Results from a project targeting academic progression and completion of minority male students in North Carolina community colleges show that overall retention rates for those students increased by more than 22 percent when actively engaged with a success coach.
Findings from the Minority Male Success Initiative (MMSI), a three-year project designed to increase the progression and completion rate of minority male students, were announced by Watermark, a provider of solutions for higher education institutions.
The study began by assigning a success coach to cohorts of new, minority-male students across 11 community colleges in the North Carolina Community College System. These success coaches conducted proactive outreach throughout the term by utilizing support technology and predictive analytics.
“Our goal is to try to find practices, and hopefully this is one, where I think at the end we can say this is an effective way to catch students before problems arise, assist students to overcome those challenges, and then ultimately as a result of doing so, more students are successful,” said Dr. John J. Evans, Associate Director-Student Life at the North Carolina Community College System. “Retention goes up, graduation rates go up, all those negative academic metrics decrease and we make improvements to students moving forward.”
Over the course of four terms, Watermark found that for new, minority-male, full-time students in pursuit of an associate’s degree, overall retention increased by 22.4 percent when success coaching was implemented. This illustrates the impact on student success and retention when institutions strategically align people, processes, and technology with the goal of improving outcomes for vulnerable student populations.
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