Student Success Project Archive

Here you can view the work previously completed by our Student Success teams and partners as of Winter 2026. These accomplishments show the capabilities and expertise of our valued teams.

Active Learning Classrooms

This project will collect data from PSU faculty to better understand what active learning activities are taking place in our classrooms. With this data, we will amplify the engaging pedagogies used in our classrooms, identify the gaps that exist between existing active learning techniques faculty are using (or would like to use) and physical classroom configurations. This analysis will be compiled along with recommendations for development of a “PSU Active Learning Classroom” standard that would meet the needs of the highest priority use cases and that could be requested by faculty through normal classroom assignment processes, in addition to informing professional development opportunities.

Advising Assessment

In an effort to improve the advising structure and services at PSU, Advising and Career Services (ACS) is engaging in an external program review led by fellows from the National Academic Advising Association (NACADA) to ensure that ACS meets the needs of students and the institution.

Advising Strategic Plan

Following the 2023 NACADA recommendations, Undergraduate Academic Advising (UAA) engaged in a strategic planning process, aligning the mission and vision of UAA with the PSU Strategic Plan and the Embracing our Majority BIPOC Future framework. The goal of the UAA strategic plan was to create a cohesive and collective vision for academic advising at PSU. The Advising Strategic Plan centers the needs of our current and future PSU students to ensure their success and improves the experience of advisors and advising leadership. The Undergraduate Academic Advising Strategic Plan promotes a collaborative and positive work environment and culture and operationalizes recommendations from the external assessment by NACADA and internal assessment group.

ALEKS Pilot

In an effort to place students more appropriately into introductory level Chemistry courses, the department implemented the ALEKS placement test and remediation tool. In addition to improving placement, the goal of the project is to improve the success of students in CHEM 221 and thereby also improve persistence. Students who do not meet the minimum score for placement into 221 are given the opportunity to complete a series of learning units in order to improve their score. As of spring 2023, the test has launched and is currently in use.

ASCEND Initiative

Portland State University’s ASCEND Initiative was an overarching framework designed to support first-year and transfer students as they move through year one at PSU. ASCEND outlined 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 were part of the ASCEND Initiative. Click "Read More" to find out more about ASCEND and see a list of the projects that were involved.

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.

Cohort Model For Portland Scholars

This initiative supports Portland Scholars during their first year at PSU with a goal of improving outcomes for first-year students who enroll with a high school GPA below 3.0. Through the cohort model, students will develop community, belonging, and academic identity. Cohort models and early academic integration have been shown to increase retention. Students involved in a cohort often exhibit increased campus engagement and express greater overall satisfaction and a strong sense of belonging. This project aims to create a cohort for conditionally admitted students that will span three terms of Student Success FRINQ pilots. Through this cohort model, students will receive an enhanced support system throughout their first year 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. Through a unified gathering of stakeholders we aim to design a solid, feasible, maintainable and effective solution that meets broad PSU needs, hitting on recruitment, admission, co-admission, transfer transition, and continued PSU enrollment/degree progress -- and most importantly - an ability to strengthen the advising partnership so our academic advisors can work more closely on a given students situation and pathway. Additionally, this project aligns with and supports all of the HECC work related to the Major Transfer Maps and improved transfer pathway.

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.

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.

Motivate Lab at the University of Virginia is provided us with light-touch support to train the PSU project team to implement the Student Voices Initiative protocol, code and analyze the data, and identify themes to understand salient opportunity structures (e.g., aspects of the college environment that either thwart or enhance their sense of belonging) that can be addressed by incorporating the student perspective.

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 Undergraduate Academic Advising, University Career Center, and the Transfer & Returning Student Resource Center.

Pedagogical Innovation

Under the joint leadership of Professor Erin Shortlidge and Vice Provost Erica Wagner, this Inclusive Pedagogy and Curricular Innovation project aims to support faculty in evidence-based, culturally relevant, inclusive curriculum development in order to improve faculty experiences of teaching and students' learning experiences. The second phase of this project is called EPIC@PSU.

Students First Resilience Fund

At PSU, 43% of students who were unable to resolve all of their holds left, many of whom left with a financial hold. In partnership with the Office of Student Success, PSU's Division of Enrollment Management initiated a pilot program designed to predict students at risk of receiving a financial hold and proactively provide them with financial support. The Student’s First Resilience Fund provides $500 a term for three terms to a group of students identified as being likely to have a financial hold placed on their account. The program is expected to help increase retention rates on campus.

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 create a mechanism for student success staff to provide additional support —thereby increasing overall student engagement and persistence. This project is in maintenance mode.

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.

WICHE No Holding Back

The goal of this project was to give institutions tools to (re)evaluate our administrative and/or student success and hold policies to improve student success and to better use our data in policy formation. We participated in a community of practice over the course of 15 months and received support from WICHE and AACRAO as we went through the exercise of collecting, cleaning, and analyzing administrative hold data and revising policies based on those findings.

Virtual First Stop

The Virtual First Stop (VFS) project was a cross-divisional collaboration to prioritize and implement a shared set of tools and processes to simplify the student’s experience when seeking help.