N2025 Conversations | Aim 1: Innovative Student Experiences

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03/18/2022 Added

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In the first of a six video series, University Of Nebraska-Lincoln deans discuss progress on the N2025 strategic plan. The conversation explores Aim 1: Innovative Student Experiences.

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[00:00:05.700]Good morning. Today I focus on three interrelated components to aim one, increasing degree
[00:00:11.640]completion, closing equity gaps and expanding experiential learning. As a reminder, here's the
[00:00:17.460]overall vision underpinning aim one: to create lifelong learners through relevant and innovation
[00:00:23.550]education to support students career and life goals. And here are the N2025 targets with respect
[00:00:30.420]to these components. Our goal is to increase our system four and six year graduation rates to
[00:00:36.090]reduce our equity gap and to enhance experiential learning. The first component is to increase the
[00:00:41.640]number of students who earn bachelor's degrees. We know a bachelor's degree improves a student's
[00:00:46.650]economic and social mobility. The good news is that our efforts to increase four year graduation
[00:00:52.470]rates are succeeding. Last year's cohort graduated at 47.3%, the highest four year rate in UNL's
[00:00:59.820]history, and several of your colleges exceeded 50% in four year rates for the very first time. The
[00:01:07.770]target for our four year rate is 55%. So we need to increase by 4.5% to achieve the N2025 goal. In
[00:01:18.690]terms of six year rates, our improvement is steady but slower. To achieve the N2025 goal we need to
[00:01:27.330]increase our system six year rate by 2.8%. Our second component is closing equity gaps. We know
[00:01:35.880]our students are not equally succeeding in degree completion. We have had success. In 2016, the
[00:01:43.140]Education Trust named UNL, a national leader in improving graduation rates for Black and African
[00:01:48.510]American students. However, our current equity rates are moving in the opposite direction. For
[00:01:55.620]instance, in the gap and graduation rates between first generation and continuing students is
[00:02:00.780]growing wider. The gap has grown over 5% in the past five years. Fortunately, we now have data and
[00:02:09.420]reports to help departments identify and monitor equity trends in their courses and programs. These
[00:02:15.570]reports have encouraged many faculty to examine curriculum to address these challenges. And UNL is
[00:02:21.270]part of the APLU powered by Publics initiative focused on degree completion and closing equity
[00:02:26.460]gaps. Experiential learning is the third component and it is the lever by which we can accomplish the
[00:02:32.370]first two experiential learning is important for all students providing breadth and depth of
[00:02:37.680]integrated learning and the skills that employers value. Experiential learning is especially
[00:02:43.230]powerful for historically underserved students, leading to higher retention and graduation rates
[00:02:48.780]and providing experiences that they might not have access to in their home communities. Our goal is
[00:02:54.810]to share that all students have multiple opportunities to engage in experiential learning
[00:03:00.090]throughout their UNL careers. That's why all undergraduate colleges have approved an
[00:03:06.270]experiential learning graduation requirement that will start in fall 2022. So that's a brief summary
[00:03:13.080]of where we are in innovating the student experience to gauge all students in learning that
[00:03:17.640]is innovative, relevant and equitable.
[00:03:20.750]Let's talk a little bit about first, the experiential component here. You know, this is the
[00:03:28.520]big, big goal that is in the N2025 plan. And I've often said, perhaps the biggest goal, the biggest
[00:03:37.340]aim that we have is around that particular piece of our student experience at Nebraska. So let's
[00:03:44.840]start the conversation there. Around how we're doing and what's happening around campus in terms
[00:03:52.730]of that particular piece of aim one.
[00:03:56.380]I'd like to start Sherri Jones, the Dean of the College of Education and Human Sciences couldn't
[00:04:01.360]be with us this morning, she sent me a great example of what's happening in CEHS. She says
[00:04:08.080]although 100% of CEHS students have experiencial learning that includes research, creative
[00:04:14.170]activity, community engagement or global experiences, we continue to innovate. The Teacher
[00:04:20.080]Scholars Academy is a scholarship program we're working to endow that provides a living and
[00:04:25.750]learning community for pre-service teachers across three colleges CASNR, Fine and Performing Arts and
[00:04:32.770]CEHS with shared coursework, leadership development, important dialogue through racial
[00:04:39.070]literacy roundtables and community engagement from day one on campus. Admission is based on critical
[00:04:46.360]thinking about education and dispositions for being a teacher rather than GPA and SAT scores.
