It is clear that California State University (CSU) Chancellor Mildred Garcia not only cares about student success, she is investing the resources of the Office of the Chancellor, including the time and talent of its staff and leadership, into transforming the CSU and holding campuses accountable. Network Director Shonda Goward interviewed Deputy Vice Chancellor Dr. Dilcie Perez regarding Chancellor Garcia’s approach to the end of Graduation Initiative 2025 and addressing how the CSU will go forward in the future.
The Year of Engagement is a process by which the CSU Chancellor’s Office is evaluating where the CSU is at the end of the Graduation 2025 period before embarking on a new, reimagined vision for student success. The Chancellor’s Office team has completed their data collection of both quantitative and qualitative data from across the entire system to advance this effort. These data include over a million surveys sent to students, staff and faculty to launch its Year of Engagement according to Deputy Vice Chancellor Dilcie Perez. There is also a working group of middle leaders from across the system tasked with providing feedback. In transparency, Network Director Goward is a part of this group. The Chancellor’s Office has also hired Deloitte Consulting to assist in facilitating the development of a student success framework for the CSU. This new framework, Dr. Perez, emphasized, is our “north star,” which guides how we do this work. However, she also noted that the members of the CSU Student Success Network shouldn’t wait for the Chancellor’s Office to dive deep into the literature and the work.
According to a presentation provided by the Chancellor’s Office to the Board of Trustees Committee on Educational Policy, the guiding principles of the Year of Engagement are that it be student-centric, equity-driven, data-informed, collaborative, and transparent. This will mean working together across a campus to produce scalable solutions to long standing problems that have hampered student success and retention. Retention work should be a vital part of any campus strategy for student success because it means that an institution is intentionally focused on the students’ outcomes. Additionally, it means that the institution is also thinking about its financial success. It is often said by marketers and the financial wing of the university sector that an institution that retains its students can project tuition and fee revenue.[1] This is the budgetary imperative of student success. The moral imperative was highlighted by Dr. Perez in the following statement:
We don’t truly embrace the fact that strategic enrollment management is also graduating them, and getting our students through. And I would say to you that most universities don’t have a mechanism to know who the students are that they are losing and why. And I think that when we begin to truly unpack as a system who our students are, where they struggle, where we are losing them, and identify strategies and high touch ways in which to give them support as early or as early as possible we will start to see a shift and a change.
The work Dr. Perez speaks of requires several components coming together including student services and the colleges. She articulates that we get there by “find[ing] ways to truly understand what the needs of our individual student populations are.”
This work also requires Academic Affairs to collaborate with Student Affairs. Often the work of student success is solely shunted to Student Affairs as though the classroom is not a part of the student experience. Dr. Perez stated:
We have a lot of academic elitism in higher education, and what we don’t always recognize and reconcile is that we have built systems and structures intended to weed students out. We were never built as institutions for the students we serve. And so we’re putting a lot of value statements on who jumps through hoops and hurdles that we have created in our systems.
Dr. Perez also noted that the work of the CSU is equity work by its nature. The diverse population that we serve, if served well, will close equity gaps in the state of California. It is not added work. She noted, “You will see us provide data. You will see us be transparent about data.” She also said, “What I can guarantee is that we as a system will be accountable to our vision and goals.”
It was clear from this interview that the Year of Engagement is an opportunity for everyone in the CSU ecosystem to participate in setting the standards for student success going forward and that there will be expectations for leaders and campuses. Dr. Perez reiterated that the new Student Success Framework will be finalized in spring or summer 2025.
[1]Bertoli, J. “Decrease Student Attrition to Increase Revenue.” Modo. Retrieved from: https://modolabs.com/type/blog/decrease-student-attrition-to-increase-revenue/