Running head: STUDENT SUCCESS AT THREE CALIFORNIA UNIVERSITIES 1

Student Success at Three California Universities

Eli Heller

Seattle University
STUDENT SUCCESS AT THREE CALIFORNIA UNIVERSITIES 2

Student Success at Three California Universities

Examining Best Practices

The ways in which student affairs practitioners at Occidental College, the University of

California Los Angeles (UCLA), and California State University Los Angeles (CSULA),

respectively, conceptualize and define student success, specifically with regard to retention and

degree completion rates, vary drastically. At Occidental College, a small liberal arts institution

with only about 2,100 total undergraduate students, student success is measured in terms of a

students potential for success after their time at Occidental, whether this concludes with

graduation or not. While Occidental has a high graduation rate (about 87%), Dr. Vivian Garay

Santiago, Director of Student Success at Oxy, stressed the fact that student success cannot be

measured in terms of graduation, as the small size of the institution often leads to a hand-

holding approach for students experiencing difficulties that might have negatively impacted

their chances of graduating. Since the staff to student ratio is so low and student difficulties are

noticed and almost always caught and addressed before they become serious, if a student

graduates from Occidental, but needed a significant amount of individualized attention from

several different professionals just to achieve this, he or she may not be successful after

graduation.

At UCLA, an institution with a very large student population and a wide range of diverse

racial, sexual, gender, age, transfer, ability and other identities represented, as well as a

significant transfer population of about 7,000 students, who bring an equally diverse range of

capital, life experiences and situations that present barriers to their graduation, graduation is a

better measure of student success than at Occidental. Yet because of the extremely competitive
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nature of admission into the university (the acceptance rate is under 20%), competition among

students, particularly in the STEM disciplines, and the extremely high expectations students have

for themselves (and mental health struggles they experience when they do not succeed

academically) graduation is still limiting as a measure of student success. According to Dr.

Corey Hollis, Director of Academic Advising for the College of Letters and Sciences, many

students at UCLA view college as a means to an end, and even if they are able to earn

outstanding grades and achieve their post-graduation goals, they are not reaching success at the

university if they are not engaging with campus and with faculty. Paolo Velasco, Director of the

Bruin Resource Center, which houses an array of resources for diverse student populations,

added that many students experience such a poor quality of life during their time at the university

in order to achieve satisfactory grades, that such instances cannot be considered student success

either.

Finally, at California State University Los Angeles (CSULA), where around 80% of

students are the first in their families to attend college, the population of students enrolled in the

in-house, low-income only Education Opportunity Program (EOP) is about 4,000, almost all

students commute to campus and work either full time or part-time in addition to their studies,

and students of color make up the majority of the student population, degree completion and

graduation from the university are the most accurate measures of student success. Due to the

wide variety of barriers toward achieving degree completion at CSULA for most students,

practitioners working there define student success in terms of graduation.

My own definition of student success in higher education is a commitment, across all

academic departments, offices, faculty and staff, to assessing, under what conditions, students

will maximize their learning experiences both inside and outside the classroom, in order to
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succeed professionally and personally after their time the university. This can be achieved, as

Kuh (2015) explains, through linking assessment and other educational processes, such as

program and curriculum review, planning and budgeting (p. 80) and by keeping the focus of

assessment on learning. In regards to inclusive excellence, since what each individual student

enrolled in higher education needs to in order to succeed and benefit from their education after

graduation differs widely depending on institutional type and the students identities, student

success also means a commitment to multicultural competence, social justice, and supporting

diverse student populations, including commuters, nontraditional students, veterans, dreamer

students, and other disadvantaged populations, among all faculty and staff on college campuses.

Overall, at the highest level, evidence of student learning gathered from assessments must be

utilized to a high extent in order for students to be successful. This would incorporate the

improvement of policies and practices that have a strong effect on institutional decision-making,

problem identification, faculty development, course revision (Kuh, 2015, p. 217) and other

factors that determine the level of student learning taking place on college campuses among all

populations.

