Savannah State University 2024
Student body profile:
- Enrollment has been on an upward trajectory with an average increase
- 81% of all students are Georgia residents
- 86% of the undergraduate student population is African American
- Current retention rate 71%
- Percentage of students receiving Pell; 73%, average award is $5,900
Mission:
As the first public historically Black university in Georgia, Savannah State develops productive members of a global society through high-quality instruction, scholarship, research, service, and community involvement. The university fosters engaged learning and personal growth in a student-centered environment that celebrates its African American legacy while nurturing a diverse student body where all are welcome. SSU offers graduate and undergraduate studies including nationally accredited programs in the liberal arts, the sciences, and the professions.
Guided by its mission, the Savannah State CCG/Momentum Year initiative is dedicated to enhancing student success from the freshman year onward. The team's focus on realigning the curriculum to promote the "15 to Finish" approach is central to helping students progress toward timely graduation, thereby reducing the overall cost of earning an undergraduate degree. This initiative also contributes to the creation of a highly skilled workforce and the development of future researchers.
Expanding support services, including tutoring, professional advising, and faculty mentoring, enhances the quality of instruction and provides students with meaningful opportunities for personal and academic growth. These services, coupled with the adoption of high-impact practices, play a pivotal role in fostering well-rounded, capable graduates. Faculty members are also guiding students in exploring career pathways and facilitating course scheduling that aligns with degree progression, while simultaneously helping students develop critical soft skills necessary for success in the workplace.
Furthermore, these key priorities are designed to bolster students' academic achievements and personal development by promoting effective time management strategies and supporting financial literacy, especially in managing student debt.
Success Inventory
Strategy/Project Name:
Expanding Financial Literacy
Strategy/Project Description:
Educate incoming and continuing students on financial literacy. This includes campus activities regarding understanding the FAFSA, financial aid processing, reviewing student accounts, balancing a budget, and making healthy fiscal decisions. These activities are in collaboration with the Center for Student Success and Retention and Housing & Residence Life
Evaluation/Assessment plan:
The SSU Student Financial Service team (Bursar Office & Office of Financial Aid) will deliver a strategic plan for educating the incoming class regarding financial literacy to reduce the number of students on the cancellation for non-payment list at payment deadline. The team will work with FYE courses and the Division of Enrollment Management to implement a plan for student and parent engagement.
KPIs/ Goal:
- 80% of students that attended the FYE course will complete their upcoming year FAFSA by February 1.
- 75% of students that attend New Student Orientation (NSO) will have completed their upcoming year’s FAFSA, completing documents or external scholarships letters to the Student Financial Services team by their NSO session.
- 40% of the incoming student population will be engaged in RAFTr (social media platform).
- 80% of the incoming class will have their balance satisfied by the first Fall payment deadline.
Progress and Adjustments:
Academic Year 2023-2024
- The Financial Aid Office attended all FYE Fall 2023 courses to speak with the first-year students regarding aspects of financial literacy, including when to complete the upcoming year FAFSA. This activity yielded 100% completion rate of completing FAFSA by Feb 1, 2024.
- Out of the students that attended New Student Orientation (NSO) 2023 sessions, 88% completed their FAFSA prior to their respective NSO session.
- For Fall 2023, we do not have engagement data because engagement statistics started Spring 2024.
- 60% of the incoming class had their balances satisfied by the Fall 2023 payment deadline of July 21, 2023. We plan to hire 2 consultants to assist with Fall 2024 financial aid processing.
Academic Year 2024-2025
- The Financial Aid & Registrar’s Offices attended all FYE courses in September to speak with the first-year students regarding aspects of financial literacy, including when to complete the upcoming year FAFSA. Assessment will be conducted on February 2, 2025 to evaluate how many Fall 2024 first year students completed the 2025-2026 FAFSA.
- Out of the students that attended New Student Orientation (NSO) 2024 sessions, 85% completed their FAFSA prior to their respective NSO session.
- 14% of incoming students engaged in RAFTr. Students and parents were emailed an invitation to join RAFTr.
- 44% of the incoming class had their balances satisfied by the Fall 2024 payment deadline of August 9, 2024. SSU requested a cancellation extension due to the 2425 FAFSA delays to September 6, 2024. Based upon Fall 2023 results, we hired 2 consultants to assist with Fall 2024 financial aid processing. 100% incoming class had their balances satisfied by the new Fall 2024 payment deadline of September 6, 2024
Plan for the Year Ahead:
- The Financial Aid Office will attend all FYE courses in October once the new FAFSA opens to speak with the first-year students regarding aspects of financial literacy, including when to complete the upcoming year FAFSA. A coordination with the FYE coordinator will occur to re-align the course module to accommodate this in October.
