Using NSSE Data in Strategic Decision Making for Advising
Dr. Elsa Núñez arrived as new president at Eastern Connecticut State University in 2006 with a reputation as a proponent of strategic planning and data-driven decision making. Within a year, more than 300 faculty and staff were hard at work crafting the first five-year strategic plan of her presidency. (As of this printing, the university is in the third planning cycle of the Núñez administration.)
One of the most important elements of Eastern’s 2008–2013 Strategic Plan was a multi-tiered advisement program driven by results from the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) to overcome the politics of change. This initiative created an advising program that Eastern depends on to serve students and to help them persist on their path to academic success.
When the strategic planning committee charged with supporting student success looked at Eastern’s NSSE 2010 data, they paid particular attention to students’ written qualitative responses to the survey’s open-ended questions. Student comments, such as the two below, clearly indicated that Eastern’s advising system was broken and that depending on faculty to advise students wasn’t working.
“Trying to figure out my major was hard, because I was not advised well at all.”
“I’ve seen my advisor only once all year; she causes me more stress than my schoolwork!”
The hard data from NSSE were also compelling. When asked if they talked with a faculty member about their career plans, only 46 percent of freshmen and 49 percent of seniors said yes. Asked to evaluate Eastern’s academic advising program on a scale of 1–5, students rated it only 2.9.
Eastern’s success in using data for strategic decision making in student advising has built confidence in using data to make other critical decisions that require innovation and change.
While the problem was clear enough, how to build a better advising system—one that the administration could sell to the faculty—was a challenge. Dr. Núñez felt she needed a faculty champion who could help to gain faculty buy-in and to ensure implementation at the academic department level. She found such a champion in an environmental earth science professor—a scientist and an award-winning teacher respected by his peers and loved by his students.
President Núñez asked this professor to work with her to convince the faculty that the new advising model—far from taking advising away from them—supported their natural role as mentors for their students. The plan was for a professional advising office to take over some aspects of advising outside of the faculty’s subject matter expertise so that professors could focus on providing students with program- and course-specific counseling and support. Faculty would also continue to have the critical role of advising students on career opportunities in collaboration with the Center for Internships and Career Development.
Dr. Núñez and her faculty champion went to each academic department to share NSSE data. They reminded the faculty that surveys such as NSSE are typically completed by self-motivated, higher-achieving students. If these students were having problems with the advising program, odds were good that the program needed to be stronger.
These discussions with faculty were not quiet conversations, Dr. Núñez recalls. The faculty challenged the model being presented and questioned the findings, but NSSE results were hard to ignore as they came directly from students. The fact that the faculty champion was a highly respected research scientist with student-centered classes was a major reason why the faculty were finally convinced to endorse the new advising model.
A student academic advising committee—also led by faculty members—was created to finalize the plan for a multi-tiered advising model. The new structure included a newly staffed office of professional advisors; clear roles for that office and for faculty; and programs to provide advising at four critical stages in a student’s life: (1) pre-enrollment, (2) first-year experience, (3) choosing a major, and (4) career planning. Eastern even brought advising into the residence halls so that students are “at home” when talking about their academic and career futures.
Using funds from a Title III grant, as well as other university resources, Eastern invested $4 million in the advising program. The year after the program was implemented, student satisfaction rose from 69 percent to 78 percent. NSSE data showed that from 2008 to 2012 student ratings increased 31 percentage points for faculty accessibility, 11 points for Eastern as a supportive campus, and 12 points for prompt feedback from faculty.
More recent data from NSSE 2017 compared Eastern to its peers in the Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges (COPLAC) and found Eastern students outperforming their COPLAC peers when it comes to discussing careers and topics beyond the classroom with faculty.
Retention at Eastern has risen as well. The recent 2018 freshman-to-sophomore cohort was at an all-time high of 79.3 percent, up more than two percentage points from 2017 and almost six points from a decade ago. Knowing that this measure impacts graduation rates, even though Eastern’s four-year graduation rate is the highest in the Connecticut State University System, the university continues to work on it. Most important, however, is the success of individual Eastern students.
Eastern’s improvement of student advising is a good example of how the university uses data in making strategic decisions, and this success has built confidence in using data in other critical decisions that require innovation and change. Only by listening to student voices can colleges and universities ensure that the changes we make improve educational outcomes. Sharing credible data—the hard quantitative data as well as the anecdotal, qualitative data found in NSSE results—is a powerful way to mobilize faculty in leading change efforts and in making decisions to enhance student learning.