[00:04:53.200]Retention is 98%.
[00:04:56.800]Yeah, I'm happy to say that in the College of Arts and Sciences, our have faculty gotten strong
[00:05:01.000]support behind the idea of ensuring that every student in the college has an experiential
[00:05:04.720]learning opportunity. And with recent really generous financial support of a million dollar
[00:05:10.120]lead gift from an alum of the college, we'll be investing in making sure that every student has
[00:05:15.190]the opportunity to have an internship, study abroad opportunity or research opportunity. And
[00:05:20.410]we know that those resources are really important because equity gaps also play a role in student's
[00:05:25.450]ability to access internships in the summer time. And so we're we're thrilled to be able to provide
[00:05:31.210]financial support to assist those students in those kinds of endeavors. And we're also expanding
[00:05:35.380]our staffing so that we have the outreach into the community, into corporations into nonprofit
[00:05:40.750]organizations into government entities to open those doors for our students. And so I think it's
[00:05:45.490]really a great example of a partnership between the university and our alumni to see the benefit
[00:05:50.350]of those opportunities for our students.
[00:05:52.540]In the College of Architecture, we have design studios, and our fourth year design studio is
[00:05:58.990]called a Collaborate Studio. Interior design, architecture and landscape architecture students
[00:06:05.500]all work on a real world problem in this design studio. One of the examples that I'd like to use
[00:06:14.620]is a faculty member from interior design and a faculty member from architecture have worked
[00:06:20.830]together with an architectural firm in Omaha. And they are developing this partnership so that they
[00:06:30.340]can work on educational facilities in collaboration with communities from around the
[00:06:38.350]state. So in the past, they've worked with Boys Town. They've worked with Elkhorn public and Adams
[00:06:45.730]Central schools. So every student passes through the design 410 Studio, the Collaborate Studio, and
[00:06:54.520]it's been a very enriching experience for them.
[00:06:58.690]So in the College of Business, we are also trying to work to document some of our experiential
[00:07:03.910]learning. That's been our primary challenge in terms of study abroad opportunities, internship
[00:07:09.760]opportunities, as well as various co-curricular opportunities. So the documentation is going to be
[00:07:16.510]critical for us to be able to show that the students have these opportunities to engage.
[00:07:21.450]We're fortunate in the College of Engineering that our curricula have a lot of experiential learning
[00:07:26.010]built into it. But we know that's not enough. And so we've launched an initiative we call it the two
[00:07:31.050]out of three initiative, where we're promising every student will have the opportunity to do two
[00:07:35.970]out of three experiences. And those experiences are a paid internship with a company, an
[00:07:42.150]undergraduate research experience, and a study abroad program. So every student will be get to do
[00:07:48.180]two of those three things. We're partnering with Nebraska industry on our internship opportunities
[00:07:53.970]with organizations like the Nebraska tech collaborative. We're also about to launch an
[00:07:58.170]initiative with the Nebraska startup community to place students in internships with startup
[00:08:03.390]companies. Our Kiewit Scholars Program and the Peter Kiewit Foundation Engineering Academy. Both
[00:08:08.790]provide stipends to the students for study abroad. Our internships are also really highly paid. And
[00:08:14.820]so this is helping reduce the student debt of our students.
[00:08:18.180]Part of a professional education, of course, is getting on the ground training. And we have five
[00:08:22.860]clinics at the law school that are long standing clinics focused on teaching our students how to
[00:08:27.930]become civil litigators, prosecutors, immigration attorneys, entrepreneur lawyers, and representing
[00:08:35.610]children as guardians ad litem. So most of our students get that experience. We focus some of our
[00:08:42.300]externship programs on nonprofits, often because the private sector will take clerks over the
[00:08:48.480]summer for law students, and the nonprofits actually need help as well from our law students.
[00:08:54.270]It provides great work for the nonprofits but our students get tremendous experience through that.
