Story by Bridgette McAuliffe, Staff writer

Photo courtesy of Peggy Whaley

Murray State faculty members were awarded the 2018 Best Practices Award for research that spanned four years.

At the annual National Symposium of Student Retention, three faculty members presented research highlighting how Student Success Seminars in the freshman transitions classes increased retention at Murray State, earning them the award.

The conference is held by the Consortium for Student Retention Data Exchange at the University of Oklahoma.

Peggy Whaley, director of student engagement and success and vice president of student affairs, was one of the faculty who led the research and development of the seminars.

“Over the past four and half years we’ve been incorporating a student success seminar into the transitions courses,” Whaley said. “We get a group of individuals and we partner with the faculty instructor and we come for six class sessions to teach student success skills.”

The skills chosen to be taught in these courses are determined by the results of student surveys in which freshmen are asked what skills of success they struggle with the most.

“We don’t want to take anything away from the 100T- it’s really about adding good content to the 100T class,” Whaley said.

This year is the first time that the Student Success Seminars have been incorporated into every 100T class on campus.

“What we’ve seen is that the retention and persistence rates of those students who’ve had the combined course versus those who’ve had the stand alone course are much higher,” Whaley said. “So after four years of data, we were able to share that with the provost, Dr. Robertson and student affairs to show that it really does has a positive impact on student retention.”

Cindy Clemson, assistant professor of education and human services, worked with Whaley on the seminars and attended the symposium.

“The conference was on student retention data, so we thought what better way to present what we have learned about a very unique and innovative way that we have solved a problem at Murray State,” Clemson said.

She said because statistically only half of college students reach graduation, they felt a moral and ethical obligation to help students be successful and have a higher percentage of students graduate.

Five years ago, the Council on Post-Secondary Education in the state of Kentucky had a student success summit where they challenged each university to come up with a way student affairs staff could collaborate with faculty to increase retention rates, which is where Clemson said they developed this success seminar model.

Jeff Henry, research instruction librarian and assistant professor of university libraries, has been a seminar instructor since the fall of 2015.

“Student retention and student success are topics I am passionate about, so it always made research easier,” Henry said. “Students that were in my success seminar have made a connection with someone in the library that they hopefully feel comfortable approaching with any questions, academic and not.”

Because of their collective research efforts, Student Success Seminars are an aspect of the 100T courses that we will continue to see at Murray State.