ASCEND Podcast

Many students are figuratively drowning from the weight of their personal lives or scholastic endeavors. They feel lost. They feel alone. They feel hopeless. They are frustrated, confused, and lacking confidence. Many are just crying to be noticed and for someone to simply recognize that they are alive, that they have a purpose, and that someone sees them for who they are. Most faculty and staff a...

Dr. Monica Brockmeyer, Senior Research Fellow, Center for Urban Studies and Associate Professor, Department Computer Science at Wayne State University, joins co-hosts Jared Tippets and Eric Kirby to share her knowledge, wisdom, and insights on how campuses can increase their retention and student success efforts! Monica Brockmeyer, Ph. D., an experienced and pioneering higher education leader and...

A healthy campus culture will have a strong partnership between Academic Affairs and Student Affairs. This is something that most campuses struggle with as sometimes there is a natural tension between Academic Affairs and Student Affairs. While Student Affairs professionals sometimes push too hard and too fast with initiatives, it is important for them to remember that Student Affairs exists to su...

Dr. Russell Lowery-Hart, President for Amarillo College, joins co-hosts Jared Tippets and Eric Kirby to share his knowledge, wisdom, and insights on how campuses can increase their retention and student success efforts! Dr. Russell Lowery-Hart, President for Amarillo College since 2014. Amarillo College was named the 2023 Aspen Prize Co-Winner for Community College Excellence. Russell’s leadership...

A great way to provide support for staff, faculty, and students is to make them aware of the campus and community resources and services that are available to them. Hoping that students remember everything from their orientation or that faculty and staff have the time necessary to research and memorize where to send students for help is not a very efficient strategy. We recommend that campuses pro...

Dr. Karnell “Dr. K” McConnell-Black (he/him) is the vice president for student life at Reed College in Portland, OR.  He has over 15+ years of experience in higher education. Karnell has a bachelor’s degree in communication, a master’s in education, and a doctorate in education. He has served in a variety of professional roles, including coordinator of orientation and first-year programs at Loyola...

Data from the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) suggests that there is a large gap between the percentage of employers that rate recent students as proficient in particular skills and the percentage of students who consider themselves proficient in the same skills. We must do better as educators to help our current students and recent graduates be better prepared to succeed in...

Dan Carpenter, Assistant Vice Provost for Student Success Innovation at Purdue University, joins co-hosts Jared Tippets and Eric Kirby to share his knowledge, wisdom, and insights on how campuses can increase their retention and student success efforts! Dan Carpenter serves as the Assistant Vice Provost for Student Success Innovation at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. In this role he...

We all have a pretty good idea of the data points that signal a student may be less likely to persist or retain. RIGHT? Yet, many campuses have purchased expensive software solutions that promise sophisticated data analysis to predict student retention. And, while we know that these programs work well, we have found that many of these third-party models are not significantly more accurate than hom...

Dr. Stephanie Foote, Vice President for Teaching, Learning, and Evidence-Based Practices at the John N. Gardner Institute for Excellence in Undergraduate Education, joins co-hosts Jared Tippets and Eric Kirby to share his knowledge, wisdom, and insights on how campuses can increase their retention and student success efforts! Stephanie M. Foote is the Vice President for Teaching, Learning, and Evi...

Getting students to do the right thing at the right time can often be a challenge.  Therefore, it is vital that we focus our limited time, energy, and money on those students who need us most, when they need us most. We must discover which students to nudge along, and then find a way to reach those students who do not want to be reached. The right nudges at the right time are a key to success in r...

Dr. Jim Hintz, Associate Vice Chancellor for Student Success, Inclusion, and Belonging at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, joins co-hosts Jared Tippets and Eric Kirby to share his knowledge, wisdom, and insights on how campuses can increase their retention and student success efforts! Dr. Hintz serves as the Associate Vice Chancellor for Student Success, Inclusion, and Belonging at the...

