Strategic Priority 2

Eliminate achievement gaps by using analytics, refining, and expanding student support programs, and increasing faculty diversity.

2024 Update and Recommendations

Recommendation 1: Create a high-touch, multi-member early alert system to increase student persistence and retention rates

• Challenge: P & R rates are as much as 20% lower in some sub-populations
• Task: Initial launch should specifically target the Black male population and other sub-populations (e.g., Pell-eligible, students on probation, transfer students)

Early Alert Program

• High-student touch
• Allows all members of success team (advisors and instructors) to be notified
• Low initial cost – already available through EAB Navigate
• Has been shown to increase student persistence and retention.

Short-Term Recommendations

• Implement early alert program for black, male sub-population of students.
• Structurally expand program to include other sub-populations (e.g., students on probation, REBOUND, transfer students)

Long-Term Recommendations

• Create Team/Office to handle alerts to expand response to information gathering and future recommendations
• Peer mentoring program for students with repeated/multiple alerts

Recommendation 2: Increase support for existing systems focused on mental health services on campus

• Challenge: 79% of MTSU students reported moderate to severe psychological distress and 52% of students scored positive on a validated loneliness scale in 2022
• Task: Link/coordinate systems and structures to create “wrap-around care”

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2022 Update and Accomplishments

• Student Success check-ins were sent to professors of African American freshmen twice during Spring 2022.
• The Black Faculty and Staff Association (BFSA) has been re-established.
• Dr. Monica Smith hired as Assistant to the President for Inclusion and Community Engagement.
• Three Diversity Dissertation Fellows were hired.
• The College of Education’s Center for Fairness, Justice, and Equity has been established.
• “Man Up Teacher Fellowship” (MUTF) has begun efforts.

Work Group

Co-Chair: Michelle Arnold	Office of Student Success
Co-Chair: Eric Oslund	College of Education
Lando Carter	LT&ITC
Matthew Duncan	University Studies
Andrienne Friedli	College of Basic and Applied Sciences
Jonell Hinsey	Office of Student Success
Jimmy Mumford	College of Liberal Arts
Julie Myatt	MT Engage; College of Liberal Arts
Mary Ellen Sloane	Walker Library
Monica Smith	Community Engagement
Michelle Stevens	College of Education
Chandra Story	College of Behavioral and Health Sciences
Sam Zaza	Jones College of Business