Student Success

Two students sitting in the Urban Plaza, talking to each other

SINQ Curriculum Redesign

Program Status: Planning

University Studies and the Office of Student Success collaborated to redesign the online Sophomore Inquiry (SINQ) Mentor Workshop Curriculum, incorporating input from online SINQ faculty and various campus partners.  The project was initiated to address a UNST budget cut for 2025-26. The revised budget necessitated the cut of online mentors by 50 percent, which required a redesign of the online mentor program to have a smaller and more focused role for online mentors, concentrating on student success, career readiness, and writing support. This project was further initiated to address the DFW rates in SINQ classes, particularly for those students who take classes online, as research indicates that students who take online SINQs have higher DFW rates than students who take in-person SINQs. At PSU about 45% of students take an online SINQ. This project supports the NISS recommendation to "Continue to strengthen orientation and entry year courses that explicitly link academic pathways, support services, and career/experiential opportunities."

Accomplished

  • Designed a set curriculum for mentors that meets repeatability and adaptability parameters and incorporates student success initiatives.
  • Embedded career exploration, and research/writing workshops into the mentor curriculum.
  • Reviewing the assessment strategies of phase one and the data available to evaluate effectiveness.
  • Hosted a professional development in the fall for faculty and mentors.
  • Created training materials, guidelines, FAQ's, and templates to support onboarding incoming faculty to the online SINQ mentor workshops
  • Review course evaluations and faculty/mentor feedback forms
  • The project team streamlined onboarding process by documenting communication and outreach processes, training materials and tools, and follow-up.

In Progress

  • Reviewing the assessment strategies of phase one and the data available to evaluate effectiveness.
  • Developing a sustainability plan for onboarding new online SINQ faculty.
  • Reviewing the maintenance plan for the workshops.
  • Testing the Blueprint functionality in Canvas to streamline workshop implementation for faculty.

Project Health

  • Phase 2 of this project has been paused as the committee considers recommendations from the General Education Task Force.
  • As part of PSU’s Bridge to the Future 2.0 financial sustainability plan, it has been determined that the UNST Graduate Peer Mentor Program will be eliminated at the end of Spring Term 2026. This includes the online SINQ mentors. Further review and discussion are needed to consider if any part of the online mentor workshop curriculum can or will be incorporated into the main course curriculum. 

Project Team

Executive Sponsor: VPSS
Project Sponsor: Andrea Garrity and Lindsey Wilkinson
Leads: Lindsey Wilkinson and Meredith Michaud 
Project Manager: Pamela Bock
Team: Dana Lundell, Daneen Bergland, Rowanna Carpenter, Meredith Michaud, