Communications

Undergraduate Studies and Partners Build Technological Resources

December 2022

The Undergraduate Studies team is continuously working with its internal and external partners to enhance the USF student experience.  This year we have three areas where we are advancing our use of technology to create a more effective experience for the student and increase efficiencies for university administrators.

Archivum ARC petition

In Spring 2022, the Academic Regulation Committee (ARC) petition process digitized from paper forms to electronic workflow in Archivum. ARC petitions are used by undergraduate students to waive certain institutional and state policies on student registration. This project was the culmination of efforts between Undergraduate Studies, the Office of the Registrar, and Information Technology with participation from stakeholders from the Council on Academic Advising, Admissions, Financial Aid, Dean of Students offices, and Student Outreach & Support.

The goal of moving online was to increase the process’ transparency and reduce processing time as well as improve collaboration, communication, and consistency across academic colleges. Other added benefits include reduce errors from handwritten forms, reduce lost documentation, and improved confidentiality on medical withdrawals. Since the online process launched, over 2500 petitions have been processed by the Colleges and Student Outreach & Support. IT is addressing continuing improvement to the process based on feedback from academic advising and other partners.

First-Year Academic Progress Rate (FY-APR) Tracker 

The Student Success leadership team gave Steve Johnson, data manager of Student Success and Kim Williams, data manager of Office of Academic Advocacy the charge to create a dashboard to track the much needed insights into the Academic Progress Rate (APR) for First-Time in College students, a metric of the Florida Board of Governor’s Performance Based Funding goals.  

The academic progress rate (APR) refers to the percentage of students in the first-time-in-college cohort with a USF GPA of at least 2.0 who are still enrolled during the second Fall term. This tracker using PowerBI software monitors the cohort’s registration status by the students’ GPA and established monitoring groups to show if there are high numbers of students with low grades or repeating courses that put their GPA in jeopardy of declining. The insights from this type of data are essential for helping UGS see the big picture and act proactively to improve student success.

Transfer Success Council 

The Transfer Success Council was formed to strengthen our collaboration across OneUSF to positively impact the transfer student experience and improve graduation rates.  The council is comprised of approximately 20 people, in diverse positions and levels, from all three campus locations.  The long-term goal of the council is to function as an “umbrella group” for key transfer success initiatives, bringing attention to and prioritizing efforts to enhance transfer student performance across all campuses. 

The council’s charge is as follows:  

• Champion and coordinate efforts to ensure transfer students succeed and graduate on time across OneUSF.
• Advance transfer student success through collaboration and action with our institutional, community, and state partners to ensure we are transfer ready.

Promote an institutional culture that values the contributions of transfer students and incorporates them into a culture of care that supports their success.The Council is currently working on two initiatives.  The first is bringing public-facing transfer articulation technology to USF funded through a grant from the Helios Education and Lumina Foundations. This technology doesn’t require a USF login and will allow current and prospective students to identify how their courses transfer to USF enabling a smoother transition to USF.  The second initiative is the creation of a transfer success strategic plan focused on student experience, faculty perception/faculty-provided support, and transfer readiness.  This work is currently underway across OneUSF with participation from faculty, staff, and administrators.  The transfer strategic planning committee aims to have a draft plan by summer/fall 2023.