Student Success Case Study Compendium

• About: Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) enrolls 23,000 undergraduate students and has a 59% six-year graduation rate.
• Challenge: VCU has steadily improved its first-year retention rate, but needed a new way to identify and address the less obvious needs of populations who are unlikely to complete, especially those beyond the first year.
• Solution: In fall 2014, VCU advisors used Navigate360 predictive analytics to run advising campaigns that proactively intervened with 12 student subpopulations.
• Impact: Persistence-focused campaigns resulted in the retention of an additional 65 students in the spring of 2015 and $346,000 in spring tuition and fees revenue. Momentum from campaigns and other initiatives has positively impacted four- and six-year graduation rates.

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• About:The University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee (UWM) is a public research university with a total enrollment of 24,029, a 75% retention rate and a 47% six-year graduation rate.
• Challenge: As a part of EAB’s Moon Shot for Equity initiative, UWM sought to eliminate equity gaps in retention and graduation. However, financial hurdles created a barrier to completion for many students who were otherwise in good academic standing. Moreover, these barriers disproportionately impacted students who are first-generation and/or low-income, as well as under represented minority students (URM), including Black, Hispanic and multi-racial students.
• Solution: UWM piloted a completion grant program to award eligible students with 90+ credits a one-time grant to address small registration preventing balances.
• Impact: Grant recipients completed at a higher rate. There were no equity gaps in retention or graduation between non-URM and URM students who received the grant, compared to the control group which had a 16.1% gap in retention/graduation.

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• About: The University of South Alabama (USA) is a public research university with a total enrollment of 16,211 and a six-year graduation rate of 36%.
• Challenge: Since 2005, USA had experienced declining retention in the midst of enrollment growth. With six- and four-year graduation rates plateauing at 36% and 17%, respectively, USA sought to help students graduate on time and improve overall student performance.
• Solution: USA developed a four-pronged strategy to help more students graduate in a timely manner with the right major. They used Navigate360 data to identify areas of focus. USA then launched two campaigns in 2016, one to encourage high credit-hours students to graduate and the second to enroll students in need of additional support in intensive academic coaching.
• Impact: Through its partnership with EAB, USA was able to increase retention by 12% across four years and graduate an additional 126 students in 2016.

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• About: The University at Albany, part of the SUNY system, has 13,500 undergraduate students, a 65% six-year graduation rate, and an 83% retention rate.
• Challenge: In recent years, Albany has experienced enrollment growth, a new president, and a new strategic plan emphasizing student success. More than half of Albany students receive financial aid through the New York State Grant Programs and 45% are Pell recipients. Albany had achieved some success enacting a variety of practices to improve retention, but the impact was not what they hoped due to poor coordination among student-facing offices across campus. They needed a driving force to create a more collaborative culture.
• Solution: Albany partnered with EAB in 2015 and implemented Navigate360 in student-facing offices across campus. Advisors use Navigate360 to work with Grant students to keep them in compliance, and advisors also reach out to unenrolled students to get them back on campus.
• Impact: Navigate360 allows Albany’s various offices to collaboratively support students and keep them on track to graduation. Through multiple campaigns, Albany has re enrolled thousands of additional students resulting in over $5M in tuition revenue.

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• About: National Louis University (NLU) is a Hispanic-Serving Institution with a nontraditional population of approximately 9,000 undergraduate and graduate students. NLU has a 48% four-year graduation rate and a 72% annual persistence rate.
• Challenge: Historically, NLU’s undergraduate student body was primarily part-time, online, and/or evening transfer students. In 2015, they launched a new full-time daytime program serving largely first-generation, low-income students. In 2018, NLU merged these populations, building the Undergraduate College with the mission of improving equity in degree attainment and employment. However, siloed and reactive departments using multiple technology systems prevented students from getting proactive support and progressing toward a degree.
• Solution: NLU’s Undergraduate College hired a team of success coaches (high-touch academic advisors) to collaborate with faculty to support students. They then implemented Navigate360 to strengthen coordination between faculty, coaches, and additional support staff, facilitating holistic support and improving student outcomes.
• Impact: NLU students now have 13% higher first- to second-year retention compared to Chicago students with a similar academic profile. 90% of faculty responded to progress reports in Navigate360, and 98% of students surveyed reported that faculty and success coach outreach was helpful.