At CSULA, the university-wide initiative Fifteento- Finish established the current

goal for all students at the university to enroll in a minimum of 15 units in order to graduate

within 4 or 5 years. Most students who do graduate from the university often take up to 7 years

to complete their degrees due to financial and time management-related barriers that result from

commuting to campus from many miles away or working at least one full time or part-time job

off campus. Dr. Janet Lopez, Director of Student Success for the College of Business and

Economics, explained that taking this much time to complete a degree could be detrimental to

students later on, as it delays them in finding a job that provides a stable income. Yet, on the
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other hand, many students at CSULA do not have the academic preparation or time to

realistically achieve success in 15 units per semester and a student who graduates from the

university within 4 years, yet with a low GPA, has a much lower chance of finding stable

employment after graduation than a student who graduates in 6 or 7 years with a higher GPA. Dr.

Lopez also mentioned that these challenges make it very difficult for CSULA to prepare students

well for the workforce, and that employers usually perceive CSULA students as underprepared

for jobs in finance, accounting, marketing and other business-related fields. She also mentioned

that the tension between students demanding work schedules and achieving the Fifteen-to-Finish

initiative has caused tension between student affairs staff and business faculty, including

situations where it is impossible to tell whether students poor grades are due to faculty making

their courses too difficult for students to perform well, or to students being underprepared or

simply not having enough time in their schedules to devote to studying and assignments.

Finally, Dr. Lopez mentioned that it would benefit students immensely if on-campus

recruitment (the process through which employers visit college campuses to recruit continuing or

graduating students, particularly those in STEM and business majors, for either full-time paid

internships or full-time employment) had more visibility on campus and more campus-wide

promotion, as it does at neighboring universities such as UCLA and USC. On-campus

recruitment is done on a smaller scale at CSULA, with individual departments (such as Finance)

in the College of Business and Economics inviting employers to campus to recruit students. A

stronger awareness of on-campus recruitment, and the possibility of beginning a full-time paid

position in a field directly related to students coursework could drive student motivation to

follow the Fifteen-to-Finish initiative, graduate in fewer years, and find professional success

thereafter.
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The Fifteen-to-Finish initiative could be strengthened in its current context at CSULA

and applied to other institutional contexts if more required classes for majors in STEM and

business were scheduled to meet at night or on weekends to accommodate students work

schedules. On a deeper level, it would benefit CSULA students if they were allowed and

encouraged to count their current work experiences for credit toward their coursework at the

university. Incorporating experiential learning requirements into STEM and business

coursework by allowing students to count their current employment toward academic

requirements would also allow students extra time to study for rigorous courses, such as calculus,

that are required for most of these majors. Further, it would benefit commuter students greatly if

faculty would validate and appreciate students leadership experiences off campus, professional

and otherwise, because often, these students sole interaction with campus professionals may be

in the classroom (Kodama, 2015, p. 49). Finally, this practice could both be applied to other

institutional settings and strengthened at CSULA, if STEM and business major coursework were

assembled in ways that directly relate to specific jobs. For example, professionals in finance

could visit finance classrooms to explain how understanding a financial concept, such as capital

budgeting or investments, is necessary to work professionally in the field. This could drive

motivation to complete as many classes as possible in a given term at any institutional type.

The Fifteen-to-Finish initiative relates most significantly to SDA learning outcomes # 1

and # 4. In regards to learning outcome #1, the need for an initiative that encourages students to

complete at least 15 units every academic term (which only 1-2 decades ago would have been the

expectation of all students in higher education) demonstrates the changing nature of higher

education. The number of students that experience a traditional university education, including

living on campus and not working to support themselves during their college years, is decreasing
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rapidly. It is important for all emerging student affairs professionals to understand how

universities can support nontraditional, commuter, and working students, which are all

represented widely at CSULA. The Fifteen-to-Finish initiative thus also, in turn, relates to

learning outcome #4, in that it serves to help students reach their professional goals sooner,

bringing justice to those of diverse socioeconomic backgrounds.

At UCLA, the current practice of hiring more teaching professors, whose primary roles

and responsibilities are to teach heavily impacted and challenging courses, such as calculus and

physics, which are required by several academic departments, rather than professors whose

primary focus at the university is to conduct research, was established with the goal of helping

more students achieve success in these difficult courses. Because of the extremely competitive

nature of admissions at UCLA, and the high level of competition among the thousands of

students who take such classes at the university, hiring more teaching professors would

compensate for the differing levels of academic preparation that students entering the university

possess, including the wide range of resources and social capital to which students had access

prior to their arrival at UCLA. Hiring more faculty members to focus specifically on teaching

would also change the format of such classes, making them more discussion oriented. One

increasingly popular model at UCLA, according to Dr. Hollis is the flipped classroom model,

in which students first view videos of a lecture, and break off into individual discussion groups

during class time to review the material together and practice what they have learned.

There are a wide variety of barriers to overcome in order for this specific student success

initiative to be most successful. First, as I learned from Mr. Velasco, at the highest level, UCLA

attracts more funding and prestige from hiring top faculty to conduct research at the university,

and whose primary objective is to publish or perish, rather than faculty who are hired primarily
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to teach. Thus, in some respects, hiring more teaching faculty is a financial risk that the

university as a whole does not feel is worth taking. This manifests in the fact that some

departments are willing to alter curriculum and syllabi to accommodate students learning needs,

an arduous and time-consuming task that may cause initiative fatigue for those involved, while

others are not (Kuh, 2015, p.184). Second, simply offering professional development

opportunities for research faculty to improve their teaching competencies is not an effective way

to improve student learning and success because faculty are autonomous and generally do not

show much interest in participating in these sessions, as Dr. Hollis explained. Finally, in order

for students to benefit from teaching faculty, they must also adjust their expectations from the

university, learn to cope with disappointment and accept the possibility that they will experience

academic difficulties, understanding them to be at least partially due to the overwhelmingly

competitive nature of pursuing a STEM-related major or pre-medical focus at UCLA, rather than

a lack of academic capability on their part. Several studies in recent years have demonstrated the

seriousness of the current mental health crisis, with academic pressure being one of the

contributing factors. Stress due to academics has been heightened by high grade expectations,

the gap between academic expectations and reality and the millennial generations inability to

cope with failure (Kruisselbrink Flatt, 2013, p. 1). UCLA students who are excluded from

competitive majors must learn to reconstruct themselves and restore their confidence in their

abilities, often by applying themselves to coursework outside of STEM or pre-med. Student

affairs staff can assist with these transitions by developing stellar student counseling skills.

This practice of hiring more teaching faculty at a research university like UCLA could be

strengthened if more departments were cooperative and open to conducting formal assessments

of how students in challenging, impacted courses learn best, and utilizing data to teach such
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courses in ways that make it easiest for students to learn. Kuh (2015) cites faculty engagement

with the assessment process as the most significant challenge to effective assessment because

active engagement in assessment in most schools and departments is borne by only a few

faculty members who are genuinely interested in the process (p. 136). Yet a campus-wide

commitment to assessment practices could accommodate for the differing levels of academic

preparation with which students in impacted majors enter the university. Faculty therefore must

be open to experimenting with different teaching formats, including the flipped classroom model,

and administering surveys to students, to assess which instructional methods are most helpful to

their learning. A study conducted by Jacob Enfield (2013), a professor at the neighboring

California State University Northridge (CSUN) found that students enrolled in his web design

course largely appreciated the flipped classroom model of the course, as it allowed them to learn

independently and at their own pace, both prior to and after class meetings, and freed up class

time for learning activities that provided students opportunities to practice what they learned

and apply that knowledge to different situations (p. 15). This example demonstrates how the

flipped-classroom model of classroom teaching could be applied at a large, state university, in a

non-research context, as well as in a wide variety of academic disciplines. There is plenty of

room for further research on which aspects of a flipped classroom model work best in each

discipline.

UCLAs teaching professor hiring practice most relates to SDA learning outcome #9

because it demonstrates the issues surrounding finance and governance that prevent the

university from prioritizing student learning from the upper level administrations perspective.

The university generates the most revenue from attracting well-known research faculty, rather

than hiring teaching professors, so it will always prioritize research instead simply due to its
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institutional type. In terms of governance, the fact that some departments are willing to assess,

evaluate, and alter the classroom experience to enhance student success while others are not

demonstrates the autonomy of each individual department at such a large institution.

At Occidental College, the Culture of Care initiative is a program through which a team

of professionals in functional areas and departments across campus, including associate deans of

students, faculty, disability services, athletics, and public safety, meet together weekly to address

and devise a plan to resolve every reported student issue, academic and otherwise. For example,

if a student athlete suffers from poor grades due to a learning disability, the Student Success

Team (SST) would discuss and devise possible solutions relatively quickly, since representatives

from disability services, athletics, and faculty, respectively, are present at every meeting, and

there would be no delay in communication among these three involved parties.