[00:08:59.460]We've also started a nonprofit board externship program, where our students can sit as non-voting
[00:09:05.400]members of a nonprofit board. We know that when lawyers go out into the community, they're often
[00:09:11.010]asked to take leadership positions with boards of directors of nonprofits, then this gives our
[00:09:15.780]students a chance to sit on those boards over the course of an entire year, and see how they operate
[00:09:20.790]and see the different dynamics of board membership. I guess I'll mention one other thing
[00:09:25.890]is not just nonprofits. We have a law Plus Business Program, where they spent half the summer
[00:09:30.900]as a general counsel and a corporation, and then half the summer in a business unit. Many of our
[00:09:35.730]students go to law school and realize I either want to represent businesses or I'd like to be a
[00:09:40.440]business person myself. And so that that program gives them dual exposure to both of those roles.
[00:09:47.990]So Dean Tiffany Heng-Moss was unable to be here, but she provided quite a quite a list. The Engler
[00:09:54.980]entrepreneurship program and agribusiness is really a fantastic program now in year 11, where
[00:10:02.660]students come in and start their own companies. There's a lot of cross pollination, if you will,
[00:10:08.930]with other programs across the campus. Really fantastic. We're now looking at Engler 2.0 which
[00:10:15.290]is taking the Engler program to the communities out there. One vehicle for experiential learning
[00:10:22.250]is the Rural Futures Fellows Program, where for the last six years, we've actually been able to
[00:10:28.970]position students from all of our colleges here at UNL and beyond in communities to work on problems
[00:10:38.510]and opportunities for growth, from entrepreneurship to eco tourism, to rural
[00:10:45.740]prosperity, economic development, urban planning. It's been really a fantastic portfolio.
[00:10:52.790]One of the things also in this particular part of the aim is around the undergraduate research
[00:11:01.160]experience as well. UCARE program at the university continues to be a leader nationally, in
[00:11:08.420]terms of engaging our students across colleges, in undergraduate research experiences directly with
[00:11:16.310]faculty as well. I'm very proud of, of the UCARE program
[00:11:20.300]The libraries as a the information services part of the university works with all of the colleges
[00:11:25.940]to support their experiential learning aims, we need to make sure that those students have access
[00:11:32.780]to the high quality resources that they'll need. So in the area of innovation and entrepreneurship,
[00:11:38.510]for example, we will be dramatically expanding our capacity both in terms of information resources
[00:11:45.350]and expertise in the libraries. But we also support student experiential learning in our own
[00:11:52.070]right. And we have in particular in the area of digital history, digital humanities, through our
[00:11:58.340]strong partnership with arts and sciences through the Center for Digital research in the Humanities,
[00:12:03.380]we have students doing incredible work, telling the stories of that we have not really been
[00:12:09.920]hearing, filling the gaps in the silences. So we have opportunities for students to tell stories
[00:12:15.620]about the black student experience at UNL. To tell the stories of women scholars. So this is an area
[00:12:23.060]where the libraries will be expanding our investment in student co curricular learning.
[00:12:29.380]Experiential learning of many different kinds is really the heart of much of graduate education,
[00:12:34.750]whether it's in our traditional masters and doctoral programs or our professional programs, it
[00:12:40.750]is a key part of what makes a graduate school at Nebraska something to to seek out and value. In
[00:12:48.310]particular, I'd like to note that one of the advantages of being here is very often graduate
[00:12:52.600]students are working directly with the faculty rather than three layers below with multiple
[00:12:58.960]postdocs. But our faculty are directly engaged. And I think that that creates a very, very
[00:13:04.900]positive learning experience. I'd also like to mention that our graduate students are deeply
[00:13:10.420]involved with the undergraduate experiential learning. Many of our graduate students are the
[00:13:17.320]day to day supervisors in UCARE projects are other research activities, they really enrich the the
[00:13:24.760]students experience and in turn, receive their training and mentorship and enrichment as part of
[00:13:30.400]that.
