Colleagues:
Senior Vice President for Student Success and Well-Being Paul Dosal and I recently informed deans and the undergraduate advising and coaching community of some changes to our approach to undergraduate student success.
I want to share with the broader university community why we are making these changes.
We are moving to a modern, active approach to undergraduate advising. Many efforts in this direction have been attempted here over the years, but they have tended to stall. Our peer institutions in Florida and around the nation have demonstrated that an active advising model backed by strong technological tools is a powerful way to help undergraduate students find solutions to challenges and complete their degrees in a timely manner.
We will be moving to a new Academic Success Coach model that fuses the approaches of undergraduate academic advisors and coaches to better help our students map their academic pathways on the road to timely graduation.
Our new model is designed to standardize active student support and centralizes most undergraduate academic advising and coaching under the Division of Student Success and Well-Being. Academic Success Coaches will continue to serve and reside in their current colleges, utilizing their local knowledge.
The new model is part of a strategic effort to advance student success and reach preeminence. Specifically, we need to move our undergraduate 4-year graduation rate from 55 percent to at least 60 percent in order to meet this preeminence metric, which we aim to do by 2027.
Reaching a goal like this requires investment. Performance-based funding dollars, which are earmarked for strategic investment, will be used for a more competitive pay structure for advisors — to make us competitive for talent needed to reach our goals — as well as for added positions.
Those directly involved in undergraduate advising and coaching naturally have many questions. Dr. Dosal and his team will be working closely with deans, colleges, and HR in the weeks ahead to implement this transition, and they will be sharing regular updates to address those questions.
I believe these changes are necessary and urgent. We have a moral imperative to ensure the success of our students. I am confident that our new model will help us better fulfill our mission to advance their outcomes.
These changes also build momentum on our path to preeminence, which will unlock additional resources that will help us do even more for our people and our community.
Thank you for your dedication to student success and our strategic goals.
