Wisdom from the 2025 Student Success Collaborative Award Winners
Align institutional priorities and resources early on. Make sure your website is up to date, as it plays a key role in AI learning.
Finally, collaborate closely with EAB! Their support was essential to our successful implementation of AI tools.
Automate recurring reports in Edify and establish a transparent schedule for updating insights. This ensures data “in process” are not equated to “final numbers” (ex. Class registrations vs. Census enrollment) and frees up time for deeper analysis.
Collaborate with other systems at your institution. The more you can define the parameters of available student success data while also defining data parameters for other systems and sources at your institution (SIS, IR, etc.), the better users will understand the system.
Carroll Crowson
Director of Academic Support Programs
Break down data silos by integrating student success data with other institutional data. We use a tool called Power BI, and it helps us empower teams to deliver timely support, use unified dashboards to assess what’s working, and inform outreach efforts.
As a new administrator 20 years ago, a seasoned faculty member told me to never make a decision without the best interests of students in mind. Think about that, and put it into action every day!
Dr. Bill Feige
President
Knowledge Agent interactions are a goldmine for insight. Even if you have a clear communications plan, student questions can reveal disconnects to help your team uncover hidden gaps, respond proactively, and better communicate policies, processes, and resources.
We use Edify and Navigate360 to track student engagement with support services. Automated daily updates to the persistence model are key for helping success coaches identify and support disengaged students at risk of stopping out.
Don’t wait to be the expert. Practice in your test environment, ask questions, and keep moving forward. Small actions create lasting impact. You have EAB Support, Office Hours, and the Community to lean on!
Mary Amador
Program Specialist, Office of Institutional Research
In a time of rapid change and uncertainty across higher ed, dare to pursue a bold and inspiring vision. Tap into Starfish’s flexibility and tailor the system to align with your culture and strategic priorities. You can transform challenges into opportunities!
Listening to faculty and making tangible improvements based on their input significantly boosts their participation. Pairing that with data to demonstrate impact makes it contagious. Just a handful of happy faculty champions can significantly shift the dynamic.
Make data actionable. We use student success analytics to prioritize aid, guide care, and steer outreach—even social media ads—to students predicted to benefit most. Build habits to use data every term.
Training is key in order for technology to standardize advising, improve data access, and foster meaningful collaboration. Our Student Success Training Academy empowers faculty and staff to provide more student-centered support that ultimately enhances retention, persistence, and degree completion.
Timothy L. Hatchett, Ph.D.
Chief Student Affairs Officer/Vice President of Student Affairs and Enrollment Management
Be intentional in strategically mapping out your technology rollout, but remain flexible during execution — success depends on your ability to adjust to feedback, timing, and emerging campus needs.
Renee Tastad
Assistant Vice President, Student Affairs and Enrollment Management
Build strong user relationships to drive adoption. User feedback shaped our homegrown support site—featuring videos and guides—which saw over 800 visits in its first week, fostering a community around coordinated care.
Integrate the AI Message Content Creator in advisor processes and training. The more our advisors use it, the more confident and efficient they become. Our advisors find the tool helps with saving time, setting the right tone, and even communicating with parents.
Use your student success technology for relationship-building. The tool provides scaffolding to enhance and facilitate communications between staff, faculty, and students. Focus on the relationships. They are fundamental to coordinated care and improved persistence!
I stay current by consistently logging into the platform to explore new updates, participating in live sessions, and reviewing recorded trainings. Once I have a comprehensive understanding of a new feature, I assess its potential integration with our existing systems. My approach is always guided by a central question: How will this initiative enhance the student experience?
Caron Gomes
Systems Analyst/Programmer
Be bold. Replace traditional midterm grades with Midsemester Progress Surveys. Enable nuanced feedback to unlock timely outreach. Holistic insights at scale are now our mid-semester norm, not the exception.
Dream big, start small—but start smart. Before launching AI tools, assess your existing workflows, fix what’s broken, and pilot with intention. We streamlined referrals, appointments, and training first—then we soft launched the AI Knowledge Bot.
Make sure student outreach is multimodal. We market our student survey via website banner, social media post, email, and text! Also, think about phase 1 and phase 2 of follow up. E.g. after students complete our Basic Needs Survey, referrals are triaged out District-wide and additional outreach is conducted where needed.
Think about what may be confusing from the student perspective. We realized some students didn’t know the difference between their faculty and professional advisors, so we created a checklist explaining what to talk about with each.
Start small, scale smart. One well-timed workflow beats ten confusing ones. At SEMO, we build with clarity, test with partners, and always document what works (and what to avoid). We openly share wins and lessons learned so others can skip the trial-and-error and move straight to impact.
Create a campus-wide culture of care. Engage users across key departments through early alerts and messaging campaigns. This collaboration will ensure timely, personalized support for every student. Then, the platform’s predictive analytics can help you transform support into preventive care, improving retention rates while fostering genuine institutional commitment to student success.
Leverage your faculty network to promote Forage’s industry simulations as class assignments. We’ve also integrated them as a requirement in internship courses and experiential learning programs and added Forage as a homepage link in our student success platform.
Think about who needs to be involved to advance data-driven student success. We collaborated with Institutional Research and IT units on our Edify and Navigate360 work to identify the most effective data sources and tools to address challenges. Campaigns now deliver timely, proactive communications, while integrated dashboards and shared notes allow advisors to meet students where they are.
Chase Hagood
Vice Provost for Student Success
Embrace AI! It offers on-demand support through a familiar platform. Pair Navigate360’s AI with Automations to expand your impact. Addressing concerns, like controlling Knowledge Agent inputs, helped us build trust through transparency.
To create a coordinated care calendar, identify key student deadlines first, then map outreach and campaigns to support those moments. Bring together cross-functional staff monthly/bi-weekly to review data, adjust strategies, and coordinate proactive, unified communication.
Alicia Stuedemann
Director of New Student and Retention Programs