[00:13:30.850]We do experiential learning all the time. Every time a music or theater or dance student performs
[00:13:36.520]in public that's really experiential learning, our graphic designers who work with clients during
[00:13:41.680]internships, it's all experiential learning. And so we feel like this is really part of what we do
[00:13:47.500]every day. But we're also trying to build on that and create new kinds of experiences as well. Oh,
[00:13:52.420]we have some students in our Innovation Studio in Emerging Media Arts who are going to North
[00:13:58.000]Carolina over spring break to learn to tell some stories of underserved communities, they're
[00:14:02.980]through virtual reality and augmented reality. We also have a wonderful collaboration that happened
[00:14:10.240]in the fall semester between our dance program in our Emerging Media Arts program where our dancers,
[00:14:16.360]used motion capture technology, and were able to dance in a virtual environment built by our
[00:14:24.970]Emerging Media Arts students is in a live performance in the Emerging Media Arts Building
[00:14:29.890]where we can see the dancers both in real life and projected in their virtual reality experience. And
[00:14:35.560]so we have lots of new and innovative experiences that our students are getting to build on what we
[00:14:41.800]normally do all the time in Fine and Performing Arts.
[00:14:45.460]But let's let's pivot the conversation a little bit and talk about the equity gap. Part of this
[00:14:51.310]aim is to reduce the equity gap in our students at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln by half roughly
[00:14:59.530]from 14 to roughly 7%. So to make sure everyone understands the equity gap is the graduation rate
[00:15:09.760]of underrepresented minority students compared to you the whole,
[00:15:15.850]The APLU powered by Publix initiative is comprised of over 100 universities, public land grant
[00:15:23.350]institutions that are focused on increasing degree completion and closing equity gaps and there are
[00:15:30.250]20 different clusters. So we're working with seven other big 10 schools, we're always looking at
[00:15:35.620]institutional barriers that are a common across our institutions and ways that we can dismantle
[00:15:41.650]them so that students can be successful.
[00:15:44.320]And in terms of completion rate, the goals that we have around increasing degree completion,
[00:15:50.890]increasing retention in our undergraduate students in particular, what are what are some of the
[00:15:59.380]challenges that we have and in making progress and completing that.
[00:16:05.080]So in terms of achieving our goals around degree completion, student retention, and also addressing
[00:16:10.510]equity gaps, what we recognize in the College of Arts and Sciences is that this really varies
[00:16:15.400]across the various different domains and arts and sciences. And so to address that kind of unique
[00:16:20.680]set of challenges, what we've done is create a, what we call our CAS up challenge, or our
[00:16:25.690]challenge for achieving success in undergraduate programs. In every unit in the college has now
[00:16:31.090]submitted their plans, the central focus of which is to dive into their own data. We now have a lot
[00:16:37.150]of data accessible to us to be able to understand what it looks like across different domains at the
[00:16:42.310]course level. And we're empowering our units to come up with their ideas. It's really a
[00:16:48.250]partnership with our academic units do identify what are the specific strategies that they're
[00:16:52.270]going to pursue over the next five years to address those, those particular aims. And then
[00:16:58.510]we're also making sure that our students get good academic advising, we set a goal to have 90% of
[00:17:04.450]our first year students have a one-on-one contact with an academic advisor in that first year, and
[00:17:10.810]to set out at least a two-year academic plan. And we were pleased to see that we reached that 90%
[00:17:17.050]mark. But we want to go further, and make sure that every student is getting off to a great start
[00:17:21.460]in their academic career.
[00:17:22.660]Just to build on what Mark said the Center for Transformative Teaching has prioritized grants,
[00:17:28.120]both to individual faculty, but also to departments that are interested in focusing their
[00:17:33.940]work around equity and supporting their efforts.
[00:17:36.850]I was actually going to refer to the CTT grants, because we have a number of our faculty who have
[00:17:41.380]taken them on where they're they're interviewing students who have run into challenges completing
[00:17:47.230]some of our hands on components in our curriculum. We're making sure that we're finding out why. What
[00:17:52.780]are those barriers to student success across the college? So those CTT grants have been really
[00:17:59.230]essential for our faculty to be really understand, where are those barriers? And how can we improve
[00:18:04.990]our curriculum to make sure that everyone has the same opportunity?
[00:18:08.260]So I'm going to take you up on your challenge to make this more of a conversation, right? I don't
[00:18:12.160]teach undergraduates. What strikes me as as that listen to everyone is how individualized the
[00:18:17.200]approach must be for every student. It goes back to this overarching theme of every person in every
[00:18:23.200]interaction matters. And to try and do that on a relatively massive scale. I mean, we're one of the
[00:18:28.570]smallest schools in the big 10. But we do have 25,000 undergraduates or so and how do we do that?
