Student Success Committee Report
to the UHH Congress
April 10, 2006
Active members: Kainoa Ariola, Karla Hayashi, Raina Ivanova, Gail Makuakane-Lundin,
Craig Severance, Kenith Simmons (Chair), Michael Wery (student member)
As charged by the Congress, the Student Success Committee has met regularly during
AY 2005-2006 in order to review past reports from the Retention and Academic
Advising Committees and to make recommendations as to how the University should
respond to these reports.
Retention
The UH System’s planning documents specify that increasing retention and the 6-year
graduation rates in East Hawaii will be a priority for the 2007-2009 biennium budget. It
does appear that student retention is viewed as a high priority goal among faculty, staff
and the Administration at UHH and at the UH-System.
In the past year, there has been progress in a number of areas related to retention. These
areas were noted as in need of implementation in prior reports by the UHH Congress
Retention Committee, in student focus groups conducted in 2004, or in the UHH
Strategic Plan 2002-2010:
1) Student Services has agreed to have cyber advising for incoming General
students in place for Summer 2006.
2) The advising center has expanded its on-line advising through its newly designed
website.
3) UHH Housing is piloting a first year curriculum for a cohort entering in Fall
2006.
4) A Math-Physics cohort program for freshmen Physics/Science majors will be
piloted in Fall 2006.
5) Advising/mentoring award selection activities are being coordinated by Karla
Hayashi through the Student Success committee.
6) A new institutional analyst has been hired.
7) The interim director of Service Learning recently gave a presentation to the
VCAA’s academic council, which was intended to broaden the awareness of
service learning opportunities; a new permanent director is expected on board in
April.
8) Academic Affairs and Student Affairs are exploring ways to improve transfer
and graduation evaluations.
9) The Admissions Committee of the UH Congress has recommended to Congress
that a standing Admissions Committee comprising faculty and administrators be
created and charged with reviewing admissions policies with reference to student
retention.
10) The new student life center and will improve the opportunities for on-campus
recreation.
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11) Additional housing is being pursued actively, through new construction and
rental agreements with local hotels and apartment buildings.
12) Residence halls are addressing issues related to substance abuse and excessive
noise.
There is, of course, much more that needs to be done. To continue the quest toward
higher retention, the committee recommends the following:
1) Enrollment and academic planning must be coordinated;
a) A standing University Admissions Committee should be constituted with
membership from faculty and administration to review admission
policies as these impact student academic needs and the University’s
capacity.
b) Academic units must make a more systematic effort to match course/ seat
offerings in high demand and bottle-neck courses to carefully predicted
demand.
 Predictive data should be provided to the academic units by
admissions/records in coordination with the Institutional Analyst
as the schedule for the following semester is being created.
 Data from early registration should be analyzed during the last
weeks of the preceding semester so that adjustments to course
offerings can be made prior to registration week for the
following semester.
 While faculty preference for teaching assignments should be
honored when possible, these preferences should not over ride
the needs of students as departments plan their course schedules.
 A mechanism for accountability of Colleges/Departments in
meeting student demand needs to be created; this might include a
statement to the VCAA from each Dean as to predicted need in
identified high demand courses and the College’s plans for
meeting these needs.
2) A full fledged UHH Learning Center should be created to strengthen and
coordinate tutorial services on campus as well as to deliver appropriate training to
tutors.
 While departments would still be responsible for content in
subject areas and for selecting tutors in those areas, the Learning
Center would provide training in student interface, the ethics of
tutoring, and other general elements of the tutorial process.
 The Learning Center would be responsible for directing students
to departmentally based tutorial services and for providing
tutorial service where appropriate, such as in Writing.
 It would also serve as the administrative center for tutors on
campus, in that it would coordinate (with the Career Center)
advertising, hiring, and payment of peer tutors.
 The Learning Center should be staffed by peer tutors and by a
professional Director.
 It should be administratively housed in Academic Affairs.
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Advising
The Student Success Committee joins with other voices on the campus to recommend
that our advising model be revised.
It has been well established that advising on the campus is not functioning at an optimum
level. The demands on the Advising Center are far too great for the size of the staff or of
the physical space. Faculty advising is uneven across the campus. Faculty including those
who do Graduation Evaluations and Records Office personnel report that many students
who expect to graduate find that they are deficient in graduation requirements. In part,
this is caused by the unwillingness on the part of students to seek out their advisors
throughout their academic careers. It also appears to be the case that while many faculty
are devoted to excellence in advising, others do not have the expertise or the time to offer
the kind of advising students need. . Data from the UH Hilo NSSE survey and from
focus groups on retention suggest that there is widespread student dissatisfaction with
the advising system now in place.
