resources for iPASS implementation include advising centers, academics, the Provost's Office, the Office of Information Technology (OIT), and the Office of Institutional Research. Collaborative efforts between departments will work to provide the EAB GUIDE App and integrate components of EAB SSC Campus and DegreeWorks into the award winning OIT mobile application. Having this information available in a mobile format will provide streamlined, effective advising for our tech-driven students. Year 1 Project Update (poster)

Integrated Planning and Advising Services at a Major Public Research University: Our goal is to initiate a culture change in the University of Washington's community of academic planning professionals. Modeled after successful programs in which we have engaged faculty in the advancement of teaching and learning, we are establishing an iPASS Academic Advising Academy to which advisers and related academic services professionals may apply. Upon admittance, participants will form learning communities focused on integrating information resources and technologies in centralized and decentralized front-line advising and other provisions of academic services.

iPASS: Integrated Planning and Advising for Student Success in Higher Education: WVU is delivering a four-year unified experience called Project 168 that consolidates students' academic, personal and professional development. Project 168 allows students to customize their on-campus college experience in the areas of academics, finance, student life, wellness, service and career preparation. Project 168 takes a holistic approach to student engagement and achievement at the university by going beyond classroom activities and extending to the 168 hours each student has in a week.

Support from this proposal will allow WVU to provide additional assistance to the faculty, staff, and students in the adoption, utilization, and refinement of our integrated planning and advising services system. The system will serve as the "technological glue" for identifying students, engaging the university community, and measuring success. This project seeks to provide an environment in which new data-driven efforts can be created, the impact be measured, and the efforts be refined to better meet the needs of our students. Year 1 Project Update (poster)