In this episode we share our formula for breaking down silos on campus. One of the key aspects of changing a culture on campus is breaking down the existing silos and getting people to work together rather than working independently. Campuses must become more concerned about the success and persistence of every student than their own departments. Silos and territorialism on campus are created by i...

Dr. Dhanfu Elston, Senior Vice President for Strategy and Chief of Staff at Complete College America, joins co-hosts Jared Tippets and Eric Kirby to share his knowledge, wisdom, and insights on how campuses can increase their retention and student success efforts! Dhanfu E. Elston, Ph. D.  (pronounced: dah-NEE-foo) serves as Complete College America’s Senior Vice President for Strategy and Chief o...

It is important to remember that Generation Z students are much closer with their families and rely heavily on their parents or guardians in their decision-making process (Hundrieser, 2015). As a result, it is very important for colleges and universities to partner with parents in their students success. In this episode we talk about creating a Parent and Family Services office to serve as the sin...

Dr. Paul Dosal, Senior Vice President for Student Success at the University of Central Florida, joins co-hosts Jared Tippets and Eric Kirby to share his knowledge, wisdom, and insights on how campuses can increase their retention and student success efforts! Dr. Paul Dosal joined the University of Central Florida as the inaugural Senior Vice President for Student Success in July 2022.   In this po...

As we have consulted with institutions across the nation, we have found that regardless of the academic reputation or extracurricular experience an institution might have, if students are unable to afford to attend, these students will leave. In this episode, we talk about a number of considerations for increasing the number of student jobs on campus.

Dr. Dale Whittaker, Senior Advisor for Postsecondary Success and Pathways at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, joins co-hosts Jared Tippets and Eric Kirby to share his knowledge, wisdom, and insights on how campuses can increase their retention and student success efforts! Dr. Dale Whittaker has worked for over three decades on the frontlines of public higher education in roles ranging from...

Each semester, during the 2nd week of classes, we work with faculty to report on the attendance status of each student. From this exercise we are able to: (1) clean up enrollment records; and (2) collect the names of students who have not been attending classes. We know from research that class attendance is an extremely powerful predictor of student persistence. Students who regularly attend all...

Dr. Tim Renick, Executive Director of the National Institute for Student Success and Professor of Religious Studies at Georgia State University, joins co-hosts Jared Tippets and Eric Kirby to share his knowledge, wisdom, and insights on how campuses can increase their retention and student success efforts! Timothy Renick is the founding Executive Director of the National Institute for Student Succ...

In our quest to increase persistence and retention, we often spend all our efforts on the “murky middle” (Venit, 2015) or those that we know have a higher propensity to leave. Consequently, we neglect our “high fliers.” This can bite us if we are not careful. Make sure that with everything you do, you take time to praise the positive and recognize those students who do not require a lot of attenti...

Dr. Melinda Karp, Founder of Phase Two Advisory, joins co-hosts Jared Tippets and Eric Kirby to share her knowledge, wisdom, and insights on how campuses can increase their retention and student success efforts! Melinda Karp is the founder of Phase Two Advisory, a small consultancy that works with broad access colleges and universities to apply the research on what works for student success to the...

Generally speaking, campus events cater to extroverted students. They are activities that often revolve around large crowds, high intensity activities, loud music, and/or require a lot of interaction. Knowing that it is important for our introverted students to also engage,  we implemented smaller, more intimate and quiet events to make sure they also feel connected to campus and develop a sense o...

Dr. Bernie Savarese, Acting Vice President for Academic Affairs, Research, and Student Success at the University of Tennessee System, joins co-hosts Jared Tippets and Eric Kirby to share his knowledge, wisdom, and insights on how campuses can increase their retention and student success efforts! Dr. Bernie Savarese joined the University of Tennessee System in 2021 as the associate vice president f...

One of the cultural aspects we believe has had a large impact on increasing the retention and completion rates of our students is getting to know them individually, and ideally by name. We know that students are much more likely to persist and retain when they feel a sense of connection to campus, and one of the easiest ways to help them feel connected is getting to know them.