Brad Mortensen, President, Weber State University; NWCCU Commissioner
Earlier this fall, Weber State University was recognized by the U.S. Department of Education for our work on improving student success and closing achievement gaps. We were one of 30 Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities schools honored with the Raise the Bar Postsecondary Success Recognition Program.
While being singled out in this manner is truly flattering, it also offers an opportunity to pause and consider how we’ve reached this point, and to contemplate additional work we can do to expand our practices to help even more students.
Access has been and continues to be one of our institution’s core commitments dating back to its beginnings in 1889. When I first reflected on this honor, I was reminded of the faces and names of students, past and present, who personify what it means to make the most of their access to an open-enrollment university like Weber State, and then persevere and earn a college education.
I was reminded of Naheed Davis, whose family immigrated to the U.S. from Guatemala when she was in elementary school, and who initially stopped out of college because of a degenerative eye condition that stole her vision. Naheed never lost her lifelong love of numbers, and eventually, with some of the support measures put in place at Weber State, she returned to college and earned her bachelor’s degree in accounting and master’s in taxation all at WSU.
This honor celebrates the success of Camille Lopez, a student who was discouraged and became disenfranchised with education while in high school, but discovered a new love of learning and self-confidence through our Wildcat Scholar program. As a Wildcat Scholar, she learned time-management skills and gained the confidence to earn a degree in special education while raising three young children, including one on the autism spectrum.
I also see Jessica Stratton’s success reflected in this honor. Fleeing a turbulent homelife, Jessica found herself living out of her car and working graveyard shifts to make ends meet, but she never lost sight of her goal of pursuing an education. Today she is an award-winning student who will earn her degree in computer science next spring.
These are just three examples of the thousands of success stories at Weber State that make me so proud of our institution. I’m sure many of you can point to similar inspirational stories at your schools.
Weber State provides opportunities for students like Naheed, Camille, and Jessica to have a second chance at a college education, opportunities that they might not have at selective enrollment institutions, based on their previous educational struggles.
Yet for every success story like these, I worry about the number of students whose names and stories I do not know. Students who also enrolled at Weber State, but did not find success. Students whose enrollment record is only reflected in anonymous data and charts that show the work we still have to do to further close opportunity and achievement gaps.
As the Department of Education recognition shows, we are making progress on closing those gaps. Our efforts to do so reflect a nearly decade-long process of intentional and systemic changes, informed by data and institutionalized strategically.
This focus didn’t occur overnight. Instead, it’s helpful to view it over several years, and some of the key decisions and metrics that contributed to our improved outcomes.
Early Efforts
In the summer of 2016, Weber State University created a Student Success Steering Committee (SSSC) comprised of leadership and representation from the Academic Affairs and Student Affairs divisions. Two similar committees existed in Academic Affairs and Student Affairs, focusing on access and success of students from socioeconomically disadvantaged and underrepresented communities, and the decision was made to combine these efforts at the institutional level. The idea was to gather individuals who could think critically about these high-level student success issues, help educate faculty, staff, and students about the concept, and guide a process that would ultimately communicate and implement best practices for student success across the university.
The SSSC also led to the creation of Tuesday Tips, a dedicated email sent out every other Tuesday during the semester to faculty and staff with tips and items designed to help students be successful. Some topics included where to go for advising, how to apply for financial aid and scholarships, and other resources on campus to help them achieve their educational goals and well-being. Since 2019, the number of subscribers to this newsletter has more than doubled (2019: 293, 2024: 628), although we would like to see more faculty subscribe.
The university also invested in the Starfish retention tool, which allows faculty to flag students who are not coming to class, turning in assignments late, or struggling with content. Over time, progress surveys and individual outreach have gained momentum as tools that prompt early alert outreach to students. This is one more indication of our efforts to support our students by attempting to understand how they are doing and to proactively help when they are struggling.
In the early stages, the SSSC would meet to discuss various issues related to student outcomes, including identifying successful approaches in some of our academic colleges. Some of our communications during that time frame were aimed at celebrating individuals who were having success, and featuring them on web pages and employee newsletters, including Tuesday Tips, to model the importance of helping students persevere and succeed.
A great example of this occurred during my first year as president. In August 2019, at our annual Back-to-School Breakfast, we asked faculty and staff to respond to a survey where they shared how they individually contributed to student success. Along with some of the responses you might expect from dedicated faculty and staff who work directly with students, employees in landscaping and accounting services also shared how their work supports our students. We highlighted some of the answers in employee communications throughout that school year as a way to further reinforce the campus wide commitment.