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• About: North Carolina Central University (NCCU) is a Historically Black College/University (HBCU) with 4,748 degree-seeking undergraduate students, a 52% six-year graduation rate, and a 76% retention rate.
• Challenge: Male students, who make up just a third of NCCU’s enrollment and graduate at a lower rate than their female peers, lacked a place on campus to build community and belonging. With limited resources, NCCU’s Men’s Achievement Center needed to engage, support, and retain male students.
• Solution: NCCU launched the African American Male Initiative (AAMI) in 2009 to help create a space for men on campus that offers programming, coaching, and support to foster personal, academic, and professional growth. AAMI staff use Navigate360, EAB’s Student Success Management System, to monitor the progress of all students, collaborate with faculty and other offices to flag and address student needs, and analyze data that informs interventions and bolsters grant applications.
• Impact: Men participating in AAMI have a 90% retention rate compared to a 72% retention rate of Black male students that attend NCCU but are not part of AAMI. AAMI students also have a 57% four-year graduation rate, compared to a 23% rate for all Black male students at NCCU.

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• About: Concordia College is a small private Christian school with 2,010 students, an 83.6% retention rate and a 75% six-year graduation rate.
• Challenge: During the COVID-19 pandemic, Concordia was forced to cease in-person operations. Their emergency response team worried that many students wouldn’t have the necessary resources or support to access their online courses and finish the semester.
• Solution: Concordia College has been part of EAB’s Student Success Collaborative partner for six years, going live with Navigate360 in 2015. While ceasing in-person operations, Concordia emailed all students a departure form to assess immediate needs and used Navigate360 to reach unresponsive students. Additionally, faculty submitted Navigate360 Progress Reports to flag students struggling with remote learning. Leveraging the Coordinated Care Network they built with Navigate360 in the months prior, Concordia redeployed support staff to quickly act on students’ challenges and concerns.
• Impact: Using Navigate360 to reach students, Concordia saw a 16% increase in departure form submissions, and 93% of faculty participated in a campaign to identify students struggling in online courses. Additionally, Concordia redeployed more than a dozen staff to follow up on student concerns and better meet time-sensitive student needs.

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• About: The University of North Carolina School of Medicine (UNC Med) is one of the top-ranked medical schools in the country. UNC Med enrolls 896 students.
• Challenge: Prior to launching Navigate360, UNC Med struggled to provide holistic student support. Advisors had to look in many different places to get a full view of students’ backgrounds, course schedules and goals, and ongoing challenges and potential concerns.
• Solution: UNC Med launched Navigate360 in 2020 and has already seen a positive impact. Advisors no longer need to manually track students with flags or attendance issues, and all relevant staff can easily and centrally access the full picture of their students to provide holistic, comprehensive support.
• Impact: Since launching Navigate360 in Fall 2020, 96% of UNC medical students have been contacted via Navigate360, and 89% have appointment activity logged in the platform.

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• About: Waverton State University* is a public research university serving about 15,000 undergraduates with a 74% six-year graduation rate and a 90% retention rate. It is part of a state-wide university system.
• Challenge: Despite a strong first-year retention rate, many students were failing to graduate in four years. In 2014, Waverton’s president set a goal to increase the four-year graduation rate by 12 percentage points by 2019. But with student caseloads approaching 800 in some advising units, advisors were stretched too thin to give all students the attention they needed to succeed.
• Solution: Waverton leveraged EAB’s student success platform, Navigate360, to improve cross-campus collaboration, implement new data-driven strategies, and improve their organizational structures. They leveraged EAB’s student-facing app, Navigate360 Student, to provide their undergraduates with a comprehensive, personalized advising experience.
• Impact: Waverton successfully launched Navigate360 Student to more than 12,000 users, including 77% of first-year and transfer students. With this and other strategies implemented since 2014, Waverton’s four-year graduation rate increased 15 percentage points.

