TRIO Student Support Services Annual Report 2020-2021

Note: Student Support Services is a TRIO program funded by the United States Department of Education to provide academic support services to students from low-income and first generation college-going backgrounds. The mission statement and program goals (objectives in the U.S. Department of Education framework) are specified by federal regulations and policies and cannot be altered without approval from a program officer at the U.S. Department of Education.

I. Mission Statement

The mission of Student Support Services (SSS) is to improve the academic standing, retention, graduation, and graduate and professional school enrollment rates of eligible students who are receiving project services.

Department Goals

Performance Objectives (required by the U.S. Department of Education)

1. Persistence: 63% of all students served by the SSS Project will persist from one academic year to the beginning of the next academic year or graduate.
2. Good Academic Standing: 92% of all enrolled participants served by the SSS Project will meet the performance of good academic standing (2.0 or above).
3. Graduation: 61% of new participants served each year will graduate within six years.
   • These performance objectives are in alignment with division goals to increase the retention and graduation of students.
   • The services offered by SSS also contribute to recruitment efforts by reassuring students and their families that individualized support is available to students from disadvantaged backgrounds at CSU, Chico.
   • The date of last review was December 4, 2020 when the project submitted the TRIO Student Support Services Annual Performance Report (APR) to the U.S. Department of Education.

II. Departmental Accomplishments

• Successfully met all Department of Education program objectives on retention, graduation, and persistence.
• Successfully improved our TRIO Student Support Services application to make it more accessible to the students that we recruit.
• Successfully continued to serve and offer all of our activities virtually to our 172 participants.
• Awarded 5-year funding for the program that represents 1.4 million dollars to continue to accomplish our program goals.
• Dropped Dave Ramsey financial curriculum and began building a new financial wellness curriculum from department resources and national research.
• Continued our relationship with the Recreation Department to give our students the best virtual experience that still allowed for career development and exploration.
• Increased our study sessions to include the spring semester for all new first-year students.
• Worked with 10 peer mentors to continue to offer services to our students.
• Held our first virtual FOCUS and STEP orientation program for our first-year and transfer students.
• Like the rest of the campus, our program successfully transitioned into an online/virtual format to continue to serve our students.
• Successfully started planning for the transition to using Chico State 360 in order to better fit university advising practices and note taking.
• Partnered with the Cal-Fresh program to provide the best service to our program. This relationship continued as we transitioned online and began seeing many of our participants return home to other counties.
• Successfully recruited a new fall 2021 cohort amongst news from other SSS programs of difficulties of meeting their recruitment goals.
• Carefully collaborated with our Financial Aid office ensure that our new 26 first-year and 11 transfer students were correctly packaged and met all Financial Aid requirements to get their aid on time.
• Participation in Chico State’s Giving Day and fundraising – this resulted in flexible money to help offset the restricted budget that we get from the Department of Education.
• In partnership with the Financial Aid and Scholarship Office, we successfully awarded 29,000+ dollars in grant aid to our income eligible students.
• Increased our offered workshops to our students. Mainly in the area of Life After College series that works with our students who within a year of graduation.
• Required that all first-year participants, new transfer students, and students on AP to take the LASSI online assessment and follow it up with a one-on-one coaching session with a peer coach to discuss improving their approaches and strategies to their studies using proven-effective practices.
• Refined our process for working with students on academic probation, and more closely helped our students to work with Academic Advising to receive help to get above the 2.0 cumulative grade point average.
• Required attendance at mandatory financial wellness workshops for all first-year students and second year students.
• Successfully assisted our students with new university grading policies to help them meet university grade point average requirements.
• Transitioned our contract services to an online format where students are able to more easily review where they stand with their requirements.
• Offered mandatory fall semester seminar course for first year participants.
• Continued to encourage participants to safely participate in civic engagement opportunities – these opportunities were online and locally in Chico.
• Began our transition to campus and were able to successfully move our department back to in-person and online services.

