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Goal: Enhancing Student Success
Objective: Academic advising, research advising, mentoring, and class experiences that prepare students for their academic and professional futures
Strategy 1: Conduct intentional curricular reviews and revisions that increase curricular flexibility, incorporate in-demand skill sets, and enhance teaching and learning practices.
Example action steps
- Multiple academic units in the college will conduct reviews and revisions of undergraduate program curricula. Goals include: increasing options for majors within core content areas (with options scoped toward career pathways); creating opportunities for stackable credentials (certificates, minors, and training that meets professional credentialling requirements); as well as making space, when possible, for cross-disciplinary exploration.
- The college will reorganize and redirect effort of its Outreach Office, initially purpose-built to support World Campus and Conferences and Institutes programming, to transform into an Office of Innovative Life-Long Learning that will offer academic units access to broader expertise and resources in education program development and learning design to support program and individual course development and redesign.
- Our largest doctoral program will incorporate standardized training in professional skill development in non-subject-matter science domains, including formal and informal research communication, into their curriculum
Strategy 2: Improve student success in navigating academic pathways through increased and consistent access to quality resources.
Example Action Steps
- Co-locate college-level student success center (center for student advising and engagement, student enrollment services, undergraduate affairs, and diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging) in an integrated space promoting student access and program collaboration.
- Building on a recently completed pilot project, implement a college-level peer tutoring program targeting critical early course roadblocks to academic success across multiple majors.
- Two local academic units will launch peer-mentoring programs pairing upper division undergraduates with pre-majors transitioning into the major.
Strategy 3: Develop and implement new academic offerings that apply existing HHD faculty expertise in areas with promising demand and occupational outlook profiles.
Example Action Steps
- Stand up new cross-departmental majors in Public Health and Sports Management
- Build the just started major in Systems Neuroscience
- Collaborate with University and other colleges around introduction of cross-college majors (e.g., sustainability) and minors (e.g., AI)
- Offer a new college-level course targeted to change-of-campus students and second-year pre-majors who have not made their major decision to connect academic interests to meaningful career paths.
Targets related to priority University metrics
| University Metrics | Target* |
|---|---|
| Advising experience of students | • Maintain academic advising encounter rate of at least 80% of undergraduate students having at least one advising session per semester (HHD was the only UP college above 80% advisor encounter rate in latest available data Fall 2023). • Reach 90% of first year students reporting “somewhat” or “very” on end of year survey question asking, “How confident is your understanding of your remaining general education requirements.” |
| Usage of student support services | • Reach 70% of first year students reporting “good” or “great” on end of first semester survey question asking, “How would you rate the progress you made in establishing a support network of HHD faculty, academic advisers and other HHD staff through PSU 14?” • Reach 75% of first year students reporting “a lot” or “a great deal” on end of first semester survey question asking how much did PSU14 (first year seminar) help you in locating and understanding what resources are available to help you in college? |
| Academic performance and progress | • Increase one- and two-year undergraduate retention rates by 2.5%. • Increase four-year graduation rate by 5% |
| Credit hours attempted vs earned | • Cut D/F/LD rate in courses with D/F/LD rates at baseline >=20% by at least 25%. |
| Student skills and competencies | • At least 80 percent of graduates will have been involved in 2 or more course-embedded HIPs by graduation. • Increased student completion of career-relevant badges and credentials |
| Student post-graduation outcomes | • 10% increase in the proportion of graduates (undergraduate programs) employed full-time or continuing their education within 12 months of graduation. |
* Unless an alternate time-period is specified, target refers to change from the start to the end of the five-year plan implementation period.
Note that percent increases applied to metrics that are themselves percentages are multiplicative not additive (e.g., a 5% increase to a four year graduation rate of 72.1% is 1.05*72.1% or 75.7% not 77.1% (72.1% plus 5 percentage points).
Objective: Undergraduate students’ co-curricular experiences align their passions, aptitudes, and ambitions to lead them to successful next steps.
