Supplemental Updates for Georgia Institute of Technology - 2024

Academic Year 2023-2024 Updates

Complete College Georgia-Georgia Tech (CCG-GT) Steering Committee. Georgia Tech’s Momentum work is guided by the CCG-GT Steering Committee, a diverse team of cross-campus leaders who provide input for our student success initiatives and promote engagement of our Momentum work across Georgia Tech. Chaired by Dr. Steven P. Girardot, Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education, the CCG-GT Steering Committee meets several times annually to review, refine, and assess retention and completion strategies. The 2023-2025 CCG-GT Steering Committee members serve a two-year term to create stability for our CCG work.

Academic Success and Advising Awards: Annually, the Office of Undergraduate Education (OUE) recognizes the outstanding contributions of faculty and staff who have gone above and beyond to support our undergraduate students and improve retention, progression, and graduation with our Academic Success and Advising Awards. Since 2004, Georgia Tech has formally recognized excellence in academic advising, an integral part of the academic culture at the Institute, ensuring a holistic experience for students. Champions in this work, one staff advisor and one faculty advisor, are honored, highlighting best practices and core values in advising. Kristi Mehaffey, an Advising Manager in the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, was awarded the Outstanding Undergraduate Academic Advisor for staff. Christina Ragan, an academic professional based in the School of Biological Sciences who works with the students, faculty, and staff in the Neuroscience undergraduate degree program, was awarded the Outstanding Undergraduate Academic Advisor for faculty.

New this year, OUE launched the Complete College Georgia (CCG) Champion Award. The CCG Champion Award recognizes one staff or faculty member who has made critical contributions to undergraduate student success, advancing the primary goals of CCG to improve the experience for Georgia Tech’s highest priority students while promoting our institutional values. OUE’s inaugural CCG Champion is Ashton Tomlin, Senior Assistant Director in the Office of Special Scholarships. Ashton joined the Special Scholarships team in 2022, demonstrating her commitment to expanding access to students traditionally underrepresented in higher education by connecting financial aid and holistic student support. She has developed a support program for Tech Promise Scholars, ensuring student needs are fully understood. Ashton is praised by colleagues and students alike for her ability to connect with students and her tireless work to find the resources they need to succeed. The CCG Champion is awarded $1,500 as a token of their contributions to the Institution.

Improvements to Student-Serving Operations and Spaces. The Clough Undergraduate Learning Commons (CULC) is a five-story, 222,000-square-foot hub for undergraduate education that includes classrooms, labs, academic services and student commons areas. Named in honor of former Institute President G. Wayne Clough, it opened in 2011 and serves as an interdisciplinary facility to encourage collaboration and technologically enhanced teaching and learning. CULC is also home to the Office of Undergraduate Education’s ASA and E2L, which underwent an exciting renovation over fall 2023 to revitalize and modernize the office spaces, providing a more dynamic and efficient hub for undergraduate students and staff alike. OUE plays a pivotal role in guiding students throughout their academic journey, providing essential resources, support, and guidance to ensure a fulfilling and enriching university experience. Recognizing the importance of its mission, the decision to renovate its offices demonstrates the Institute’s commitment to continually improving the student experience.

Highlighted Programming for High-Priority Populations. Over the spring 2024 semester, ASA led efforts to identify key collaborators for cross-campus partnerships that are essential to support high-priority students. With an established infrastructure in place, the Expanding Access Team utilized a case management approach to high-priority student support in fall 2024, first focusing on Tech Promise students. The team includes partners from the Office of Special Scholarships, Financial Aid, and GT Strategic Consulting in addition to core members from OUE’s ASA, E2L, and GT Career Center.

As a result of the developing collaborations between departments, Retention & Completion Initiatives and Undergraduate Admission piloted a cost-free asynchronous peer mentoring program over summer 2024 for all incoming Tech Promise scholars called Momentum Mentoring. The G. Wayne Clough Georgia Tech Promise Program is the first of its kind offered by a public university in Georgia. Since 2007, the scholarship has provided a debt-free degree to qualifying students from low-income Georgia families, filling a gap in the financial aid support system by picking up where other scholarships and financial aid options leave off, covering a student’s full cost of attendance. Ultimately, 58 incoming Tech Promise scholars participated in summer Momentum Mentoring, 30 of which were referred to First-Gen Jackets Peer Mentoring program to continue their engagement through fall 2024.

During the spring 2024 semester, First-Generation Student Initiatives matched 100 first-generation students at Georgia Tech with one of 52 employer hosts from the Atlanta region for a shadowing day experience. Activities students participated in while shadowing included an office tour, a meeting with senior leadership, resume review, informational interviews with team members, joining a client meeting, etc. First-generation students had the opportunity to network with professionals, discuss career pathways, and gain knowledge of internship or job opportunities. The First-Gen Shadowing Program at Georgia Tech is designed to expose first-generation students to career possibilities. Often, a shadowing experience can be the first time a student meets with someone from a related STEM field.