Highlights:

Online Services

Our program operated over 3352 hours of online services, and successfully continued all of our key and federally required services into an online format. We have creatively moved our identification and selection process into an online format. We continued to improve all three of our TRIO applications that were quickly moved into an online format to be more accessible for our students and not require students to pay for the cost of mailing in their applications. These applications have been combined into one application in order to make it easier for students to complete. All applications now begin through our TRIO SSS website as an interest form and then go into an automated email from our Cognito form builder. Our program worked closely with Chico State Web Services to build an application that helped our staff and students. We will be completing a debrief and comparison to see what success we have experienced at the end of our next recruitment period. When we transitioned into an online format many students had questions after spring break ended and they were ready to engage with academics again. We began holding weekly TRIO updates each Friday to allow students a guaranteed time where they could engage with our program. Over the seven weeks process we had over 200 student contacts due to the Friday meetings.
Although we will continue to serve our online students, we do plan to hold as much of our welcome activities in-person in collaboration with Associated Students and Facility Reservations. We will continue to offers two parent/ally welcome options that connects our program to the support systems of our students. This relationship is important to allow our program to win the support of the family, and hopefully convince them of the importance of supporting their students throughout college. Many of our students will be moving to Chico. 38% of our students plan to live with their family, and we prioritize getting in contact with our student’s housemates to give tangible action items on how to support their students through a semester where they will be learning online. This means that a majority of students will be returning to Chico and in-person participation.

Online Application Improvements–

With the approval from Department of Education, our program is now able to receive and accept digital signatures. This was a major win for our program and our ability to improve our application. We have been using Cognito Forms, Qualtrics, and email communication in order to process applications. We have not completed our recruitment period for the summer, and we have already received more than 200+ applications.

Life After College Workshop Series –

All students were invited to our workshop series for Life After College that included six different workshops. Out workshop topics covered loan repayment, graduate school, law school participation, finances and investing, and topics on negotiating salary. Developing trust with our students is important as we work with them, as we have found that our students are not as likely to attend workshops that are outside our program. This also means that partnerships with key offices across campus is vital so that we may broker a relationship with a key person that represents that office. This has been key as we work with the Career Center. The Career Center has been a place on-campus that our students have been challenged to visit and we are addressing this challenge by careful work and connection to our liaison Betina Wildhaber at the Career Center.

We have also closely interweaved our Life After College work into the agreements that we develop for each student. The Life After College series is required of all of our students who participate in our Career Track or Grad School Track agreements. All workshops were delivered virtually and had good attendance. We recorded all of our workshops and will be utilizing our Learning Technologies Program partnership to host the videos on our Blackboard organization page. As a result of our Life After College series, 93% of our graduating students felt that better prepared to start their financial journey after graduation.

Diversity Efforts:

• Inclusion efforts – male participants – male participation has continued to be a challenge for our program and I understand that it is not unique to our program. This challenge has been around for our program since before 2016 and is an issue that we have working to overcome. We plan to add men’s programming that partners with the STAR Center at Chico State to include programming that is specifically catered towards male identifying students. Representation is an important piece to our program and we have continued to employee students who are representative of our student participants. Male participation has stagnated over the last two cohorts that may be impacted by the transition in leadership of the program. We foresee that there will be a continued challenge as we lose our current Student Development Coordinator of our program.
• Inclusion efforts – Latinx students –
  Culturally inclusive approaches were included in FOCUS and STEP, including Spanish speaking staff and welcome baskets delivered to students by SSS mentors. Latinx students are contacted in advance and encouraged to bring their parents/ally to meet project staff. Two parent/ally welcome programs are incorporated into our FOCUS and STEP program. These are planned virtually and were well attended in our first year of offering.
• Campus Collaboration, Representation, and Outreach
  • WESTOP 2020 – The student development coordinator participated in WESTOP and Nor-Cal WESTOP committees. on the project’s financial wellness program at the WESTOP 2019 regional conference.
  • Pause 2021 – The student development coordinator worked on with PDC to represent the program, and put on a successful PAUSE conference in January 2020.
  • Recruiting Coordination Committee – The director served on the Enrollment Management created committee that focuses on recruiting a diverse student population.

