Ensuring a robust and vibrant education
The University of Oregon is a starting place for the dreams of our students and their families. Students arrive at our university with hopes for successful lives, for fulfilling careers, and for opportunities to contribute to our society at large. This gives us precious responsibility. Recognizing this, we pledge to support them during their time with us and to enhance pathways to timely graduation and degree completion.
Key Performance Indicators
- Four-year and six-year graduation rates
- Four-year and six-year graduation rate equity gaps
- Retention to second year
Indicators of Success
Indicators of Success (IOS) are leading indicators that are directly linked to impacting the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for each Oregon Rising goal area. These indicators are designed to drive improvement in key bottlenecks and to be specific enough for units across campus to see their role in improving one or multiple IOS. While KPIs will not change, IOSs may change as strategies evolve and we improve performance on specific indicators.
Indicators for this Goal:
- Percentage of undergraduates registered for 15+ credits each term
- Percentage of students who see an advisor in the first year
- Percentage of students who participate in a first-year experience
- Percentage of students with a D/F/W/NP in the first year
- Retention rate through the first three years of college
Strategies
To enhance pathways to timely graduation, we will:
- Establish a campus-wide student policy and practice action team that serves as the central coordinating body to focus on understanding and removing institutional barriers to timely graduation.
- Require on-going, research informed curriculum analysis in the schools/colleges to identify and remove curricular barriers to timely graduation.
- Mobilize a university-wide “finish in four” effort. (Note: “Finish in four” will be adapted to “finish in five” as program durations warrant.) Work together across academic and student support units to create unified principles for student success; and align academic advising practices across the university.
- Direct effective targeted financial assistance to students.
Academic Year 2024–25 Milestones
Curricular Revision
- Identify curricular bottlenecks.
- Develop data reports required to make data informed decision related to curricular bottlenecks.
- Integrate on-going curriculum analysis and improvement into departmental, school/college, and institutional processes.
- Identify supports needed for on-going curriculum analysis and improvement.
- Collect information from each school and college on what is already happening, share with each other, and celebrate our successes.
- Appoint the EVPAA and task them with developing and implementing a plan for core education reinvigoration and assessment.
Advising
- Assign and empower the VP of UESS to lead this academic advising alignment work.
- Create consistent advisor messaging that will:
- Increase the number of students taking 15 units per term
- Ensure advisor messaging to students is consistent with “finish in four”.
- Identify resources required to enable every student to meet with their academic advisor in the first year and understand their pathway to graduation.
- Integrate an opportunity to meet with an advisor during IntroDUCKtion.
- Showcase advising best practices via a summit.
Policies and Practices
- Charge and empower a cross-functional team to identify barriers to retention and timely graduation and take action
- Use data to identify top barriers to retention and on-time graduation, including equity gaps.
- Select initial areas/barriers of focus including low hanging fruit action items to take immediately.
- Take immediate action to eliminate barriers where possible.
- Develop an action plan and budget for AY 25-26 to eliminate additional barriers.
Goal Owner
- Christopher P. Long, Provost and Senior Vice President
The Goal Owner will work with appointed chairs to establish collaborative workgroups, representing diverse areas of the university, that will drive completion of the milestones assigned to each of the goals' multiple strategies for this academic year and beyond.
Workgroups
Dedicated teams are actively working together to enhance pathways to timely graduation.
- Student Success Action Team
- Curricular Analysis Workgroup
- Financial Assistance Workgroup
- Strategy Development Team (Winter 2024)