As the campus seeks to formalize our definition of student success, an opportunity to provide feedback on this second draft version of the UC Merced’s definition of student success is being extended.
This student success definition is intended to be student-centered and applicable to both undergraduate and graduate students. We sought to make the definition reflective of UC Merced’s distinctive context as a young public research university in California’s San Joaquin Valley. The Student Success Definition is intentionally broad. An overly specific definition would also be too exclusionary, and so could limit the extent to which students, faculty, staff, and administrators were able to see themselves and their work in the statement. Mostly we wanted to the definition to be clear, so that is accessible to multiple audiences.
Created to serve as an ‘umbrella’ statement, the student success definition can be used by individual campus units in the development of vision and mission statements, in the development of student and program learning outcomes, and as a driver for assessment of efforts supporting student success. We wanted to be sure the definition emphasizes that undergraduate and graduate student success is a shared responsibility between student, faculty, staff, and administration. We also felt it was important that the definition communicate that student success is present in every part of the student’s UC Merced experience.
In the first round of vetting, we gathered feedback from Divisional Council, Deans Council, ASUCM, GSA, Academic Advisors, and Student Affairs Directors. We considered all the feedback and decided to incorporate the following:
- Feedback from students re: use of the term of “personal responsibility”
- Circular nature of the first sentence
- Sense that the statement needed to be more aspirational
- Restructuring of content so that the first focus was on students (and their success), and then the institutional context
- Naming (rather than implying) ‘completion’ of educational goals
- Including the term ‘administration’ as part of the list of ‘responsible’ individuals for student success
- Questions as to why success was defined as engagement, not in accomplishment or contributions
Our goal is to circulate the second draft definition braodly and collect feedback by March 17, 2017.