Strategy 4: Expand and coordinate co-curricular experiences to build transferable skills, professional identity, and reflective practice aligned with post-graduation pathways.
Example Action Steps
- Create template student engagement plans (SEPs) to be introduced during first-year advising at the college that curate and integrate available and new co-curricular opportunities around resonant themes motivating student involvement and promote post-graduation success (e.g., leadership, discovery and innovation, human flourishing) and create badging to designate plan completion.
- Expand the college’s engagement in clinical service delivery to increase opportunities to provide students (both graduate trainees and undergraduates on path toward clinical service careers) with hands-on opportunities to enhance what they are learning in the classroom.
- Grow employer and student participation in HHD career fair.
- Launch an Undergraduate Research Opportunities for Learning and Leadership initiative, modelled after Earth and Mineral Sciences Undergraduate Research Opportunities Connection program, where undergraduate students are paired with and mentored by graduate students or postdocs in a research environment.
Targets related to priority University metrics
| University Metrics | Target* |
|---|---|
| Student involvement in co-curricular high-impact practices |
• At least 20% of incoming first-year students complete 10+ First Year Passport activities • 10% of undergraduate program graduates will receive SEP badging |
| Student participation in mentoring programs |
• At least 25% of HHD graduates will have participated in a college or department-based peer or alumni mentoring program. • Have at least 16 graduate-undergraduate student pairs annually engaged in the newly launched UROLL initiative. |
| Student participation in career events | • Increase student and employer attendance at HHD career fair by 20% |
| Twelve-month post-graduation employment or continuing ed | • 10% increase in the proportion of graduates (undergraduate programs) employed full-time or continuing their education within 12 months of graduation. |
* Unless an alternate time-period is specified, target refers to change from the start to the end of the five-year plan implementation period.
Note that percent increases applied to metrics that are themselves percentages are multiplicative not additive (e.g., a 5% increase to a four year graduation rate of 72.1% is 1.05*72.1% or 75.7% not 77.1% (72.1% plus 5 percentage points).
Objective: Student, staff, and faculty health and wellness are cultivated in a caring community focused on flourishing
Strategy 5: Incorporate principals of holistic student centered advising, launch novel programming focused on student well-being.
Example Action Steps
- Departments will pilot various initiatives geared toward promoting holistic advising, including promoting training through the National Student Affairs and Higher Education conference and the pursuit of mental health first aid certification.
- Expand HHD student engagement programs focused on flourishing through collaborations between HHD Student Advising and Engagement, the Edna Bennett Pierce Prevention Research Center (potentially including the Flourish Design Hub – see bullet that follows), and Penn State Student Affairs.
- Launch the Learn to Flourish Design Hub within the Edna Bennett Pierce Prevention Research Center to engage students and faculty in the design and evaluation of novel interventions intended to promote positive mental health and flourishing in college students and other young adults.
- Expand and institutionalize metrics of physical and mental health and well-being conducted as part of the activity-based general health and wellness courses the college offers to meet general education requirements beyond the existing fitness assessments and develop resources for instructors to enhance course impact on holistic well-being.
- Relocate the Center for Fitness and Wellness (CFW) from the IM building to Rec Hall and once relocated launch weekly fitness and wellness experiences out of the CFW for faculty and staff.
Targets related to priority University metrics
| University Metric | Target* |
|---|---|
| Student, faculty, and staff perception of health and well-being | • Increasing trend in summary perception of health and well-being metrics (for all groups – students, staff, and faculty) on available self-report surveys. This will include relevant items in a new college-level survey to be launched college-level survey of all graduate students. (Note that many University surveys of well-being do not currently generate college-specific data.) |
* Unless an alternate time-period is specified, target refers to change from the start to the end of the five-year plan implementation period.
Note that percent increases applied to metrics that are themselves percentages are multiplicative not additive (e.g., a 5% increase to a four year graduation rate of 72.1% is 1.05*72.1% or 75.7% not 77.1% (72.1% plus 5 percentage points).