*Pseudonym

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• About: William Paterson University of New Jersey (WP) is a midsize public Hispanic-Serving Institution with 9,429 students, 40% of whom are first-generation. WP offers over 150 degree and certificate programs, including 57 online programs, and has a 71% retention rate and 56% six-year graduation rate.
• Opportunity: After several years using a basic student success platform, WP wanted to reach and engage students more effectively. Excited about the student-facing tools in EAB’s Navigate360 CRM, they implemented the platform in 2022. Their priorities included a smooth implementation and transition between platforms, better coordination for outreach to students, and stronger student engagement—including for online learners.
• Solution: WP seamlessly transitioned from their prior platform to Navigate360, thanks in large part to the support provided by their EAB team, including their Launch Consultant and Strategic Leader, who met with WP’s implementation team weekly to conceptualize what various workflows and processes could look like with the new platform. Today, stakeholders across campus—from student success leadership, to support offices, to faculty, to both in-person and online students—use Navigate360 on a regular basis. Key features, including multi-modal outreach campaigns, student self-service tools, and the LMS integration have been integral to driving outcomes.
• Impact: Students are highly engaged in the Navigate360 app—81% of logins are from repeat users. WP’s automated alert for LMS utilization has helped hundreds of online learners stay on top of their academic work. And Navigate360 has supercharged overall student support practices, improving retention efforts and contributing to over $1.4M in additional revenue.

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• About: Middlemore University* enrolls 9,000 undergraduate students and has a 78% retention rate and a 51% six-year graduation rate.
• Challenge: Across Middlemore’s 60+ undergraduate degree programs in seven colleges, advising and course planning processes varied greatly. With siloed and inconsistent student support, retention rates remained stagnant over several years. Middlemore needed an innovative strategy to keep students on track and improve outcomes.
• Solution: Middlemore expanded their existing Navigate360 partnership by implementing Program Advising and One-Click Registration. Meanwhile, the Office of Undergraduate Studies used this as an opportunity to establish standardized processes, procedures, and plan formats to ensure every student on campus enjoyed the same comprehensive, dynamic plan building experience.
• Impact: Students who created course plans in Navigate360 retained at a 21.1 percentage-point higher rate than their peers without plans. This higher rate indicates that Middlemore retained about 90 additional students, equating to more than $360K in estimated tuition revenue.

*Pseudonym

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• About: Washburn is an open-access university with 5,472 undergraduate students, nearly half of whom are first-generation. Washburn has a 69% retention rate and a 51% six-year graduation rate.
• Challenge: Many students, especially first-generation students, found the university catalog confusing and intimidating. Washburn experienced challenges guiding students through multi-semester course planning and faced stagnant student outcomes, including their four-year graduation rate. They sought a way to help students better understand course offerings and requirements so they could chart their own academic paths.
• Solution: Student success leaders at Washburn know that for students to graduate on time, they need to create a personalized path that evolves with them across their time on campus. By implementing Program Advising within EAB’s Navigate360, Washburn incorporated informed course planning into their first-year seminar, allowing students to envision an achievable and adaptable path to graduation.
• Impact: Washburn’s Navigate360 partnership, and the Program Advising tool in particular, have had an outsized impact: their four-year graduation rate increased 21 percentage points since launching Navigate360. Additionally, they’ve seen $413,000 in tuition revenue from higher average retention and credit loads for students using building course plans in Navigate360.

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• About: Robert Morris University (RMU) is a private doctoral university with 4,385 undergraduate students, a 61% six-year graduation rate, and an 80% retention rate. They strive to embody their motto, “Big enough to matter, small enough to care.”
• Challenge: Prior to collaborating with EAB, RMU’s students and advisors lacked the tools to coordinate and communicate a plan to stay on track. Advisors needed insight into students’ involvement and engagement on campus, and students needed a clear checklist to follow.
• Solution: RMU partnered with EAB in April 2017 with the goal of achieving 50% first-year adoption on EAB’s student-facing mobile app. First, they created a first-year seminar syllabus that requires students to complete in-app assignments, driving both downloads and ongoing utilization. Second, they used in-app Quick Polls to help keep students on track, and provide advisors and administrators with powerful insights about student interests, needs, and concerns.
• Impact: RMU dramatically exceeded their adoption goal, with 94% of first-year students downloading the app. This contributed to a 2% increase in first-year retention compared to 2016.

