On June 1, 2025, Georgia Tech launched Navigate360, a new digital platform designed to support academic advising, streamline student success efforts, and strengthen collaboration across campus. Built by EAB, Navigate360 serves as the Institute’s primary student success management system, bringing together advisors, faculty, and support staff in service of a more connected and proactive student experience. The launch represents a major milestone in Georgia Tech’s ongoing efforts to improve the undergraduate experience by enhancing the tools, processes, and partnerships that support students from orientation through graduation. Furthermore, using powerful data disaggregation and straightforward communication tools to reach students, Navigate360 provides us with the opportunity for continuous improvement of our retention interventions and early alert program.
Georgia Tech’s portfolio of retention interventions has historically included the following:
|
Intervention |
Frequency |
Purpose |
|
Non-Registered Student Survey |
Annually, during summer, using fall registration data |
Contact students who are not registered for the upcoming academic year, identify barriers to registration, and connect to resources accordingly. |
|
Summer Letter Campaign |
Annually, during summer |
Contact students who have just completed their first academic year at GT on academic warning or academic probation. Notify students of academic standing, explain the policy, and provide information about academic support resources. |
|
Non-Continuing Student Survey |
Annually |
Identify primary reasons students in good academic standing leave the Institute and to identify those who may need assistance to return to Georgia Tech. Students reenrolling are assisted individually. |
|
Midterm Progress Report (MPR) |
Every fall and spring semester, when 40% of the term is complete |
Alert students in 1000- and 2000-level courses they are off track academically. MPRs are communicated as S-Satisfactory or U-Unsatisfactory. Academic advisors and academic support specialists intervene accordingly. |
|
Enrollment Campaign for Success Seminar (Students on Academic Probation) |
Every fall and spring semester, during add/drop period |
Invite eligible students to register for GT 2100-B: Student Success Seminar to support their academic recovery and share benefits of the course. |
- MPR Submission Compliance Rate: In Spring 2025, the submission deadline for MPRs was not extended with 99.95% of midterm grades reported, ensuring students and advisors had time to act on a midterm U before the withdrawal deadline. In Fall 2025, we again maintained the submission deadline with only 88 of 50,170 required midterm grades unreported representing a compliance rate of 99.8%. While the submission rate dropped marginally, near complete compliance represents the continued effectiveness of the multi-audience communication strategy.
- Existing Outreach Portfolio: We aimed to execute 100% of retention intervention in Navigate360 after June 1, 2025. While this goal was met for messaging campaigns and appointment campaigns, survey campaigns are not yet rolled out for all users. As such, the Summer 25 Non-Registered Student Campaign was conducted a hybrid using the messaging capability of Navigate360 and a Qualtrics survey.
- Campaign Effectiveness and Engagement: Pilot Navigate360 campaigns established baselines for campaign metrics, and the following targets were established:
- 20% click-to-open rate.
- 50% of opened emails also click links.
- 10% appointments scheduled and attended.
- 100% of appointment summaries created.
- Improved Academic Self-Efficacy and College Navigational Skills: Of students who meet with an academic coach, the following targets were established:
- Coach supported students participate in two or more support services at rate 40% higher than their comparative counterpart.
- 75% of students report that coaching impacted their decision to participate in student support services.
- Students grow substantively in academic efficacy from matriculation after working with an academic coach.
- 90% of students report increased confidence in their ability to address the academic risk indicator prompting academic coaching (academic standing, midterm progress report, etc.)
Using Navigate360, we can develop proactive and agile data-driven interventions that drive student action rather than relying solely on informational campaigns with no resource utilization feedback. As of Fall 2025, the following retention interventions have been reimagined and modernized:
|
Updated Interventions |
Updated Approach |
|
Summer Letter Campaign is now Academic Standing Coaching Appointment Campaign |
Over Summer 2025, all students on academic warning and academic probation were invited to participate in academic coaching to develop new strategies for success before the fall term. The following baselines were established:
We will compare academic outcomes in Fall 2025 for students that utilized academic coaching serving to those who did not. |
|
Non-Continuing Student Survey is now First-Years Not Retained Analysis and Outreach |
New in Fall 2025, we conducted an analysis of students in the Fall 2024 cohort not retained. Using shared advising notes, it is no longer necessary to ask students to provide the context of their stop-out or transfer. Additionally, we identified students that are possible to retain and are conducting outreach to those students to provide reenrollment support. |
|
Midterm Progress Report (MPR) |
In Spring 2025, we executed a three-pronged communication strategy targeting multiple audience impacting the success of the early alert intervention, requiring cooperation from several campus partners. The communication strategy included: Faculty Outreach Campaign Deployed
Student Awareness Campaign Deployed
New Academic Advisor Tools
In Fall 2025, the three-pronged communication strategy was replicated, and we launched an appointment campaign to 780 students with 2 or more Us for academic coaching. All 2,233 students with one MPR U were invited to attend drop-in midterm coaching (attended by 10 students) and provided a video resource coaching students through taking action on a midterm U (viewed 40 times by 31 unique users, including ~5 advisors). As an additional layer of support, students that received a U in Physics I/II and Calculus I/II were included in a messaging campaign sharing tutoring and group study services available for these specific courses. |
|
Enrollment Campaign for Success Seminar (Students on Academic Probation) will be expanded to include first-year cohort students on academic warning after their first fall semester |
Our analysis of first-year cohort students that were not retained into their second year revealed several students ended their first fall semester on academic warning. This trend reveals an opportunity to intervene earlier for students struggling academically with a semester-long supportive academic skills development seminar. We are considering requiring the course for students on warning or probation during their first year, but minimally, our enrollment campaign will be expanded beyond probation for freshmen. |
Professional academic coaching has been reorganized into Retention and Completion Initiatives, maximizing the service’s potential as an intervention for at-risk students. We plan to hire a second full-time academic coach by the end of the Fall 2025 semester and identify, define, and operationalize at least five data-informed academic risk indicators to prioritize in the coaching intervention. Over the course of the next year, we intend 75% of the professional academic coaching appointments held to support students with a defined academic risk indicator with measurable improvement/effectiveness of the service. Furthermore, a peer academic coaching program will be piloted during the Spring 2026 semester to provide a tiered level of academic support in partnership with Retention & Completion Initiatives and Learning & Academic Success Initiatives. Peer academic coaching will provide an outlet for students experiencing moderate or specific concerns to engage with coaching support while scaling professional coaching services for critical indicators and complex student cases.
Georgia Tech’s portfolio of retention interventions will undergo continued refinement throughout the coming academic year to meet student needs and generate students’ agentic actions. New campaigns and interventions will be data-driven and measurable to allocate resources effectively.
As Navigate360 improves our ability to communicate directly with students and eliminates barriers to students setting appointments with student success professionals, our capacity to meet this new demand is quickly reaching a ceiling. For example, very few students with 2 or more Us included in our Fall 2025 midterm referral to academic coaching were able to get an appointment. An operational oversight, coaching availability was nearly completely booked before the campaign was launched. As a lesson learned, we will block substantial appointment availability at the beginning of the term during the midterm period. Additionally, we hosted a drop-in midterm U advice session, serviced by advisors, coaches, and learning specialists across Academic Success & Advising with increased student participation. We will continue to examine ways to build capacity during critical points in the semester by mobilizing teams beyond academic coaching.
The academic advising community with academic units is reporting a similar strain on capacity. Navigate360 empowers the Institute to track utilization of academic success services and mobilize human resources to meet demand, which is a significant operational improvement for Georgia Tech