- The Financial Aid Office will host virtual question and answer workshops with the incoming class regarding financial aid questions specifically targeting the new FAFSA. The recording of one or more of the workshops will be used to cultivate a strategic plan for communicating to the students that could not attend these students so that all incoming students will be educated prior to their NSO session. The Bursar's Office will create educational videos that explain the student account, payment deadline, and how your financial aid changes affect the student account. The Bursar team will work with SSU's Marketing and Student Affairs teams to advertise the education video series prior to NSO sessions.
- SSU will work with IT Services to automate the Banner to RAFTr portal interface to sync incoming student data and automatically load all students into the portal to make introduction to the portal easier. Cross departmental initiatives will be developed throughout Enrollment Management and Student Affairs for a more engaging student experience.
- During New Student Orientation (NSO) 2025 sessions, the Financial Services team will conduct personalized one-on-one appointments to discuss each student's financial plan for paying for college so that students will have their balances satisfied by the first Fall payment deadline. Collaborate with Admissions to include presentation at NSO regarding meeting the payment deadline.
Challenges and Support:
- Staffing structure to support one-on-one personal customer service touch points prior to NSO sessions and payment deadline affected KPI #2 and KPI#4.
- Communication and Marketing plans over the summer when students may no longer be as engaged in university business
Strategy/Project Name:
Reassessing Faculty Mentorship
Strategy/Project Description:
Develop the faculty mentorship program. This program assists students with career exploration, selecting and aligning major electives with their career aspirations, participation with High Impact Practices such as: scholarships, internships, study abroad
Evaluation/Assessment plan:
Evaluation Plan and measures:
- Develop baseline of faculty champions in each College to be trained in Spring 2025
- Secure funding for Faculty Mentorship Program and establish the number of faculty that participated
- Survey for SSU freshman students participating in the mentoring program. (Career exploration and potential High Impact Practices [HIPS]) Exit Survey will be developed and conducted in 12/2024.
- Develop baseline of faculty champions in each college
- Develop baseline of number of students mentored by the end of Spring 2025 (EAB data collection)
KPIs:
- Number of students participating
- Baseline number of first-time freshmen in the Fall 2024 (Exit Survey)
- Number of faculty participating
- Baseline current number of faculty champions and mentors
- Minimum of one training per semester for faculty
- 90-100% of FA24 incoming students enrolled in the term will be coded with a faculty mentor and meet with them at least 1x per term
Progress and Adjustments:
- Deans identified 11 faculty mentors for a pilot across the 3 larger colleges
- Funding has been secured to provide NACADA (National Academic Advising Association) memberships for the cohort as well as attendance at upcoming professional development conferences
- Pilot cohort assessment developed and will have the first meeting to discuss training opportunities (12/2024)
- Some colleges have coded all of their students with Faculty mentors in Banner
Plan for the Year Ahead:
- Create a handbook for faculty mentors. This should be similar in nature to the professional advisor handbook. Should include the role, any training opportunities and any platforms they will be required to use. (Upscaling faculty training)
- Upscale faculty training and develop a schedule for faculty mentors. Training should include Degree Works and note-taking, EAB Navigate scheduling, note-taking and cases.
- Create a survey instrument to allow students to provide feedback on their faculty mentor experience to be used for continued professional development training.
- Ensure all students (new and current) enrolled each term has an updated and active faculty mentor coded in Banner. (Streamline process of assigning faculty mentor for all colleges)
- Ensure every student is meeting with their faculty mentor at least once per term during Faculty Mentor Period.
- Revival of the academic advising council to assist in further developing the communication between faculty mentors, students and advisors
Challenges and Support:
- Student engagement with faculty mentor
- Scale up (in a short time) faculty to be effective with mentoring.
Strategy/Project Name:
Work Readiness, soft skills, professional development for students
Strategy/Project Description:
This project aims to equip students with the soft skills (super skills) needed to succeed in the workplace. Savannah State University (SSU) will implement trainings, activities, and programming to teach and reinforce soft skills development
Evaluation/Assessment plan:
KPIs:
- Participation/Satisfaction rates - Number/percentage of faculty, staff, and students participating in training sessions, workshops, activities, (with High Impact Practices [HIPS] such as guest speakers) etc.
