Higher Learning Commission

Logan University in Chesterfield, Missouri, has distinguished itself as one of the first health sciences education institutions in the nation to forge a path for student success using methods learned in HLC’s Student Success Academy. 

In March, the university joined 20 other universities from around the nation to graduate from  the Academy, a data-informed program that encourages institutions to devise new strategies for enhancing student satisfaction and performance.  

Besides Logan, the Goldfarb School of Nursing at Barnes-Jewish College in St. Louis, Missouri, is the only other health sciences education institution among the Academy’s first 21 graduates.  

“Logan is on the cutting edge in the U.S. and globally in terms of what the higher-education health sciences are doing, but this is the first time we have looked at student success intentionally involving all sectors of our community,“ said Shelley Sawalich, Logan’s dean of students and head of student affairs.  

Since taking part in the HLC Student Success Academy, the university has been breaking ground internally for what could one day become a model of student success in action for other health sciences colleges and universities.    

Logan’s work began in February 2020 when a team led by Sawalich first joined HLC’s Student Success Academy. Its participants from across the university included representatives from admissions, student services, strategic planning, faculty, staff, the online education and nutrition programs, and the College of Chiropractic.  

Each came to do three years of Academy work with a strong commitment to the university’s long-held value of always putting students first. What surprised the team of leaders that analyzed institutional data, programs and initiatives, was its initial discovery of how disjointed the community’s effort was in working to achieve the institution’s student-first aim.  

“Our challenge wasn’t commitment to student success,” said Sawalich. “It was recognizing that our student-success initiatives were living in different departments and that those silos had to be broken down in order to make progress as a health sciences education leader.” 

With help from Academy mentors and scholars, the team zeroed in on ways to grow and unite in purpose across the institution’s system-wide infrastructure, including its doctoral College of Chiropractic, graduate programs in nutrition, integrative pediatrics, sports sciences, and undergraduate degree and non degree programs in general education. 

The team talked to every department and work group about its commitment to student success and the need for better alignment. New initiatives spawned from those discussions include:  

• A sophisticated student profile dashboard with thousands of pieces of student data that can be reviewed and analyzed by department, program or college, and which can also be compared across those areas, helping Logan’s leaders to make best targeted as well as universal decisions. 

• An eight-minute university video that begins with a message from the Logan University president and follows with testimonies from more than 25 members of the Logan community.  Emphasizing the work that Logan’s people and units are doing to put students first in their endeavors, the video entitled “Logan Supporting Student Success” has been circulated internally as both a morale booster and unity builder.  

“This is just a start for all of us in working together to better understand our students, and I credit HLC’s Student Success Academy for giving us encouragement to assemble the building blocks we needed to make these projects happen,” said Sawalich. 

Logan has already shared its experiences as one of the first health sciences education institutions in the nation to graduate from the HLC Academy with the Council on Chiropractic Education, which accredits Logan’s Doctor of Chiropractic degree program that is now up for reaccreditation.  

The university also recently presented to the Association of Chiropractic Colleges on its HLC Student Success Academy experience, which includes a still-evolving plan of action for student success and is expected to be one of the first for chiropractic colleges as well as a guide for other interested health sciences education institutions.  

“We are proud of the work being done by Logan University and look forward to the institution helping to pave the way for other health sciences education institutions to grow in new directions that will benefit the wellbeing of their students,” said Barbara Gellman-Danley, president of HLC. 

HLC's Student Success and Assessment Academies are now accepting applications for Fall 2023. Learn more and apply by June 30, 2023.