OMED: Educational Services. A unit within the Office of the Provost, OMED provides programming to expand access and amplify impact in areas such as recruitment, retention, career readiness, experiential learning, and cohort development for students traditionally underrepresented in STEM, including Black, Latinx, multi-racial, American Indian, women of color, limited income, and first-generation students. In 2023-2024 OMED reached 2,868 students through a slate of programs and initiatives to meet the above aims.

Recruitment and Orientation Programs:

OMED offers two summer bridge programs to enhance student’s success as they transition from high school or home institutions to Georgia Tech.

1) Challenge, a six-week summer residential program for first-year first-time high priority students, served 115 fall-enrolling participants in 2023. Challenge students earned an average GPA of 3.27 with 77% earning a 3.0 or better in their first fall semester. African American/Black Challenge students earned an average 3.31 GPA, significantly higher than the Institute average for matriculating Black students. Early orientation relationships and methods produced 508 OMED mentoring connections the following Fall.

2) Tech 411, a one-week residential program for first-year high priority transfer students from HBCU, MSIs, HSI, and USG partner institutions supported a diverse group of students, including 41% women, 6% non-binary, 71% Black, 35% Latinx, 45% from the Engineering Transfer Pathway, 6% from the Arts & Sciences Transfer Pathway, and 59% regular transfer students. Participants engaged in a System of Success Workshop and an Academic Success Workshop Series.

Academic Enrichment & Retention Programs:

OMED provides academic enrichment and support through a variety of academic initiatives that match faculty, staff, senior undergraduate students, graduate students, resources, and tools to undergraduate students in core STEM curriculum courses, courses with high DFW rates, and areas of significant disparity between underrepresented students and majority student populations.

1) ILARC/Tutoring served 555 unique students in AY 23-24 through OMED’s drop-in tutoring, garnering 3,512 in-person visits. Additionally, ILARC tutoring and advising services were expanded to include research-based study sessions based on DFW rates in Math and NPHC fraternities and sororities academic performance. In response, OMED launched Math Mastery Study Sessions in the College of Science in partnership with the School of Mathematics and Soulful Study Sessions in collaboration with the Department of Sorority and Fraternity Life to incorporate music therapy and information processing techniques into academic support.

2) OMED diminishes financial barriers that impede student academic performance and retention. In AY 23-24, OMED’s Academic Empowerment Awards and Completion Grants of 2024 awarded $128,100 to 75 high priority students. Additionally, 20 students from HBCUs and MSIs received $9,600 in transfer empowerment stipends. Challenge participants were awarded more than $20,000 based on their academic performance in Challenge.

OMED also maintains a portfolio of mentoring programs including Edge, which matches incoming first-year students with upper-class students by major/incoming pathway, and Peer-I-Scope, which expanded its operations in AY 23-24 to provide peer mentorships for transfer students. The unit’s three-week Career Immersion Program matches limited-income students with Industry executive mentors, student peer career coaches, career center advisors, and STEM career shadowing, research, internship, or co-op experiences through a strategic intake process and customized professional development curriculum. The 2023 cohort achieved 100% industry executive matches and 56% percent secured a paid internship or co-op within six months of program completion.

High Impact Learning Initiatives.  Georgia Tech offers high-impact curricular and co-curricular opportunities to promote active learning practices and enhance academic development. According to the Association of American Colleges and Universities, these teaching and learning practices have been widely tested and found to have a positive impact on student retention, engagement, and sense of belonging. Among the options for Georgia Tech students are a first-year seminar (GT 1000), transfer student seminar (GT 2000), numerous living-learning communities, an undergraduate research program, a study abroad program, and career-engaged experiential learning opportunities (e.g., internships, co-op, and service learning).

Participation levels in these optional high-impact programs are significant. In 2023-24, nearly half of all incoming first-year students participated in the first-year seminar, GT 1000 (n=1,802), and 98% of these students were retained to fall 2024. Over summer 2023, fall 2023, and spring 2024, 284 transfer students enrolled in the transfer student seminar, GT 2000.

Through the Career Center, undergraduates participating in Georgia Tech’s co-op/internship gain in-depth professional experiences, putting into practice what they have learned in the classroom. The Undergraduate Co-op Program is a five-year, academic program designed to complement a student's formal education with alternating semesters of full-time paid work experience directly related to the student's academic major. Table 3 shows the student participation in the co-op program and six-year graduation rate for participants in the fall 2011 cohort through the fall 2017 cohort.

The Internship Program is an academic program designed to complement a student’s formal education with practical work experience. The internships are single-semester, major-related full-time, or part-time work experiences that help students better understand the “real world” applications of their academic studies. Table 4 shows the student participation in the internship program and six-year graduation rate for participants in the fall 2011 cohort through the fall 2017 cohort.

Engaging in these real-world work experiences strengthens students’ progression towards graduation. For the fall 2017 cohort, 98% of the students that participated in either co-ops or internships graduated in six years, compared to the overall graduation rate of 93%. Similarly, 98% of students in the 2017 cohort that participated in undergraduate research graduated in six years.