III. Changes in Policies and Procedures 

Changes to our online selection and identification of new eligible students. In a tough transitional year with a force to an online learning, and a concern about decreasing enrollment numbers, our department was concerned about how to complete our identification and selection process. The Department of Education changed policy and gave more direction on allowing electronic signatures. With the added flexibility, we were able to move our TRIO applications online and operate our process all virtually and accessible to students.

IV. Resources Summary

Budget Summary:
*Note: Fiscal year is based on September 1, 2020 - August 31, 2021 timeline.

Staffing:

Continued a momentum of having consistent professional staffing that includes the Director and the Student Development Coordinator. We do foresee a major challenge as we move forward with the news that the Student Development Coordinator position will be unfilled for sometime in August and possible September depending on how long it takes to work the hiring process through Chico State Enterprises.

Facilities/Equipment:

N/A

V. Program Assessment of Past Year

Program Objectives (Performance Objectives required by the U.S. Department of Education)

1. Persistence: 69% of all students served by the SSS Project will persist from one academic year to the beginning of the next academic year or graduate.
   
   Of the 152* participants enrolled in 2019-20, 95% either graduated or have registered for the fall 2020 semester.
2. Good Academic Standing: 91% of all enrolled participants served by the SSS Project will meet the performance of good academic standing (2.0 or above).
   
   Of the 152* participants enrolled in 2019-20, 98% were in good academic standing (GPA above 2.0) by the end of the academic year.
3. Graduation: 59% of new participants served each year will graduate within six years.
   
   Of the 22 participants admitted into cohort 2014, 74% graduated within six years of their point of entry into the program.

*This does not include new first year participants or transfer participants admitted summer 2020.

Program Annual Objectives for 2019-2020

1. Successfully implement a new student database to track student progress and have accurate representation of our active and inactive student participants.
   
   Outcome: Our existing database has been improved by using free online tools in order to save program funds that would not meet the needs of the program or the university. With the help of our partner programs Educational Talent Search and Upward Bound we discovered some of the challenges that they face with their student databases. We did do a review of common TRIO student databases that already exist like Lacai, Blumen, and Student Access. The main problem that we ran into with these software options is that they do not communicate or include integration with our PeopleSoft programs of student data. This limitation would make the software difficult to use and would not accomplish some of our top priorities. Instead we will begin using our Trello and spreadsheet accounts to store active and inactive participants. This will allow us to keep an accurate understanding of our active students and keep private information safely stored.
2. Improve our online student application to be accessible for students, and meet all of the federal guidelines.
   
   Outcome: Successfully accomplished and currently active. This has been one of our largest success for our program within the last year. We have moved our application fully online and available for students at any time of the day. We use Cognito Forms, Qualtrics, and Adobe Signature to collectively complete our entire application process. Our application is lengthy and may feel complicated for many students. Now we initiate our application with an interest/referral form that gives us a brief introduction to the student and gives us their contact information that includes an email and phone number. This has allowed us to get in contact with the student applicant at an earlier process. We believe that we lose less students as we are able to offer help at an earlier level of them beginning our application.
3. Increase the collaboration and partnership with the Adelante program that will provide a pipeline to our students toward graduate programs.
   
   Outcome: Success and has opened doors for further collaboration. Adelante shares a lot of our same objectives in helping first generation college students succeed in college and pursue a graduate degree. We partnered with them to have a student research panel from the students who had actively participated in the Adelante Research Project. This was a successful workshop to encourage our TRIO SSS participants to apply for the research opportunity by seeing students from similar backgrounds as the students that we serve. We combined our training activities in collaboration with Adelante, EOP, and other peer mentor/coaching programs.

VI. Ongoing Assessment Efforts

Demographic Reporting 

Federal legislation requires that SSS participants must be first generation college students (neither parent has a four-year degree), come from a low-income background, and/or have a documented disability. Two-thirds of students must be both low-income and first generation. SSS met these demographic requirements in 2020-21.