As I learned from Dr. Santiago, who runs the Student Success Team meetings, one thing

that makes this initiative successful in maintaining the universitys high graduation rate is the

small size of the student body the total number of students enrolled at the university during an

academic year is only about 2,100, and there is almost always only one degree of separation

between students, staff and faculty. Thus, faculty and staff get to know more students than they

would at a larger institution, and more quickly, and all staff work with the same students. All

student affairs staff members have a deep understanding of academics, retention, counseling, and

helping students advocate for themselves outside the classroom. For this reason, student issues

are also noticed and reported before they become serious, and at a higher rate than they would be

at a larger institution. Another reason this initiative is successful is the fact that Occidental

students are required to live on campus for their first three years at the university, and many

choose to remain living in on-campus housing for their final year. They therefore live in close
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proximity to multiple professionals, including their faculty advisors, who work together to help

them achieve success and often make first contact with a student if they notice something about

his or her behavior that is out of the ordinary. Overall, there is a strong awareness of student

mental health challenges and a commitment to social justice among all staff across campus.

The most striking aspect of the Culture of Care initiative is its likely lack of feasibility at

a larger institution, particularly a research institution such as UCLA, where many faculty

primarily focus on their individual research projects, a university with a high number of

commuter and transfer students such as CSULA, or a community college. While this initiative

provides an excellent model for staff-faculty competency crossover, faculty do almost all of the

academic advising at Occidental, and thus, by default, have more developmental relationships,

(over the entirety of four years, since almost all students enter as freshmen) with students and

more of a concern for their holistic development at the university than faculty at a larger

institution would. Thus, in order for a similar initiative to exist at a larger institution, there

would need to be a student success team for students at each individual school within the

university, and a specific individual or set of individuals responsible for tracking when students

switch their majors or voluntarily withdraw from the university. This is one instance where

conducting assessments of student learning and gathering data on student success rates and

inclusive excellence would be particularly beneficial. Still, less time and attention would be able

to be given to individual student issues at a larger institution, simply due to the difference in the

staff to faculty ratio. However, in terms of academic advising specifically, the intrusive model of

advising, in which an advisor makes initial contact with students and individual advising is

mandatory (students cannot enroll in classes for another term if they do not meet with an advisor,
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due to a registration hold) could be utilized in any institutional setting and could enhance student

success for those who otherwise would not seek advising on their own.

Occidentals Culture of Care and Student Success Team most relate to SDA learning

outcomes #2 and #6, in that these practices demonstrate the importance and effectiveness of

collaboration among various professionals that each have a strong interest in student success,

especially collaboration between faculty and staff. Due to the increasing commonality of

psychiatric disabilities among students and the trend of students in higher education today

considering themselves to be failures after just one academic failure, it is important to

incorporate a variety of perspectives in order to best understand students and student issues, with

special attention given to student resiliency and retention. Several professionals at Occidental

also mentioned the importance of having at least a basic knowledge of student development

theories, especially racial and sexual identity development theories, as these play an important

role in determining solutions to student crises.

Key Areas of Learning from Interviews

Overall, from my interviews with professionals at each campus, one of the most valuable

lessons that I learned from Best Practices is the effectiveness of housing career services within a

universitys division of academics, rather than within student affairs, as is the practice at many

universities. As the functional area that has arguably the highest level of influence over students

futures immediately following their graduation and the most interaction with employers and

other outside agents, it the responsibility of career services to ensure students transitions out of

the university setting are as successful as possible. Housing career services within the division

of academics at a university can help incorporate career development into students coursework
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beginning early in their time at the university, and providing students with experiential

opportunities such as internships and community service projects that allow them to apply their

learning inside the classroom to their developing professional aspirations outside the classroom.

As for my own professional interest, since I strive to work in either an employer relations or

counseling capacity within career services, it is critical for me to understand what students will

experience as they exit the university setting for internships and ultimately, full time

employment.

