"Census Day" occurs on the 20th class day of each fall semester. This is the day when higher education institutions take a snapshot of enrollment for reporting to various constituents. These numbers then become "official" measurements of enrollment for a given year. The snapshot for this year occurred at 11:59 p.m. on Monday, Sept. 18, with reporting released Tuesday, the following day. One aspect of this snapshot is a measure of our freshman to sophomore retention rate.

I have no doubt all faculty, staff, students, and administrators remember the announcement last year when the institution set a retention rate goal of 80%. This number was an ambitious, but I believe realistic, goal since Southeast never had a freshman retention rate over 75%. As I said to each department, given our focus on student success and excellence in teaching, why can't we be stellar in retaining students? 

As you probably heard at the recent State of the University address from President Vargas, and as is illustrated in the graphic below, our retention rate this year is 75.1%, up from 74% in fall 2016 and continuing a trend of increasing numbers dating back to fall 2012.

First-Time, Full-Time, Degree Seeking Freshman to Sophomore Retention Rates

Increasing retention over these years can be attributed to efforts by many people on our campus, including faculty and staff in Academic Affairs. I met with each academic department last fall, discussed the University retention goal and reasons why retention is vital for a student-centered higher education institution, and conversed about ideas for how to move the needle toward our goal. 

As a result, I asked each dean to work with departments to formulate and implement college and department level retention plans. I have no doubt these individual efforts by departments and faculty contribute to an ongoing retention increase. In addition, Academic Affairs partnered with Enrollment Management and Student Affairs to enhance tutoring and student assistance, support an already very strong first-year experience program, streamline University Studies requirements, and create a Master Advising program, among various initiatives. While all of these efforts certainly contribute to increasing student retention, I still believe advising plays a central role. My hope for the Master Advisor program was to have 10% of our 400 full-time faculty (40 faculty) complete this professional development opportunity in the first year. However, I was very impressed to see 110 faculty become certified as Master Advisors last year. All of these efforts certainly contribute to our freshman retention rate trending in the right direction, and I want to thank, and congratulate, the faculty and staff for their role in this success.

However, we need to keep in mind 75.1% is not our goal of 80%. It is vital we continue and expand the efforts that have made us successful over the past several years, keeping our "foot on the accelerator" as we strive to enhance the success of more and more students. Further, we need to focus on student persistence, students continuing to make progress towards their degrees, and graduation/completion rates. Student success is a central aspect of our University mission and a common purpose binding us together.

As always, thank you for all you do for our students and University through your daily work and professional effort. It is special to be a Redhawk!

Karl Kunkel, Provost