The University of Maryland Global Campus (UMGC), one of the largest public, nonprofit online universities in the U.S., today announced the expansion of an institution-wide coaching initiative designed to bolster its proven current student success model. In collaboration with national student coaching nonprofit InsideTrack, the university will work to refine and scale up its in-house success coaching program to increase support for online students from diverse and underrepresented backgrounds, including working adults, part-time students and first-time college-goers.
“Meeting the needs of today’s fast-changing workforce and society demands that college leaders continuously ask ourselves what we’re doing to become student-ready, not the other way around,” said Susan Hawkins-Wilding, vice president of student success at UMGC. “The simple fact is that there are many entry points to and through higher education, whether you are a first-time college-goer, a returning learner or a military service member or working adult making a transition in the peak of your career. No matter the circumstance, our commitment to every learner is to meet them where they are—and work to remove obstacles every step of the way.”
To help expand its wraparound support for its highly diverse population of first-time students, the university has engaged InsideTrack, which has served more than 3.2 million learners since its founding in 2001 and has developed a coaching model proven to measurably increase student persistence and graduation. Over the course of five months, professional coaches from InsideTrack will work one-on-one with up to 600 first-time students, helping to provide newly-enrolled students with personalized support needed to persist during the critical first year of study and provide short-term expansion of coaching support to UMGC’s growing number of new students.…Read More