Current Work

ASCEND Initiative

Portland State University’s ASCEND Initiative is an overarching framework designed to support first-year and transfer students as they move through year one at PSU. ASCEND outlines a comprehensive approach to providing structured and proactive guidance to students to support their educational goals, connect academic pursuits to post-college plans, and create more intentional support in time-to-degree and credit momentum.

Multiple partners and projects listed below are part of the ASCEND Initiative. Click "Read More" to find out more about ASCEND and see a list of the projects involved.

Academic Planning for Equitable Success

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

Academic Supports

To provide academic support to students enrolled in courses with historically lower completion rates or courses considered to be large gateway STEM courses, the Office of Student Success and the Learning Center have collaborated to provide embedded academic support. For the purposes of this pilot, embedded academic support utilizes peer tutors to deliver high-quality academic support to students.

Academic Warning Workshop/Probation Intervention

This workgroup was formed to revise the existing Academic Warning Workshop. Looking carefully at student feedback, data trends, and success metrics, it was apparent that a redesign was essential to accomplish the workshop’s goals. The launch of the new Academic Warning Workshop was at the end of the summer 2023 term.

Advising Strategic Plan

Undergraduate Academic Advising (UAA) is undergoing a strategic planning process that will align with the mission and vision of UAA as well as the PSU in 2030 Vision and Strategic Imperatives and the Embracing our Majority BIPOC Future framework. The goal of the UAA strategic plan is to create a cohesive and collective vision for academic advising at PSU. The Advising Strategic Plan will center the needs of our current and future PSU students to ensure their success; improve the experience of advisors and advising leadership resulting in a collaborative and positive work environment and culture; and operationalize recommendations from the external assessment by NACADA and internal assessment group.

Classroom Experience Project

The purpose of this project was to develop and implement a holistic classroom evaluation process that is used consistently and broadly across PSU with the goal that each department would adopt and leverage this new classroom experience process. The project piloted an updated classroom experience instrument and assessed the results. The project is closed with recommendations made to senior leadership that outline what is needed to fully realize an updated course evaluation process at PSU.

Data Sharing with PCC

This discovery project aims to discover a sustainable mechanism to share data and applications between Portland Community College (PCC) and Portland State University (PSU) in an attempt to increase our transfer population and gain actionable insights. Additionally, this project aligns with and supports all of the HECC work related to the Major Transfer Maps and improved transfer pathway. We have been allocated a one-time grant fund of $200,000 to initiate this discovery project.

Early Alerts

The Early Alerts workgroup is focused on increasing faculty participation in Early Alerts. The workgroup is focusing on how to close the loop with faculty each term, and how to best provide quarterly status reports. Additional work is being done to make Early Alerts data accessible so that it can be shared more regularly. The leadership team has synthesized insights gathered over the past two years to develop a proposal outlining the essential components for a sustainable Early Alerts program at PSU.

Emergency Aid Pilot

At PSU, there is not a streamlined, single process for students to request emergency aid. Current processes have different intake, eligibility, and access points which results in inequity. At times, a hardship request is completed, only to find that the student is not eligible based on their financial aid award. Meanwhile, multiple solutions (spreadsheets, paper forms, email, and databases) are used to move the request along. Finally, there is no visible centralized way for students to initiate a request. This project seeks to create a student-centered, equitable process that improves access, removes barriers and stigma, and fosters connection to campus supports and resources.

EPIC@PSU

As part of the EPIC@PSU initiatives through the Student Success division, this project will develop and host Professional Development (PD) workshops for faculty and graduate students to increase best practices in inclusive pedagogy. The structure of the proposed project is partly in response to requests by previous faculty participants to learn about additional strategies designed to promote belonging and increase inclusivity in classrooms. This includes evidence-based strategies such as opportunities for syllabus revisions to promote growth mindset, as well as small, immediately implementable strategies. Participants will continue engagement and reflection, and share lessons learned with peers through Community of Practice (CoP) meetings.

