Embracing Perpetual Innovation in Higher Education

The dictionary defines "perpetual" as: 1. never ending or changing; 2. occurring repeatedly; so frequent as to seem endless and uninterrupted. Synonyms for "perpetual" include everlasting, never-ending, eternal, permanent, unending, endless, without end, lasting, long-lasting, constant, abiding, enduring, perennial, timeless, ageless, deathless, undying, immortal, interminable, incessant, ceaseless, endless, without respite, relentless, unrelenting, persistent, continual, continuous, nonstop, recurrent, repeated, unremitting, sustained, around/round-the-clock, chronic, and unabating.

The dictionary defines "innovation" as: 1. the action or process of innovating; 2. a new method, idea, or product. Synonyms for innovation include change, alteration, revolution, upheaval, transformation, metamorphosis, and breakthrough.

In higher education today, perpetual innovation can seem very much like never-ending upheaval. Every time we make a change, implement a new strategy, or adopt a new technology on our campuses, we then attend a conference, speak with colleagues, or watch a new product demo that causes us to question the change, tweak the system, or augment the tool. The idea of perpetual innovation can be overwhelming! Instead of seeing perpetual innovation as never-ending upheaval, could we embrace perpetual innovation as long-lasting transformation? Isn't our goal in higher education to transform students' lives by providing them with an excellent, high-quality education to prepare them for a successful career in less time, at a lower cost? When perpetual innovation supports this goal, colleges and universities must embrace it.

One of the nine strategies outlined in my book, What Works at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs): Nine Strategies for Increasing Retention and Graduation Rates, is "Technology: Tools and Systems Help Us Work Smarter Not Harder." This is a story of how perpetual innovation at Morgan State University has helped faculty, staff and administrators work smarter.

Achieving Innovation

Our culture of innovation at MSU has:

1. Increased the value of our strategic initiatives, programs designed specifically to "move the data," programs designed "on purpose" to increase retention and graduation rates
2. Helped us leverage external resources and get the most out of grants and external funding that have provided the opportunity, the initial financial resources, and an external push to effectuate a campus-wide culture change
3. Activated technology, tools, and systems to help faculty, administrators, and staff work smarter and not harder

Just to put this culture of perpetual innovation in context, consider that MSU has increased its retention rate from 63 percent (2006 cohort) to 73 percent (2015 cohort) and its graduation rate from 28 percent (2005 cohort) to 38 percent (2011 cohort), both 10-point increases that directly correlate to our ongoing implementation and adoption of new tools, technologies, and systems. In collaboration with the Lumina Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Maryland Higher Education Commission, MSU has invested in new tools that assist us with strategic tracking and monitoring, academic coaching, mentoring programs, course redesign initiatives, and predictive analytics. We use Hobson's Starfish Retention [https://www.starfishsolutions.com/] to collect and report student data, for early alerts, advising notes, and appointments; Ellucian's Degree Works to provide degree planning and comprehensive auditing; and the Educational Advisory Board (EAB) Student Success Collaborative (SSC) to identify student success markers and plan student interventions. We also use tools such as Google Apps, Atomic Learning, and Pearson's Smarthinking.

The goal of our comprehensive student success program is to increase student retention rates and persistence to graduation with a focus on academic success and achievement through early intervention and systematic tracking of undergraduate students. Prior to our innovation expansion, MSU's Office of Student Success and Retention (OSSR) used APEX to identify the students, EXCEL to distribute the list of students assigned to each of the OSSR staff, and Google Docs to track intervention outcomes in one document made available to OSSR staff and other campus stakeholders (i.e., Financial Aid, Bursar, academic departments). New technology completely revolutionized this process, as well as several other processes aimed at increased student success.

The many hours it took OSSR staff at MSU to identify students with minimal technology and manual cross-referencing, to contact students individually by e-mail and phone, and report data back both manually and individually to a Google document dramatically decreased with the help of Starfish Retention Solutions. Over the past five years, the OSSR has become more efficient and effective in its efforts. Campus constituents including students, faculty, and OSSR advisors have greatly benefited from new technology and innovation. Students at MSU, for the first time, have one portal to view all of their faculty's, mentors', and advisors' outreach efforts and recommendations.

With little change to their current workload, faculty can trigger early alerts for students in their courses, with just one screenshot per class, and can see who on campus has followed-up on their early alert(s). Faculty now have the ability to distinguish which students have accessed resources on campus such as academic support, mentoring, or tutoring as a result of their early alert(s). OSSR advisors no longer manually identify students, but rather access information through Starfish to identify, track, advise, and intervene in a way that is transparent to students, faculty, and other campus constituents. Simply put, new student success and advising technologies have revolutionized MSU's processes.

The Journey to Perpetual Innovation

Our journey to perpetual innovation began in 2013 when MSU applied for and was awarded a $100,000 grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for the implementation of Integrated Planning and Advising Services (IPAS) technology. The OSSR served as the lead department for MSU's IPAS implementation and adoption. Because OSSR staff at MSU were working as academic coaches and counselors already, and targeting students for strategic interventions based on cohort designations, Starfish assisted and facilitated MSU in using IPAS technology to go to the next level.