During 2023-24 Georgia Tech continued its commitment to learning communities, hosting six communities for first-year students (four year-long communities, the summer launch community, iGniTe, and First-Year Semester Abroad) and two for upper-level students (Women, Science, and Technology and the International House). Additionally, Transfer-Year Experience, a self-selected living options to help new transfer residents access the services and resources that are relevant to their current needs, was offered. Nearly 400 first-year students participated in the summer iGniTe program in summer 2023 and 730 students took advantage of the four year-long communities (Explore, Grand Challenges, Global Leadership, and Honors Program).

Tutoring & Academic Support. As a part of Academic Success and Advising’s (ASA) mission, our Tutoring & Academic Support (TAS) program supports undergraduate students in achieving their academic goals through a range of both personalized and campus-wide initiatives that center students as our top priority. Our programming strives to foster self-regulated learning, enhance academic skills, and create opportunities for leadership and continued development within and beyond Georgia Tech's rigorous environment. In AY 2023-24, more than 9,000 students received academic support at TAS through peer-to-peer collaboration in 1:1 tutoring, Peer Led Undergraduate Study (PLUS) sessions, and drop-in visits. Table 5 displays the utilization of TAS programs over the last academic year.

Additionally, a partnership with Knack, a third-party provider for tutoring facilitation, allowed us to leverage technology in new ways to better meets students’ tutoring needs. Knack is both a booking platform for students to schedule course-specific peer-to-peer tutoring services and a service to onboard and train Georgia Tech students who are hired as peer tutors. Tutoring is completely free, and appointments take place online. Knack and Georgia Tech started a partnership in the 2022-2023 academic year focused within the College of Engineering. The program launched spring 2023 and supported all undergraduate engineering courses. In the summer of 2023, the program expanded to include all undergraduate courses except for special internship/co-operative education courses, special project/topic courses, and English.  Since summer 2023, the program has continued with this scoping and supported all undergraduate courses.

Observations and Next Steps

The Institute’s graduation rate strategy is a phased approach, scaffolding data-informed student success interventions progressively to increase the percentage of students in the fall 2024 cohort graduating in four years with an observable impact in spring 2028. Much of this work in centralized with in the Office of Undergraduate Education (OUE). As part of OUE’s strategic alignment planning process, Academic Success and Advising (ASA) conducted an alignment review across the past six months. This review examined relevant practices in advising and academic support at other R1 universities and analyzed input from internal and external stakeholders, engaging all ASA staff.

Led by Executive Director Lorett Swank, ASA’s structure includes Academic Success, Retention and Completion Initiatives, First-Generation Student Initiatives, Specialized Advising, and Advising Operations and Engagement. As a result of its new organization, ASA has identified opportunities to align important student success functions in order to amplify their impact on student success and Institute priorities. For example, Momentum activities for the year and ASPIRE strategies were strategically aligned and reconceptualized to extend beyond the spring 2024 semester, cultivating synergy between our Complete College Georgia work and institutional priorities around student success. Advancing a cohesive vision for student success across the Institution has been a major success in the past year.

In addition, a new Undergraduate Advising Operations and Engagement team has been created within the ASA unit to support cross-campus undergraduate advising projects. This work will come with its challenges as academic advising at Georgia Tech has historically operated independently, siloed within the academic departments. The director for the new advising operations team will strategically implement Georgia Tech’s new advising software tool, EAB Navigate360, as well as ensure best practices, collaboration, and cooperation within our “unique and united” campus advising community. 

As we look forward to further advance student success at Georgia Tech over the next year, strategic collaborations are paramount, both internally between Georgia Tech departments and outwardly as we create partnerships externally as well. Internally, Georgia Tech is preparing for the Institute’s 2025 reaffirmation of accreditation with the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC). As part of SACSCOC Reaffirmation of Accreditation, Georgia Tech is in the process of planning its next Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) entitled Leaders in Progress and Service: Creating Intentional and Transformative Learning Experiences. "Progress and Service” is the directional purpose of a Georgia Tech education and, from its founding, the Institute has recognized the transformative potential of experiential learning—learning by doing. The heart of the topic is the creation and implementation of a new credential that activates Tech’s mission to prepare students to advance technology and improve the human condition. An important aspect will also be a focus on students who may be less likely to participate in existing high-impact practices like under-resourced, income-limited, and first-generation students. 

Externally, the Tri-University Collaborative for the equitable attainment of engineering degrees is advancing its work towards a coalition charter and identification of external funding. Additionally, the Office of Undergraduate Education and the division of Enrollment Management are collaborating in an exciting cross-USG partnership funded by the American Talent Initiative. The Atlanta Bridge Program, a partnership with Atlanta Metropolitan State College (AMSC), provides a cohort-based transfer opportunity for academically talented students to earn a Georgia Tech degree. Beginning in fall 2025, a cohort of 40 to 50 students will be selected to participate in the bridge program. Students begin their studies at AMSC and will complete the required coursework to transfer to Georgia Tech within four academic semesters. After successful completion of coursework, including a GT seminar course offered at AMSC, students will transfer to Georgia Tech to complete their four-year degree. During their time at AMSC, students will receive academic advising and support from both institutions. Co-curricular programming, including networking, mentoring, and cohort building activities will be provided on each college campus to enhance individual and group success.