Finish Line

The Last Mile initiative that began in 2010 was very successful in helping over 1,000 students who left PSU without their degree return and graduate. There are many students that have stopped out as a result of the pandemic for a myriad of reasons, and we worked to build on the Last Mile initiative to be a true "last mile" program and help the students who were either at risk of stopping out due to financial reasons or that stopped out as a result of the pandemic. This project supported students' return with academic and financial planning support.

First-Year Advising Requirement Hold Removal Pilot

The purpose of this pilot is to minimize unintended consequences of the First Year Mandatory Advising (FYMA) registration hold that is placed on a student's impact on equitable student success. It intends to test the mechanism of the registration hold to enforce the requirement and not to test the efficacy of the First Year Advising Requirement.

First-Year Inquiry for Student Success

The purpose of this project is to redesign Portland State University’s three-term course First-Year Inquiry (FRINQ) to embed supportive services and student success measures directly in the curriculum. Our goals are to create a FRINQ curriculum where every student knows what support is available on campus by embedding advising, registration, financial aid, career readiness, wellness, belonging, etc., into the curriculum, to use FRINQ as a site where students can meet and build relationships with academic professionals from across campus who are ready to assist them, and to develop proactive processes for identifying and supporting students who are at risk of not passing or completing FRINQ.

Incoming Student Questionnaire

The Incoming Student Questionnaire will help identify first-year students who may benefit from additional support and extended onboarding before the academic year begins. The goal of the Questionnaire is to help students who may have additional challenges in their path to graduation and align a student's academic major with their professional aspirations. Additionally, the questionnaire will assess if a student has taken all the necessary steps and actions to enroll in classes. With the Incoming Student Questionnaire, we hope to further support students by assessing and addressing student needs and challenges before classes even begin.

Math Start

The Math Start initiative will strive to address various student success metrics for students who test in developmental math courses. PSU data indicates that full-time first-year students who test at Math 95 or lower persist at a rate 15% lower than their peers. The Math Start Initiative aims to determine if there are alternatives to Math 95 at PSU and a viable option for students placed into Math 95 or below to start at college-level math.

Motivate Lab: Student Voices Initiative

The Student Voices Initiative centers student-led focus groups to examine students' sense of academic and social belonging at PSU and other higher education institutions and provides recommendations for system-change, with a particular focus on supporting historically marginalized student groups.

Onboarding

This project aims to implement a clear, comprehensive, and consistent onboarding experience for first year and transfer students during their first year at PSU. With a supportive plan in place, students will know who their ‘success’ team is and the knowledge and access to resources that support student success. This project is a collaborative effort between Advising & Career Services and the Transfer & Returning Student Resource Center.

SMS Chatbot - Victor E. Bot

Student Success has partnered with EdSights to implement a campus-wide SMS chatbot that can serve as a first-line problem solving and wayfinding tool for students. The goal of this project is to provide students with a convenient way to find answers to questions, get automated and tailored messages aimed at improving connection to PSU, and creating a mechanism for student success staff to provide additional support —thereby increasing overall student engagement and persistence.

Student Success Data Champions

The Data Champions program will bring together selected faculty, staff, and administrators from across our campus to build data literacy, empower data users, deepen our understanding of equity-minded data analysis, and ultimately expand the data-informed student-success decision-making capacity at PSU. Participants will gather in cross-functional teams to answer questions about student success, supported by a series of two-hour learning/workshop sessions, and with the help of expert coaches. After completing the program, the Data Champions will return their skills and knowledge to their units to support strategic decision-making.

Student Wayfinding Task Force

The Student Wayfinding Task Force is a continuation of the First Stop Workgroup. Current work focuses on three areas:

Coordinated Hours (short-term) for services within FMH
A Virtual First Stop (long-term)
Inter-departmental relationship building

Summer Scholars

The Summer Scholars is a three-week summer program followed by a year-long academic workshop that supports early access to campus resources, community, and academic coursework to ease the transition from high school/community college to college.

Past Status Reports