From my site visits, particularly at Occidental College, I further learned that career

services bears the responsibility of making students aware that while a university can do a lot to

ensure that students identities are understood and appreciated on a college campus, some

employers may not make the same effort toward inclusion, and students may be faced with the

decision of a higher paying job with a less welcoming work environment, or a lower paying job

with a higher level of appreciation for all of students identities. To ensure a successful transition

out of the university setting, students must learn to advocate for themselves. Another key

responsibility of career services is to help students in discerning how to strike a balance between

embarking on a career path that allows an individual to pursue their passions, and find a job that

allows him or her to live comfortably. Career services is responsible for teaching students that

not every aspect of what they learn from their studies will always be incorporated directly into a

career, yet it is still possible to enjoy their passions outside of work. Leaving the university

setting with the expectation that work and personal passions may not always overlap is another

way students can ease their transitions into the workforce, and housing career services within the

division of academics, which, in Occidentals case, has led to more faculty collaboration with
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career services, and career services presenting information on student employment and career

discernment at faculty meetings, is one way to achieve this.

A second concept gathered from my site visits this summer was the importance of

understanding how disabilities, in particular invisible disabilities, affect student success and

inclusive excellence, and how this varies immensely at different institutional types. First, while

disability services offices across all college campuses provide several types of accommodations

for students with disabilities, the most significant difference between receiving accommodations

for disabilities while in high school and receiving accommodations at the collegiate level is that

once a student is over 18 years old, he or she is not required to receive accommodations, whereas

at a high school, it is the schools responsibility to provide accommodations for all students with

documented disabilities. This can manifest as a conflict between identity development and

student success, as it is common for a student with a documented disability to reject

accommodations after arriving at a university and perform poorly as a result.

For students with invisible disabilities that have yet to discover them, the realization of

having a disability can be traumatic, particularly for those pursuing heavily impacted and highly

competitive majors at large research institutions, such as STEM majors at UCLA. Students may

discover, only after enrolling in classes at a university, that while they were able to succeed in

high school without accommodations, a learning disability may emerge as a previously hidden

obstacle to their success at the university level, and they may suffer mental health complications

before finally learning how a disability services professional could help them. In regards to

psychological disabilities, which at UCLA make up one third of the total number of students with

disabilities enrolled at the university, it is important for all student affairs practitioners to develop

a strong understanding of the severity of these hidden disabilities and how they impede student
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success, especially in competitive academic settings and majors, where students often experience

their first extreme academic failures, must alter their post-graduation plans, and suffer identity

crises for which they lack the ability to cope. In addition, age 18 is the onset of most common

mental health disabilities, including anxiety and depression. Psychological disabilities are severe

and unpredictable in nature, and it is critical that counseling is a professional competency that all

student affairs practitioners develop.

A third meaningful concept learned from my site visits this summer is the salience of the

first generation and transfer student identities, in terms of how many additional and equally

salient identities are represented within these two groups in particular, especially at a Hispanic-

Serving Institution (HSI) such as CSULA, where 80% of students identify as first generation,

and a large, research institution such as UCLA, where the transfer student population consists of

7,000 students and makes up a significant percentage of the student body. While hiring a

professional who can identify with the population they serve is an effective practice that helps

students of diverse backgrounds achieve success, it is almost impossible to hire a professional

who represents every single identity included in a specific population from an empathy

standpoint. It is equally challenging to hire one designated professional to support each

individual student population.

To illustrate this, during my interview with Heather Adams, the Director of the Transfer

Student Program at UCLA, which serves almost all of UCLAs nontraditional students, she

mentioned that having a professional in charge who can relate to the experience of being a

nontraditional student (Heather is a former nontraditional student herself) has helped her do her

job, specifically in terms of assessing what nontraditional transfer students need most from the

university. Much of Heathers programming for nontraditional students, for instance, is planned
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as passive programming, such as a resume critique session that takes place as an all day event,

rather than at a specific time, to accommodate nontraditional students multiple responsibilities

and busy schedules and allow them to come by and participate when they can. She explained

that it is common for a nontraditional transfer student to seek advising, perceive that an academic

advisor cannot help them with their specific needs, and never seek advising again, suffering other

obstacles to success or a lack of a feelings of connectedness to the university as a result. She

also mentioned that hiring specific transfer advisors could prevent this and help her support the

transfer population better. However, when I spoke with Dr. Hollis and asked for her thoughts on

hiring specific advisors for transfers, she mentioned that with the heavy volume of students

enrolled and seeking advising at the university, hiring transfer advisors could also steer students

away from advising, as it could cause transfer students to show up for advising only to be told

that the only advisor trained to work with transfers is busy with too many other students and is

unavailable. To conclude, it is extremely important for universities to assess, based on their own

unique student bodies, how to strike a balance between hiring professionals who, regardless of

their specific identities, are trained and available to support students of all identities to the best of

their abilities, and hiring professionals to work only with specific student populations, based on

which populations they can identify with and support best. Further, even if a professional shares

multiple identities with the student population they support, this does not necessarily mean they

will relate to the students experiences better than a professional who does not.