- Skills Assessments - Pre- and post-measures to gauge skills growth
- Soft Skills (Super Skills) Expressed Examples - Samples of student work showcasing applied skills, like presentations, multi-disciplinary projects, case studies as special targeted projects
- Online Program Recognition – with SSU Super Skills for students, certificate awards for short course completion
Progress and Adjustments:
- In 2023-2024 The Center for Professional Excellence targeted faculty and staff (130 faculty and 230 Staff members) with the SSU Super Skills Campaign. During this time, we had one Super Skill released every Monday for faculty and staff to review. We took regular surveys every 6 weeks to see if faculty and staff were reading our vignettes. These emails described a career ready super skill, attached the super skill to a historic African American, and challenged the reader to develop the super skill in their own life career. This campaign yielded 11,520 impact touches/instances. Also, we presented this SSU Super Skill Campaign at numerous conferences to gather feedback from outside institutions. To date, we have several short surveys that were conducted about every 6 weeks. Our data shows that about 60% of our faculty and staff sees the weekly email but only 29% reads the informational narratives. For the year 2024-2025 we are duplicating this work to our student body.
- We will work on strengthening our faculty/student engagement with this project by working on a classroom implementation of Pre and Post lesson measures for several courses:
- HUMN 1201
- ENGL 1101
- ENGL 1102
- AFRS 2000
- We will be looking to our faculty champions in the courses above for help with both classroom implementation and student artifacts collection in the Spring 2025.
- The CPE will create a full-scale incentive with a recognition certification for a completion of a D2L Brightspace course on SSU Super Skills. Students may earn a certification upon course completion with the following deliverables:
- Pre, Self -Assessment
- Written Reflection
- Knowledge Quiz passed by 80%
- Implementation Artifact (sample)
- Post, Self- Assessment
Plan for the Year Ahead:
- Upscale engagement of faculty in supper skill activities beyond the four courses mentioned above.
- Comprehensive tracking of how many faculty integrate super skill activities in their courses, and participate in training workshops.
- Identify a platform with IRPA and career placement office for data collection of High impact practices/career placement Rates
Challenges and Support:
- Support of D2L Brightspace short course on SSU Super Skills (tech support if needed.
- Develop platform to collect student involvement with HIPS such as internships and career readiness
Primary Contact:
Nancy Linden (Center for Professional Excellence)
Strategy/Project Name:
Refocusing the Curriculum to Ensure 15 to Finish
Strategy/Project Description:
Evaluate all program maps in light of the USG Core IMPACTS and update our associate pathway for our two associate degrees (Core in Arts and Core in Science) using the changes/adjustments made to Core IMPACTS. Stabilizing the leadership in the coordination of the curriculum and implementation of FYE.
Evaluation/Assessment plan:
KPIs:
- Updating all degree maps with the Core IMPACT by the end of the fall 2024 semester
- Appointment of a full-time faculty to be the coordinator of the FYE
- Minimum of one training per semester for FYE faculty
- 100% of FYE faculty will ensure that their students received their degree maps, discuss the purpose and how to use them, and have conversations about degree works and its importance to degree completion
- Minimum of one training per semester for facultY
Progress and Adjustments:
- Committee has been developed to review and update the program maps to include CORE IMPACTS.
- A common template has been developed and disseminated to the program coordinators to update.
- The updated program maps were submitted to Academic Affairs by mid-November.
- Review by Academic Affairs will continue until the end of the fall 2024 term.
- A senior full professor in the college of sciences and technology was appointed to coordinate FYE starting fall semester of 2024.
- A training session for all FYE faculty was held in August prior to the start of classes.
- A three-question assessment was developed regarding the KPIs for the FYE faculty. 67% of FYE faculty indicated that their students received their degree maps, discussed their purpose and how to use them, and had conversation about degree works and its importance to degree completion.
- FYE Coordinator will disseminate the assessment to the FYE faculty teaching in the fall 2024 term and discuss the curriculum modules redesign to ensure that the degree maps module is discussed in the first month of the semester and achieve the 100% goaL.
Plan for the Year Ahead:
- Develop an Ad Hoc FYE Committee.
- The committee will review the current FYE course curriculum/syllabus, course evaluations, DWF rates and course correction to gauge the effectiveness of the current course.
- Update the University catalog with the program maps.
- Ensure all faculty, advisors and students are using the updated program maps
Challenges and Support:
Leadership transition across the academic year. Resolution is team training and dedicated time agreed to by current academic leadership (Interim Provost and Deans Council)
Primary Contact:
Andrea Moore (FYE Coordinator and Faculty in COST)