• Gender – Female: 62% Male: 38%

Statistics on Program Usage

*Does not include students admitted during the summer of 2021

VII. Analysis

• Continue to hire staff that is representative of the Chico State students and the students that we work with in the program. – with the latest transition of our past Student Development Coordinator in July 2021, this provides an opportunity for our program to continue to grow and diversify our staff. Our program primarily serves Hispanic first-generation students and it is important for university diversity, and representation that we have students that have staff that understand and have closely worked with students from similar backgrounds of those that we serve in our program.
• Continue to offer First Year Experience seminar to first year participants –Analysis of data collected from participant surveys and evaluations indicates that the project’s career development and professional skills curriculum offered via the First Year Experience seminar successfully increased participants’ academic self-confidence. The seminar allows for participants to have experiences that they may not have traditional access to in the past.
• Continue to require weekly study sessions for first year participants each fall and spring – In a virtual setting and in a bit of a surprise will continued to see positive student outcomes and feedback from the students who participated in our weekly study sessions. Continuing our study sessions was a bit of a surprise of us as we did not know what to expect during virtual study sessions. New first year participants were required to attend 1.5-hour study sessions once per week in the fall semester and then were offered optional sessions in the spring. At the end of spring 2020, participants indicated that the study sessions had a positive impact on their academic performance, and recommended continuing to require study sessions in the future.
• Continue to increase recruitment efforts toward underrepresented groups – The number of SSS applications received from males and black students (both genders) did see an increase over the last two recruitment cycles. We have seen a six percent increase in the overall number of male students served since setting this goal. We do wish to increase the collaboration with Institutional Research and Chico State 360 so that we may get student contact information sooner and begin our recruitment process. We now feel as though our application may not need to greatly change for the next couple of recruitment seasons, so this means that we may be able to start our recruitment sooner at the end of the spring semester.
• Continue to seek and obtain supplemental funds – The U.S Department of Education imposes strict guidelines governing the use of project funds to pay for food and hospitality. This presents a challenge when scheduling overnight field trips, as well as daylong workshops and trainings for project participants from low-income backgrounds who cannot afford to supply their own meals/accommodations. With the increase of need now that we are starting to use on-campus and in-person activity, it’ll be vital that we secure supplemental funds. We hope to continue with our successful fundraising campaign that we completed in February as part of the university’s Giving Day. These funds are extremely limited and will not cover the expenses of an entire year of programming.
• Continue to tie grant aid to completion of TRIO SSS agreements – Our TRIO Agreements continue to be such an important part of our success. We will continue to use each of our agreements at tools to meet our requirements from the Department of Education and help our students succeed. Quantitative (cumulative GPA) and qualitative (student evaluations) data for first year and 2nd year participants indicate that the activities required by the 1st and 2nd year contracts have a positive impact on student success in all areas pre-identified as important by our competitive grant priorities.
• Continue to offer a course that is in alignment with our grant’s competitive preference priorities – 19 students opted to take the optional spring leadership course offered by TRIO-SSS this year. This course was co-taught by Recreation Department faculty and students focused on career development and professional skills. The goal of the course is to offer practical skills like resume building, applying for part-time work, and professional skill awareness. While more data should be collected in the coming years, continued connection to program staff and high-quality academic preparation in the second semesters appears to have a correlation with academic performance.

VII. Program Objectives for the next academic year

Program Annual Objectives for 2021-2022

• Recruit, hire, and successfully onboard a new Student Development Coordinator into our TRIO SSS program.
• Compile and analyze recruitment data from the last three years of student recruitment in order to understand areas of improvement, areas of success, and areas that are broken. Use this data to continue to improve our recruitment and application process to yield healthy annual cohorts.
• Create a partnership with the STAR Center in order to increase male involvement in our TRIO SSS program, and offer programming to male identifying students in order to increase retention and participation in activities.