One specific area with plenty of room for improvement is research on students with

disabilities identity development, how it differs by institutional context, and how to improve

ways for students with disabilities to engage with the university, since, as I learned, students with

disabilities have lower graduation rates nationally. At UCLA in particular, students who use
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wheelchairs and live on campus can receive accommodations in the form of car rides down to

specific areas of campus for study groups or to attend class, yet this service is exclusively for

academic-related activities, and these students cannot participate in any extracurricular or social

activities using this service. This conflicts with Astins (1999) theory of student involvement and

could have a negative affect on students with disabilities holistic development at the university.

Campus climates surrounding disabilities could be improved immensely, as many faculty

members, as I learned, are often largely unaware of ableism and the social construction of

disabilities. In my future practice, I hope to assess strategies for eradicating the stigma around

speaking openly about disabilities, particularly hidden disabilities. There is room for

improvement in terms of making disabilities an appropriate topic for discussion amongst faculty,

staff, and students alike, especially at larger institutions.

Overall, the most significant area for improvement is bridging the gap between faculty

and staff and improving mutual trust between these two stakeholders in student learning. Several

professionals at each campus that I visited mentioned that faculty often distrust student affairs

ability to work well with students and that student affairs staff resent faculty members lack of

competencies in student development theories and multicultural competencies that foster student

success. The Student Success Team at Occidental College, with its combination of

representatives from both faculty and staff at the university, utilizes the small college setting to

merge faculty and staff competencies by addressing critical student issues together. Yet tension

still lingers between faculty and staff at Oxy, in that all students begin their studies without a

declared major, and faculty do all mandatory academic advising, yet often lack the competencies

necessary to fully support the colleges rapidly diversifying student population.

STUDENT SUCCESS AT THREE CALIFORNIA UNIVERSITIES 18

In terms of my own growth, this experience demonstrated how my own identities and

undergraduate experience do not represent the experiences that the majority of students in the

future of higher education will have. My site visit at CSULA in particular exposed me to the

reality of higher education for most of todays students and the plethora of barriers through

which todays students must navigate (very few that I can personally relate to) in order to achieve

success. Because of this, I feel that I belong in an external role, connecting students with the

outside world, such as an industry relations coordinator, career counselor, or university recruiter.

Because I prefer to learn by experiencing, I will continue to place myself in unfamiliar

environments and develop strong interpersonal relationships with students, faculty and staff

whose identities and experiences differ drastically from my own.

STUDENT SUCCESS AT THREE CALIFORNIA UNIVERSITIES 19

References

Astin, A.W. (1999) Student Involvement: A Developmental Theory for Higher Education.

Journal of College Student Development, 40 (5), 518-529.

California State University Los Angeles Academics (n.d.). Retrieved from:

http://www.calstatela.edu/univ/ppa/publicat/vsa/academics.php

Enfield, J. (2013). Looking at the Impact of the Flipped Classroom Model of Instruction on

Undergraduate Multimedia Students at CSUN. Techtrends: Linking Research And

Practice To Improve Learning, 57(6), 14-27.

Kodama, C. M. (2015). Supporting Commuter Students of Color. New Directions for Student

Services, 150, 45-55. doi: 10.1002/ss.20126.

Kruisselbrink Flatt, A. (2013). A Suffering Generation: Six Factors Contributing to the Mental

Health Crisis in North American Higher Education. College Quarterly, 16 (1).

Kuh, G.D., Ikenberry, S.O., Janowski, N.A., Cain, T.R., Ewell, P.T., Hutchings, P., & Kinzie, J.

(Eds.). (2015). Using evidence of student learning to improve higher education.

Thousand Oaks: Jossey Bass.

Occidental College Our Story. (n.d.). Retrieved from: http://www.oxy.edu/our-story/numbers

UCLA Admissions. (n.d.). Retrieved from: https://www.admission.ucla.edu/prospect/stat.htm