Marquette University Community Rallies for Student Success
When Marquette University joined HLC’s Student Success Academy in 2019, the team of leaders knew they were in for work.
To arrive at an effective strategy for improving the Marquette experience, the team spent nearly two years studying and inventorying the institution’s many student-support programs.
It collected and crunched student data on everything from demographics to drop-out and graduation rates in order to pinpoint who was left behind and why.
The team identified a need for major infrastructure change and strategies on how the Jesuit institution with more than 11,000 students in Milwaukee could best serve students, improve their outcomes and still stand for social justice.
However, no one expected the work to lead Marquette University’s president to declare in a 2021 address to the entire community that student success would be the institution’s top priority.
“It was an inspirational moment,” recalled Erik Albinson, director of educational services and Academy Team leader for Marquette.
“We were sent the message that the work we were doing was not just any initiative. This was work we would continue to do in order to achieve real change, and all of us in the community have been on the same page ever since.”
Composed of a cross-section of administrators and faculty, Marquette’s Student Success team worked closely with an Academy mentor and enjoyed camaraderie with teams from 17 other institutions from across the United States, all which became the first to graduate from HLC’s Student Success Academy in 2022.
“The Student Success Academy provided us with many useful steps for organizing data and integrating ideas and recommendations into a unified model,” said Albinson. “The Academy gave us a foundation on which to build and a catalyst at our institution for change.”
While the Marquette team concluded as a result of the process that the institution has plenty of student-support programs, it found the programs were siloed in various spaces across Marquette’s seven colleges.
The team also found through its work that students are hearing the message that Marquette is dedicated to social justice, in large part because of individual, caring people. However, that message had frequently been perceived to be coming from a bureaucratic rather than warm environment.
This led the Marquette president in his 2021 address to appoint a campus coordinating committee charged with implementing a new 10-year, multi-phase, comprehensive student success strategy.
Steps taken by the Academy team include establishment of a student success center with many services including tutoring, coaching and career mentoring. Opening in 2024, it will help prepare undergraduates for university life starting from their first day on campus.
A wellness center that will include medical, counseling, fitness and other services also is in the planning stages and will open at the same time as the student success center.
“For many years, Marquette had a culture of opportunity which was based on the idea of ‘I will help you if you need it. Just ask,” said John Su, vice provost for academic affairs who is coordinating efforts for Marquette’s transformation.
“We are now saying ‘if you have committed the time and effort to attend Marquette, we will be there for you to give you the tools you may need to succeed,” he said.
Marquette officials say they are already seeing increases in student retention as a result of their efforts, including the opening of a new Black Cultural Center that began to take shape based on analysis of student demographics data.
With these and other changes, goals for the future also include significantly boosting enrollment, retention and graduation rates over a 10-year period.
“The work that Marquette University has done to lay the groundwork for students and their wellbeing is phenomenal,” said Barbara Gellman-Danley, president of HLC. “We very much look forward to the changes and positive transformation that could be in store for the institution,” she said.
One lofty aim of the institution is to further raise its standing and reputation in U.S. higher education. Another is to become, wherever possible, a model for how to embrace and further student success.
“In many ways, HLC’s Student Success Academy has been the fuel that lifted off our rocket,” said Su. “We are now trying to defy gravity and if we are successful, we could become a model for the future.”