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• About: Elizabeth City State University (ECSU) is a historically black public university with 1,695 students, a 73% retention rate, and a 39% six-year graduation rate.
• Challenge: When creating course plans for multiple semesters, students at ECSU often didn’t have full knowledge of degree requirements, and advisors lacked visibility into course availability. There was no standard process for collaboration between students and advisors and no way to encourage long-term planning.
• Solution: ECSU launched EAB’s Navigate360 platform in 2016 and piloted the Program Advising tool with all freshman advisors in 2019. This tool provided a shared workspace where students could build plans based on their major, and advisors could add comments and flag errors. ECSU also used Quick Polls in Navigate360’s student app to identify students in need of extra support. During the transition to virtual learning caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, ECSU relied heavily on Navigate360 to understand and act on urgent student needs.
• Impact: After launching Program Advising in Navigate360, ECSU saw a 35% increase in preregistration over the previous year. The extensive use of Navigate360 among staff and students since 2016 has contributed to a 4% increase in the four-year graduation rate, and 5% and 12% growth in freshman and sophomore retention, respectively.

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• About: Gallaudet University (GU) is a bilingual private university that ensures the intellectual and professional advancement of deaf and hard of hearing students through both American Sign Language (ASL) and English. With an enrollment of 1,427 students, GU’s retention rate is 74.3% and six-year graduation rate is 43.6%.
• Challenge: GU leveraged a basic student success platform for several years to address stagnant retention rates. However, Gallaudet quickly hit a retention plateau, and had limited capability to truly engage students and allow staff to provide holistic support.
• Solution: GU migrated to Navigate360 in 2018 with the goal of improving retention and engaging students to foster stronger sense of belongingness. Navigate360 allows GU to connect advisors, faculty, and support staff across campus in a coordinated network with students at the center. Additionally, Navigate360’s student-facing app empowers students to easily access the resources and support they need.
• Impact: Since migrating to Navigate360, GU’s retention has increased 11.4 percentage points. With 92% of students using it, the Navigate360 student app is an essential retention tool for GU. Students using the app retain at a 1.7 percentage-point higher rate than the cohort average, generating over $130K in additional tuition revenue in just one semester.

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• About: California State University Fullerton (CSUF) is a large public university serving 34,305 undergraduate students with a 67.8% six-year graduation rate and an 88% retention rate.
• Challenge: At CSUF, decentralized advising and support offices lacked standard processes to train staff or direct students to needed resources. Faculty were not sufficiently engaged in collaborating with success staff to fully support students. Additionally, achievement gaps between traditional and underrepresented student populations were concerningly wide.
• Solution: CSUF built new Student Success Centers across campus, where staff use Navigate360 to monitor and connect with students, as well as engage and supplement faculty in supporting students outside the classroom. They also assessed procedural inequalities that disproportionately affect students of color and hired new specialists that use Navigate360 to improve key outcomes.
• Impact: By working to understand and remove barriers to completion, CSUF lowered the achievement gap between underrepresented minority (URM) and non-URM students by 7 percentage points. CSUF also used Navigate360 campaigns to see a $29M+ return on investment in three years.

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• About: Georgia State University is a public research university with a total enrollment of 25,945 and a six-year graduation rate of 51%. GSU has historically served large populations of low-income and underrepresented minority students.
• Challenge: Ten years ago, GSU’s six-year graduation rate hovered around 32% and was especially low for their growing population of Pell students. When Georgia joined Complete College America in 2011, GSU was required to implement a plan to improve student outcomes, with state appropriations tied to these improvements.
• Solution: GSU saw an opportunity to target resources through structured, data-driven interventions such as course redesign, supplemental instruction, freshmen learning communities, and fee-drop grants. In 2012, GSU joined the Student Success Collaborative and extended this data-driven approach to academic advising.
• Impact: GSU’s advisors use Navigate360 daily, helping students make smarter decisions, reduce time to degree, and increase their likelihood of success— contributing to a 3% increase in six-year graduation rate since 2012.