Being Intentional
The arrival of a new provost in early 2020, combined with the university undertaking its first strategic planning process in a decade, set the stage for the next step in our evolution. The new university-level strategic plan, Weber State Amplified: A Five-year Plan for Growth, was developed in consultation with key internal and external stakeholders and garnered approval from the WSU Board of Trustees in March 2021.
The comprehensive strategic plan identified five overarching goals and an extensive list of desired outcomes (in hindsight, too many!). A handful of key original goals[1] focused on expanding access and improving achievement gaps, including:
- By Fall 2025, WSU will become an Emerging Hispanic-Serving Institution by growing our percent of students who identify as Hispanic or Latino descent to 15%.
- At the end of their first year, 80% of students, faculty and staff from traditionally underserved populations will report a sense of belonging at the university.
- By the end of AY2025-26, close 8-year completion gaps between the overall student population and specific student populations or interest, including:
- Low-income (Pell-eligible) students: Reduce current 6% gap to 4%
- Students placed in developmental math and English: reduce 28% gap to 20% gap
- First-generation students: reduce 7% gap to 4% gap
- Black, Indigenous, and Persons of Color (BIPOC)/minority students: reduce 12% gap to an 8% gap.
Putting the Plan into Action: Are We the Problem?
As we launched the strategic plan in the Fall 2021, we invited notable student success champion Dr. Tim Renick, National Institute of Student Success (NISS) at Georgia State University, for our back-to-school meetings. We continued to work with NISS for that first half year to develop the Weber State Student Success playbook. The playbook emphasized that we focus on four strategies:
- improving data and the use of our data,
- adding more and better aligning advising,
- developing more proactive financial aid strategies, and
- differentiating how we treat students based on their completion goals.
But most importantly, Dr. Renick encouraged us to look at our structures, our processes, and what we put in place for students, and then to ask, “Are we the problem?”
Noting a decline in critical enrollment metrics post-COVID, we established an enrollment-based task force to look at barriers to enrollment and identify areas of need. The task force, which dubbed itself the “Loonatics,” based on Safi Bahcall’s book Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries, included a variety of faculty and staff from departments across the university willing to undertake the work needed to imagine, create, and deploy tailored student success efforts. They reviewed data during open-enrollment periods to make informed decisions and proactively reach out to students in need, ideally personally connecting with our at-risk students before they stopped out.
Over time, recognizing trends faster has allowed the Loonatics enrollment task force to be even more nimble in responding. Working in this manner has led to a 6% increase in budget-related full-time equivalent over the last three years in our fall-to-fall retention rates, and a 12% jump in 6-year graduation rates over the last five years.
These gains are attributed to a number of key practices, including:
- admitted student and new student orientation initiatives
- semester-to-semester transition outreach
- student melt outreach
- performance- and behavior-based outreach
- returning student campaigns
- student belonging and student well-checks
Changing to Better Support Students
In 2023, we restructured our university to refine our focus on student success, by combining the Division of Student Affairs and the Enrollment Services team into a new Division of Student Access and Success. This division was charged with streamlining services and support for students. The reorganization also involved centralizing academic support areas and programs and services focused on high-impact educational experiences.
That same year, we were selected as a member of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) Student Success Equity Intensive Cohort. With this initiative, we created a team of faculty, staff, administrators, and a student representative to work with other institutions across the nation in designing and refining our goals to eliminate gaps with the intention of capturing the student voice in the data and information we were collecting and analyzing.
We’ve continued to encourage faculty and staff to identify where we as an institution are the problem and where unnecessary barriers for students exist that can be removed. Along those lines, we recently revised our admissions and advising models and restructured our high school dual enrollment programs to ensure we’re focusing on access and success for our students.
Data-Informed Outcomes
Over the last five years, our institution has made significant gains in our student success strategy. In part, we’ve relied on point-in-time and live dashboards to monitor enrollment and outreach strategies actively, and to measure our strategic plan progress and progress on our accreditation metrics.
In the fall of 2019, our first-year, first-time student retention rate was 56%. While our rate has fluctuated a bit over the last couple of years, as of fall 2024 it was 58.2%, representing incremental growth.
We have also made progress toward becoming an emerging Hispanic-Serving Institution, with our Hispanic and Latino student population growing from 11.7% to 13.2% of our overall student body by fall 2024.
Utilizing fall 2019 data, we articulated goals to close eight-year completion gaps as determined by IPEDS outcome measure data for first-generation students from a 7% to a 4% completion gap. As of fall 2023, we met this goal.
We aimed to close our low-income, Pell-eligible, completion gap from 6% to 4%, and our Pell-eligible students now graduate at a rate 0.2% higher than their peers. For students placed in developmental math and English, our goal was to close our completion gap from 28% to 22%. As of fall 2023, this gap is now 22.7%.
For students who identify being from an underrepresented race/ethnicity, our goal is to close the gap from 12% to 8%. This goal has seen less progress than the other identified cohorts of interest but still has positive progress as we have closed to a 10.7% completion gap as of fall 2023.
Keys to Success
We attribute much of this success to a handful of initiatives implemented over the last five years, including Advising, Wildcat Scholars, Intentional Communication Plan, Orientation, and Emerging Hispanic-Serving Institution Efforts.
Advising
In spring 2022, our advising ratio was approximately 620:1, compared to the nationally recommended ratio of 300:1. Additionally, students seeking to change their major, those who completed an associate’s degree but had not declared a bachelor’s program of study, and those who had not been admitted to a selective program did not experience specialized outreach or assistance. To remedy this situation, in the fall of 2022 we hired our first group of first-year exploratory advisors and changed our admission process. Instead of students having to select a program of study if they were uncertain, they could choose one of 12 areas of interest. Overall, we hired 22 new advisors, expanded the number of college advisors, added transition advisors, and increased the capacity for advising in high school dual enrollment programs. As a result, we shrunk our student-to-advisor ratio from over 600:1 to 350:1, which has improved student advising significantly.
Wildcat Scholars
This program is designed to support our most vulnerable students, those who are placed in developmental mathematics and developmental English. A disproportionately higher percentage of low-income (59%) students are identified as Dev-Dev than those who enroll (41%) at the university. The Wildcat Scholars program uses a cohort-based, learning community, corequisite model. Participants, like Camille Lopez, have seen higher first-year retention rates than their counterparts of similar demographics who did not participate. Using this model, we are building out additional first-year learning communities.
Intentional Communication Plan
In 2021, we developed an outreach plan promoting messages aimed at improving student retention. A key component of this is the Mainstay texting and chatbot platform, which we branded as Ask Waldo. Messages promote everything from registration to awareness of student support and financial aid resources, along with intentional text and email interventions such as alerts for low test scores or nonattendance in classes.
Orientation
In spring 2022, we implemented mandatory orientation, which was defined as completing multiple online modules that included information designed to help students succeed in college. In 2024, with the hire of 22 more advisors and the reallocation of other personnel, we added mandatory advising for first-year students. Surprisingly, even with these two new mandatory requirements, we welcomed our largest-ever first-year class in 2024.
Emerging Hispanic-Serving Institution Efforts
Since hiring our Executive Director for Hispanic-Serving Institution Initiatives in 2022 thanks to a gift from Ally Bank, we have evaluated our programs and offerings. In 2024, we received a grant from the Utah Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity to create our Building Puentes, Spanish-speaking and bilingual degree program for undergraduate students. Our headcount for Hispanic and Latino students has grown from 3,540 to 4,103, and our high school dual enrollment offerings have grown from 9% of students enrolled as Hispanic in 2022, to 11.2% in 2024.
Looking Ahead
We are thrilled with how the steps outlined here have helped improve our retention and completion numbers. These strategic and intentional steps have helped the university as a whole embrace our goal of student success.
Naheed, Camille, and Jessica are a few shining examples of what success looks like at Weber State.
But the data and charts show that while we are making progress, more needs to be done. As we embark on our next strategic planning process at WSU, we must never lose sight of the many anonymous individuals who, despite our improved outreach efforts, continue to slip through the cracks and for whom a college education remains elusive.
[1] The first two of these goals were changed in November 2024 as part of the Amplified 2.0 Strategic Plan, as follows:
- We are committed to become an Emerging Hispanic-Serving Institution. Through Fall 2025 we will make positive growth towards having 15% of our student population include those who identify as Hispanic or Latino.
- By the end of their first year, 70% of students will report a sense of belonging at the university, matching the level reported by all students. We will review data disaggregated by different characteristics in an effort to remove barriers to belonging.
