USA Funds Sponsors Texas Sessions on Retention, With Focus on Hispanic Students

A grant from USA Funds^® supported an all-day series of student-retention sessions, with a special focus on retaining Hispanic students, at a conference this month in Texas.

The Policy Center on the First Year of College facilitated the sessions at the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board’s 21st Annual Recruitment and Retention Conference. Some of the nation’s leading authorities on student retention, in general, and Hispanic student retention, in particular, led the June 21 sessions.

The USA Funds-sponsored conference-session topics and speakers include the following:

• “Latinos in Higher Education: Using the Tools of the Trade to Navigate the Perfect Storm” presented by Sarita Brown, president, Excelencia in Education.
• “For Your Dessert and for the Just Desserts of Deserving Texas Beginning College Students: A Primer on What the Beginning Experience Must Look Like” presented by John Gardner, executive director, Policy Center on the First Year of College; senior fellow and distinguished professor emeritus, University of South Carolina, National Resource Center for the First-Year Experience and Students in Transition.
• “Making It Happen on Your Campus” presented by Brown.
• “Using a Campus-Wide Self-Study to Rethink and Measure the Beginning College Experience as the Basis for Enhanced Student Retention” presented by John Gardner, Betsy Barefoot and Randy Swing. Barefoot and Swing both are co-directors and senior scholars at the Policy Center on the First Year of College; they also are fellows of the National Resource Center for the First-Year Experience and Students in Transition.
• “Defining and Measuring Institutional Excellence in the First Year of College” presented by Barefoot.
• “Emerging Pedagogies: The Key to Improving Student Retention in First-Year Seminars and Learning Communities” presented by Swing.

USA Funds provided the sessions for more than 250 members of the Texas higher-education community who are attempting to increase student-retention and graduation rates. The conference is an important source of professional development for higher educators from public and private, two- and four-year institutions who are working to enhance their effectiveness in improving student retention.

The Policy Center on the First Year of College organized the sessions. Henry Fernandez, USA Funds executive director of scholarships, outreach and philanthropy, facilitated the collaboration among Excelencia in Education, the Policy Center and the Texas HECB.

Fernandez began working to connect these organizations and individuals last year, following a discussion with Ray Paredes, Texas Higher Education commissioner. Paredes expressed his desire to focus institutional discourse and action on student persistence, especially that of Latino students.

“USA Funds was delighted to play a proactive role in stimulating the development of best practices in enhancing student retention and bringing more attention to this compelling public-private objective,” said Fernandez.

In addition to the sponsored sessions, Texas Southern University’s Jacqueline Fleming, Sylvia Zamora and Albert Tezeno described a process of retention-plan refinement based on a presentation at USA Funds 2005 Symposium for minority-serving institutions. TSU is seeing improvements in retention after resetting priorities, revamping some programs and facilitating collaboration between departments.