Wabash College Wins Grant to Improve Student Retention Using Life Skills
Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Ind., is using a grant from the Independent Colleges of Indiana Foundation to implement USA Funds®' financial-literacy program, Life SkillsSM, in a unique way on campus. Officials of the nationally recognized liberal-arts college for men view Life Skills as a tool to improve student retention.
Clint Gasaway, director of Financial Aid at Wabash College, notes that, although some students leave school for academic reasons, others leave because of financial difficulties. "They're in credit-card trouble or have a high cell-phone bill. The budgeting module and financial module — particularly the section on wants versus needs and how to delay gratification — give students basic financial skills that they have not picked up at home or school," Gasaway said.
Wabash College was one of the test sites for Life Skills. Based on their experience during the test phase, college officials determined that Life Skills was more successful when the program was delivered in small-group settings and when students participated in the presentations. As a result, Wabash College is involving fraternity leaders, residence-hall assistants and representatives of other student organizations in the delivery of the program.
"The generous grant we received enabled us to fund this initially so that we could try out our idea," Gasaway reported. "The grant pays for the student leaders, and it provides us with a great opportunity to try it. Long term, we hope to build the program into our operating budget, if we can demonstrate that it further improved our retention rate."
In preparation to present Life Skills, the student leaders participated in an off-site training session that included presentation skills, adult-learning theory and team-building exercises. Back on campus, the student leaders developed presentation plans for the Life-Skills modules and practiced presenting the modules.
"Realistically, not much prep work is needed to conduct a session, since the presentation plans were mapped out during training," said Laura Frye, assistant director of Financial Aid. "Student leaders reserve a room, if need be, borrow audio/visual equipment from the library, and gather the students for the session. The leaders do a brief refresher on the information before they present it. It's that simple."
Senior Brian Gonzales, a residence-hall assistant, reports that he had a successful experience the first time he presented a Life-Skills session. Gonzales recognizes the value of Life Skills to Wabash students. "I really appreciate USA Funds including Wabash in this, because it's a great opportunity for students to learn about finance. So many of them send their taxes to their parents to do, and they don't have a clue as to what's going on. I feel privileged to be able to help students," Gonzales said.
Wabash College officials are keeping close tabs on the program to determine if it is contributing to better student-retention rates. "We plan to compare at the end of 2002 and again at the end of the school year," Gasaway said. "We'll look at whether we lost any students who participated in this project versus those who did not participate to determine immediate impact versus past years. Our retention rate is getting better. We're hoping this will only help us move further in the right direction."