Updates From The Dean - Issue 16

Teaching Excellence and Student Success

As Georgia Southern continues to develop a new Strategic Enrollment Plan, there will be a renewed focus on teaching excellence and student success as part of enrollment growth plans. The Division of Enrollment Management and Student Success recently collected data from each of the colleges about their student success initiatives. Based on the information gathered by Dr. Sara Gremillion, COSM Administrative Fellow for Professional Readiness and Student Success, COSM is already VERY active in area with initiatives including:

• Tutoring services provided by the SMART Center, MaSTER, and in departments

• Strong support for student participation in undergraduate research

• Use of Supplemental Instruction, Learning Assistants, and other related programs

• Deployment of Curriculum-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs)

• Engagement through high impact teaching practices

• Proven history of using professional development opportunities to focus on teaching excellence

• The Vertically Integrated Projects (VIP) program

• The College of Science and Mathematics Office of Undergraduate Research

• Academically oriented student organizations - tri-Beta, SAACS, ASBMB, Student Physics Society, Math Clob, etc

• Vibrant seminar and collogia programs

• Externally funded Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) programs

• And much, much more.

There will likely be a transition to include measurements of success for most student success initiatives to ensure the best utilization of resources and maximizing the impact for students. In addition, we could see some centralized efforts to provide support for some of the larger initiatives that span multiple colleges. We will learn more as the details of the strategic enrollment plan are unveiled in the coming months.

Additionally, COSM has a number of new initiatives under development to continue our contribution to these efforts: the new EagleMed: the Future Medical Doctor Academy, a new STEM focused summer bridge program, expansion of the COSM Office of Undergraduate Research, and more. We have also been meeting with the department chairs to discuss more specifics about potential issues in courses with high DFW rates as well as identification of gateway courses that are creating bottlenecks for students matriculation and graduation. Overall, COSM plays a significant role in freshman retention and matriculation to graduation for students in nearly every program on campus. We must not lose sight of this as we continue to work on our Soaring to Research Excellence goals.