Student Success

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Academic Planning For Equitable Success

Program Status: Implementation

Ad Astra+AASCU will provide an opportunity to engage with colleagues from other schools who are interested in improving their approach to creating balanced, effective course schedules. It provides an opportunity to learn and discuss best practices and solutions. In addition, Ad Astra will provide technical and data analysis assistance in helping PSU and other participating institutions address this barrier through a process of preparing, reflecting, prioritizing, acting, and monitoring. The main goal of the Academic Planning for Equitable Success project is to address the course schedule barrier, close equity gaps, maximize resources, and improve efficiencies. This project is largely a discovery of the ways we might improve PSU scheduling from a student-centered lens. 

Accomplished

  • The charter and project team members are finalized.
  • Project leads attended a coaching call with AASCU.
  • Contracts have reviewed, revised, finalized, and signed the Data Share Agreement between PSU and Ad Astra.
  • OIT is supporting the data share so Ad Astra can provide us with their technical support and data analysis. 
  • Project leads attended a cohort webinar on February 29th.
  • The project team had their official kickoff on March 5th. 
  • Erica, Shelly, Katherine and RO held a kick-off presentation with the department chairs and class scheduling staff to introduce them to this grant, among other things

In Progress

  • OIT is supporting the data share so Ad Astra can provide us with their technical support and data analysis. 
  • We expect to receive our benchmark analysis from AASCU in mid-April. We will then have a debrief session and will create a list of potential academic planning and scheduling changes that will be shared broadly with the PSU community for discussion. 
  • We will attend future workshops with AASCU and other institutions who are similar to us based on our benchmark analysis. 
  • We are sharing this work with Deans and Department Chairs.

Project Team

Executive Sponsor: Shelly Chabon
Leads: Erica Wagner and Katherine Barich
Project Manager: Delaney Ybarra
Team: Deb Arthur, Cindy Baccar, Andrea Garrity, Michelle Giovannozzi, Mark Jones, Beatriz Lafferriere, Amy Mulkerin, Jessica Navlet, Vicki Reitenauer, Pronoy Rai, Jacob Suher, Karenna Wait, Lindsey Wilkinson, Eki Yandall
Collaborators: Office of Information Technology, Registrar's Office, Office of Student Success