MSU has planned and executed large-scale roll-outs for the entire campus to include personalized access to Starfish, Degree Works, and EAB SCC for 6,400+ undergraduate students and more than 300 faculty and staff. With the support of President David Wilson and the university provost, faculty and staff buy-in soon followed. Because the one word that describes how change happens at MSU is leadership, the support of senior leadership at the institution was (and remains) critical to the success of IPAS adoption and campus-wide buy-in. Additionally, one of the selling points for Starfish was the user friendliness. Once faculty, staff, and students accessed the tools, they appreciated their ease of use.

As one of only 19 selected institutions for IPAS I and the only HBCU, MSU served as one of the seven funded institutions to participate in an intense research cohort evaluated by the Community College Research Center (CCRC) at the Columbia University Teachers College on behalf of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for effective implementation and integration of IPAS technology. According to a March 2015 report by the CCRC providing an overview of initial impressions of MSU's IPAS implementation and adoption, "Implementation of Starfish has introduced a transparent, comparatively efficient, and routine method of early risk targeting and intervention…. Starfish has made it easier to identify advisor assignments where previously no single system for tracking student-advisor relationships had existed…. Starfish has improved student accountability." The report further stated that "Stakeholders [at MSU] recognized that the product [Starfish] was part of a broader effort to improve retention through higher-quality advising." The CCRC evaluators noted that end-users found that "Starfish was easy to use and efficient… takes minimal time… spoke highly of the inclusion of student pictures within Starfish… and felt like their opinions and feedback mattered, which helped build trust."

A second phase of our journey to perpetual innovation began in 2014 when MSU won a Maryland Higher Education Commission (MHEC) One Step Away (OSA) grant of $75,000 to purchase a new comprehensive degree planning and auditing software, Degree Works by Ellucian. Investing in degree auditing software:

• Enables MSU to accelerate degree audit approvals
• Improves the overall quality of our student/near completers' experience through user friendly on-demand features like degree shopping
• Provides a robust, scalable, and configurable campus-wide solution that meets all requirements of the degree auditing process

Additional long-term benefits of degree auditing software include:

• Eliminating students' time and money wasted on unnecessary courses
• Reducing students' stress level about graduating on time
• Providing advisors and evaluators with more time to provide insightful advice that supports better student outcomes
• Monitoring course demand and offering the right classes at the right time for near completers
• Integrating the software with the student information system (Banner), which records interactions with students, letting us see what they see in terms of degree monitoring and degree shopping

Degree shopping enables students to compare their progress in one degree program or major field of study at your institution to other degree programs or major fields of study so that they can make informed decisions on how to progress and persist toward degree completion.

Integrating the new Degree Works tool into the existing IPAS initiative at MSU provided synergy and a "360 degree" approach to student success innovation. Together, Starfish Retention Solutions and Degree Works provide a strategy to support students from matriculation to graduation, including education planning, counseling and coaching, and targeting risk and intervention.

A third phase of our journey to perpetual innovation began in 2016 with MSU's selection to participate in the Lumina Foundation's HBCU Student Success Project, a multiyear grant that funds predictive analytics and a second-year experience across three historically black universities. Predictive analytics was the missing ingredient in our "secret sauce." We joined the EAB SSC in 2016, a system used primarily by our executive leadership team including VPs, AVPs, deans, chairs, and program directors, as well our institutional research team. We also trained advisor specialists to use EAB SSC for predictive analytics, student risk, institutional reports, and success markers. While EAB is the university's latest partner, it certainly won't be the last — our use of technology is innovative, ongoing, and, yes, never-ending.

Benefitting from Technology

Starfish has automated our Early Alert and Response System (EARS) for faculty, staff, and students. Degree Works has added new dimensions to MSU's advising, degree planning, coaching, and intervention efforts. EAB SSC has provided high-level, strategic insights in reference to gateway courses, student success markers, predictive analytics, and risk models. These three dynamic tools serve as valuable resources for faculty, staff, and students as we endeavor to promote student success while increasing retention and graduation rates.

All of our intrusive, intentional, and innovative student success initiatives have helped promote six years of a retention rate above 70 percent and a 76 percent retention rate for two years in a row — the highest the university has seen in 30 years and just a fraction of a percentage point away from the highest retention rate that MSU has ever recorded.

The first goal in MSU's strategic plan is to enhance student success. Using tools and systems for technology-enabled advising continues to act as a catalyst to achieving that goal. A culture of perpetual innovation at MSU continues to advance progress toward our goal of increasing retention and graduation rates, and it fosters long-lasting transformation within the institution. Based on our experience at MSU, I encourage you to embrace perpetual innovation, not resist it.

Tiffany Beth Mfume, DrPH, is assistant vice president for Student Success and Retention, Morgan State University.