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• About: Auburn University is a high-performing institution serving 25,000 undergraduate students in 13 colleges and schools, including the College of Engineering. Auburn has a 78% six-year graduation rate and a 90% retention rate.
• Challenge: Auburn’s College of Engineering has a rigorous curriculum. Some pre-engineering students struggle to maintain the minimum required GPA and are referred outside of Engineering to select another major. Auburn wanted to reduce the number of students referred outside of Engineering by identifying students who are at risk of not qualifying for the major and providing them with intensive tech-enabled advising support.
• Solution: Auburn partnered with EAB in 2014 and implemented Navigate360 across campus. Within the highly selective Engineering program, advising leadership uses Navigate360 alerts and cases to flag and support students at risk of not qualifying for the major to retain them within Engineering. A dedicated counselor then advises these students, enforcing positive academic behaviors.
• Impact: Through these efforts, in just three years Auburn decreased the portion of students leaving the Engineering program as a result of mandatory referrals by 73 percentage points. In 2018, they retained 94% of pre-Engineering Success Contract students at the university, thus generating $2M in estimated tuition and fee revenue.

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• About: Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU) is a public research university with a total enrollment of 21,913 and a six-year graduation rate of 52%.
• Challenge: In response to state-wide pressure to improve outcomes, MTSU created the “Quest for Student Success” plan, but needed a way to track and move the dial on metrics across the institution. MTSU’s advising units were also severely understaffed and under-resourced to serve a challenging student population on the ground.
• Solution: MTSU set out to drive rapid gains through changes informed by data and best practices. Joining the Collaborative in spring 2014 allowed MTSU to empower staff with data and execute a campus-wide strategy focused on persistence.
• Impact: Through its partnership with EAB, within the first 120 days of launching the platform, MTSU was able to increase overall persistence by 1.5 percentage points, retaining an additional 390 students for $1.5M in spring tuition revenue. They also improved four-year graduation by 4.3%.

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• About: Salisbury University is a public master’s university with an undergraduate enrollment of 7,900 and a four-year graduation rate of 46%.
• Challenge: Advising at Salisbury was owned by faculty and housed within each school, with no shared information about goals or outreach efforts. Many students were not well-prepared for critical courses in their degree path, with some stopping out as a result, or delaying their time to graduation. As enrollment increased, Salisbury “outgrew” its faculty advising model but lacked sufficient resources and buy-in to move to a hybrid professional-faculty model.
• Solution: Over the course of one year, Salisbury’s AVP of Academic Affairs and Assistant VP of Enrollment Management led the charge to rally campus around new, data-driven best practices. They conducted a large-scale retreat that brought together advising, student affairs, and enrollment management to collaborate and build a campus-wide population-specific campaign calendar. Simultaneously, they enacted programmatic changes to encourage timely degree completion.
• Impact: As a result of these efforts, Salisbury saw a 2% increase in first-time, full-time retention and successfully made the case to transition to a hybrid advising model for the fall of 2016.

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• About: Buena Vista University (BVU), a small private Christian university with 1,959 undergraduate students, has a 74% retention rate and a 62% six-year graduation rate.
• Challenge: Between 2017 and 2018, BVU was unable to retain 40% of their freshman class. They identified various contributing factors, including a decline in the average high school GPA and test scores for incoming students. While they understood why students weren’t retaining, BVU lacked an efficient process to identify, intervene with, and monitor students in need of help to keep them on track.
• Solution: BVU partnered with EAB in the Spring of 2018 to address their retention problem. They hired four new staff members focused on retention and launched progress reports campus-wide so faculty could flag disengaged and struggling students. In the Fall of 2019, they expanded EAB’s Navigate360 to additional offices beyond advising, who used the platform to contact students with registration holds, connecting them with the support needed to reenroll.
• Impact: Over the past four years, the portion of BVU freshman with a 2.5+ first-semester GPA increased by 15.3 percentage points, and fall-to-fall persistence increased by 13.2 percentage points.