[00:18:34.480]How do you give that individualized attention, particularly for a first generation student that
[00:18:39.910]may not have the support outside of the university to know how to navigate this relatively complex
[00:18:45.790]organization? So I'm curious from people on how they're approaching that tension between educating
[00:18:52.750]a lot of people and then giving people this individualized approach?
[00:18:56.660]I think, in part to answer Richard's question, but you know, one of our big challenges with Fine and
[00:19:02.420]Performing Arts has to do with actually where we are on campus. Our students are immersed in what
[00:19:09.110]they do in the fine and performing arts kind of 24/7. But they're about as far away as they can be
[00:19:14.240]from dorms and dining halls and other kinds of campus resources. We had a person now, new student
[00:19:20.480]success coordinator position, a person that's been kind of embedded in our college and really has
[00:19:26.240]made a huge difference in helping students connect to those resources, where students, particularly
[00:19:32.900]individual students, with individual problems, didn't know who to go to to ask questions and to
[00:19:37.910]get connected with things. We're also trying to bring the resources to our part of campus and so
[00:19:42.830]one of the things we're doing soon is launching a pop in pantry in one of our buildings so that
[00:19:48.770]students who need food, those students who don't have time always to go to the dining hall between
[00:19:53.600]classes, and those who may not have the resources they can come in and get food resources as well.
[00:19:59.420]And the College Business, talk about challenges as it relates to the large numbers. Our student to
[00:20:05.960]faculty ratio is now over 40. And so we teach a lot of our courses in large lectures, which makes
[00:20:10.670]it very challenging to provide a very one-on-one kind of experience. And so what we've looked to is
[00:20:17.780]through our teaching and learning center is peer tutoring and supplemental instruction. And so
[00:20:23.810]we're training peers to be supplemental instructors in our large lecture classes. They
[00:20:30.320]offer basically study sessions every week. And then they offer one on one tutoring for free.
[00:20:37.130]We're doing a lot of peer to peer mentoring, in careers, in advising and recruiting, in tutoring,
[00:20:45.260]strengths coaching. So that's one of the ways that we've tried to address that challenge.
[00:20:51.230]We have a number of programs and resources that we work with students, of course, in Residence Life.
[00:20:58.190]I visited with staff this past week. And in the fall of 2021, we had over 13,000 intentional
[00:21:08.600]interactions with students. That's mostly peer to peer mentoring. But that's an incredible increase
[00:21:15.800]in the number of interactions that our students have with their peers. I was listening to the
[00:21:22.580]conversation about experential education. And we kind of feel like I need to pop in on this one. We
[00:21:30.980]have a number of students that participate in co-curricular activities, not necessarily off
[00:21:37.460]campus, we have 500 plus RSOs, the recognized student organizations, I want to focus on what
[00:21:44.540]they're learning from those experiences. So we know that students involved in ASUN and are
[00:21:50.390]actively engaged in policy work at the campus level, but also at the state level. They work
[00:21:56.510]closely with our legislators on some of their important issues. And they're developing skills in
[00:22:03.410]democratic civic engagement. And then we employ over 1200 student workers. We have a program
[00:22:10.730]called Husker Grow. And we've learned in our most recent assessment is that this on campus work
[00:22:17.840]experience that they're having in Campus Rec in the dining hall in Residence Life, in the unions,
[00:22:23.420]they are developing a sense of community, but they're also developing important transferable
[00:22:28.580]skills.
[00:22:29.460]And Laurie, I'm glad you brought that up. Because that's that's also critically important, really,
[00:22:34.560]across all the academic colleges, the libraries, all all have students who work directly within
[00:22:43.470]within our programs and gain very valuable experience. You know, when talking about aim one,
[00:22:50.700]and the student experience at Nebraska and bolstering and growing that student experience, we
[00:22:57.420]certainly are well on our way to achieving the N2025 goals. And it's been a great conversation.
[00:23:04.980]So thank you very much for the conversation.

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N2025 Conversations | Aim 1: Innovative Student Experiences

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