The Committee reviewed a number of advising models. We recommend a system which
combines the strengths of a fully professional advising model with those of a faculty
centered model.
In this plan, all advising related to General Education and Graduation requirements
would be handled through a more fully staffed Advising Center. All advising related to
Major/ Minor/Certificate requirements and Graduate School and career exploration
related to an academic field would be handled by Departments.
Advising would be mandatory at two points in the students’ careers: when they enter
UHH and when they declare (and change) their majors. The first of these required
advising contacts would be the responsibility of the Advising Center and conducted via
cyber advising or during orientation,, as is now the practice. The second contact would be
with the major department.
Students should be urged to meet with the Advising Center and their major department
during the junior year to make sure they are on track for timely graduation.
The Advising Center:
The primary functions of the Advising Center would include:
 Advising students without academic majors
 Advising all students on matters unrelated to their academic
major/minor/certificate programs, such as General Education and Graduation
Requirements
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Issuing appropriate Modifications to Academic Requirements in areas outside of
the major/minor/certificate programs
Entering these modifications directly into students’ records at the time the
modification is authorized
Maintaining accurate records for each student
As is now the case, the Advising Center would maintain a web-site as a resource to
students and would continue to refine and expand its on-line advising services. The
Advising Center would, as it does now, provide a Bachelor’s Degree Planbook to
incoming students and would develop advising checklists; these could be available in
hard copy and on the expanded web-site.
Staffing for the Advising Center would include:
 a faculty-level Director whose position would be permanent
 a full time clerk
 A faculty level dedicated transfer and graduation evaluator
 four faculty-level professional advisors
These advisors would be cross trained so that they could advise any student with
issues related to academic requirements outside the major, but each would also be
a specialist with primary responsibility for advising and record keeping for 775
students (data from Fall 2005 MAPS Report):
o Advisor #1 – CAFNRM (146 students); CoBE (368 students); Ka Haka
Ula (73 students), Pre-professional students (148) = 754 total students
o Advisor #2 – CAS Social Sciences 753 students
o Advisor #3 – CAS Natural Science 782 students
o Advisor #4 – CAS Humanities (417), General (390) = 807 students
The director, advisors, and clerk would be housed in a centrally located Advising Center;
where the transfer/graduation evaluator would be housed physically and administratively
would depend on a number of factors including the location for the Advising Center itself
and the configuration of the new Student Services building.
Administratively, the Advising Center should be associated with the Academic Affairs
unit of the university; it could be administered directly by Academic Affairs, or if the
campus were to adopt a Provost model of organization, it could be administratively
housed in Student Affairs.
Departmental advising
All advising related to major/minor/certificate programs, including issuing Modifications
to major requirements and entering these into the student’s record, would be the
responsibility of the appropriate academic department. Each Department would be
required to offer some form of advising to students when they declare the major and at
the students’ request throughout their tenure in the department. Students would be urged
to see their faculty advisor during their junior year to be sure they are on track for
graduation.
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In consultation with each College’s Dean, each department would be responsible for
devising advising strategies that suit their particular majors. At the discretion of the
Dean, these might include:
 Assigning each student to a particular faculty and requiring all faculty in the
department to advise
 Having the Department Chair serve as the advisor to all students in the major
 Assigning one faculty member to be the Department’s advisor
 Permitting faculty to choose among service tasks including advising and service
on committees or faculty governance organizations
 Holding group advising for all majors each semester
 Incorporating peer advisors into a faculty driven advising model
 For larger advising loads, release time for designated faculty advisors could be
offered.
Models would be approved by the Dean and reported in each Department’s program
review. Assistance in developing an appropriate model and development for faculty
could be provided by the Director of the Advising Center. Each Dean would be
responsible for maintaining a record of each Department’s advising model.
Assessment
Data should routinely be collected as to the number of advising contacts in the
Advising Center and in each Department. Data should also be collected as to students
who receive deficiency notices after applying for graduation. These data could be
made useful if the actual application for graduation were separate from students’
ability to access up to date records through Banner. Data related to student
satisfaction with advising should be collected by the Institutional Research Analyst
using the NSSE survey and the Graduation survey.
Results of all of these efforts should be summarized by the Institutional Research
Analyst and reported via the websites of the VCAA, the IRA, and the Congress
Assessment Committee. Summaries of the data should be included in Program
Reviews and should be used in determining program effectiveness.
Deans should be responsible for monitoring the effectiveness of each Department’s
advising model and for providing training and other supports through the Director of
Advising when Departments need help. Reviews of College effectiveness by the
VCAA should include a review of the effectiveness of each Department’s advising
model.
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