Retention Committee Reports and Updates

May 9, 2005

Dear Colleague:

As part of the current effort to increase student numbers for the Fall, we are asking you to take a few important student outreach steps as we approach the end of the semester. Although no single effort is enough to ensure that we reach our goal of a net increase of 100 students, our concerted activities will help make this possible.

We are all feeling the pressure as we face the mounting stacks of papers, and the competency evaluations that await us, but we are hoping you will add the following simple steps to your end-of -semester routine. These are intended to facilitate communication with your students so that they can use the summer to work on completing any progress reports they received. These steps are as follows:

Once you have completed your evaluations send a group e-mail to your class (of course, individualized ones are even better, but this may be too time consuming!) and...

Inform the students that their evaluations are available. Let them know that they can access their evaluation by going to the Student Support page on the CPCS web site and clicking on the CPCS Wise link.

Remind the students of how to get their work back. It has also come to our attention that many students are not aware that work is generally returned to Student Services, and filed under their name (unless students have given you a self-addressed envelope or you have made another arrangement with them).

Make yourself available to meet with students for a few weeks following the completion of evaluations. This way, you can help students figure out what they need to do over the summer to complete outstanding progress reports. In the email, you should tell students when you are available, and how they can reach you to set up an appointment.


Thanks kindly for you anticipated cooperation in this effort.

Sincerely,
The Retention Committee

April 4, 2005

Hopefully, by now you are all contacting students from the past two semesters who have progress reports with you, to help them figure out how to best complete their work. If you are not yet doing this, please take this as a friendly reminder to begin this effort, so that students have time to complete their work this semester, or make a plan for completing it over the summer. If you are drawing a blank as to what you are supposed to be doing, please see me for a "refresher" packet.

As you are contacting students, it would be very helpful if you could complete the survey (linked). I will also put a copy in your box.

The Retention Working Group is counting on full participation from all evaluators as we seek to ensure that our numbers are up by the start of Fall 2005 -- we don't need to remind you of how urgent this campaign is.

Shoshanna (on behalf of the Retention Working Group)