Reframing Retention Strategy: A Focus on Process
The third “P” within a 4 Ps framework of student retention—process—gives priority attention to institutional processes and policies that either help or hinder the continuous enrollment of all students, not just students defined as “at risk.”
A General Chemistry and Precalculus First-Year Interest Group (FIG): Effect on Retention, Skills, and Attitudes
General chemistry and precalculus have been linked together through the University of Hartford First-Year Interest Program (FIG) as a means of creating an effective learning community of premedical, biology, and chemistry–biology students. The Integrated Learning Blocks that were created allowed each course to retain the majority of its original content and structure while emphasizing and reinforcing concepts that are common to both classes. The principles of the calculus reform movement, which focuses on treating real-life data numerically, graphically, and symbolically as well as implementing technology when appropriate, contributed substantially to the fertile environment for an effective multidisciplinary collaboration. Calculus reform’s goals were effectively carried out by using the chemistry laboratory class to supply experimental data and preliminary graphical analysis, followed by a more complete symbolic function analysis and predictive exercises in precalculus. Assessment of the FIG project showed an increase in students’ skill transfer between classes, an increased sense of community, and a substantial increase in retention among the FIG students through their sophomore year.
The New ‘U’
Today's talk about tenure must be framed within broader discussions about the role of the university. Our university system is now over one hundred years old, the “Old-Time College” is gone, the “cold war” university is no longer viable, and the foundations of the modern “multiversity” are cracking, so it is time to talk about change. But change is not necessarily reform, and resisting change probably will not keep things the way they are, so academics must understand the forces reshaping the university. Whenever I listen to colleagues defend the status quo by saying that the United States has a university system that is the envy of the world, I hear echoes of the Detroit automobile industry's casual dismissal of foreign competitors in the early 1960s. The decision not to change did not preserve the auto industry, and it is unlikely to preserve public universities as we know them. The current debates about tenure began with ideological attacks on “tenured radicals” who used their secure jobs to subvert conservative cultural values. The attack on tenure gathered steam as fiscal hawks in financially-strapped states looked for ways to save money and found huge state university systems with budgets to match. When asked why he robbed banks, the legendary Willie Sutton replied, “Because that's where the money is.” When asked why they are robbing tenure, legislators, regents, and administrators reply, “Because that's where the money is.” Personnel costs are a large share of university budgets and tenure ties the hands of administrators and legislators accustomed to using purse strings to control universities.