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• About: California State University Fullerton (CSUF) is a large public university serving 34,305 undergraduate students with a 67.8% six-year graduation rate and an 88% retention rate.
• Challenge: Florida State University (FSU) enrolls 31,000 undergraduate students and has a six-year graduation rate of 80%. The Center for Academic Retention and Enhancement (CARE) is FSU’s central office for preparing, recruiting, and ensuring the success of first-generation, socioeconomically disadvantaged students. CARE currently serves approximately 1,500 students.
• Solution: FSU now requires all CARE sophomores to participate in College Life Coaching. Coaches use EAB’s Navigate360 platform to enhance their impact and improve the overall experience for these students.
• Impact: The most dramatic outcome of College Life Coaching for CARE sophomores has been a significant increase in retention from sophomore to junior year, with the largest gains coming in the last two years as FSU began using EAB technology.

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• About: The University of South Carolina (USC) enrolls 25,556 undergraduate students and has a six-year graduation rate of 73%.
• Challenge: Despite strong institutional performance, USC’s advising structure was fragmented and advising practices were non-standardized. As a result, students’ experience (and satisfaction) varied widely across colleges, departments, and individual advisors.
• Solution: USC joined EAB’s Student Success Collaborative to coordinate different offices and improve the student experience. USC established an advising taskforce and implemented recommendations based on EAB’s best practice guidance, and connected advising and student services together in a Coordinated Care Network.
• Impact: During a time of considerable enrollment growth, USC saw a 3.7% increase in their four-year graduation rate, as well as a 1% increase in their six-year graduation rate.

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• About: University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA) is an open-admissions public university serving 15,090 undergraduates. At UAA, 94% of students are commuters, 57% are 25 or older, and 34% are ethnic minorities, including many Alaska Native students. Overall, UAA has a 32% six-year graduation rate and a 67% retention rate.
• Challenge: Many incoming UAA students are underprepared for college, leading to excess credit attempts and low retention and completion rates. Concerningly, data showed an equity gap for Alaska Native students specifically.
• Solution: To better support all students as they transition to college life, UAA developed a new first-year advising program that uses degree maps based on placement test data to help students choose the right courses. They implemented Navigate360 to ensure staff and students have the tools they need to succeed.
• Impact: Alaska Native student outcomes have improved markedly over five years—this student population’s six-year graduation rate increased by 13.8%, and their retention rate increased by 5.9%. More freshmen are taking appropriate credit loads and passing lower-division courses. Additionally, UAA now has a 5% higher first-time, full-time (FTFT) overall retention rate compared to peer institutions.

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• About: Samford University is a private Christian university with 3,000 undergraduate students and a six-year graduation rate of 73%.
• Challenge: A communication gap existed between faculty advisors and student support staff due to inconsistent tools and processes for monitoring and supporting student progress. Faculty were aware of student issues but lacked the time to fully address them, while student support staff had the capacity to intervene but didn’t know which students needed help.
• Solution: Faculty leadership established new policies requiring midterm grade submissions, while student support staff began using EAB’s holistic student data to strategically intervene with students in need of support.
• Impact: First-year retention increased 2% within one year of EAB Navigate360 implementation with no additional investment in tutoring, supplemental instruction, or other student success measures.

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• About: Grand View University (GV) is a private liberal arts college in Iowa with 1,800 undergraduate students, a 50% six-year graduation rate, and a 68% retention rate.
• Challenge: Academic advising was disjointed, with inconsistent plans of study, unconnected silos of support, and students expressing confusion about where to seek assistance. Previous efforts to impact student success were not effective in mitigating these issues.
• Solution: In Fall 2017, GV launched a new advising model to coordinate student care via a network of professional advisors and campus support. After partnering with EAB, GV strategically brought faculty and support units onto the platform through trainings that started with a strong foundation of necessary knowledge and grew from there based on a user’s role and needs.
• Impact: Since joining the Collaborative in early 2017, GV has seen a 5.6% increase in students registered for Fall 2018, as well as a 3.6% increase in fall-to-fall first-year retention.

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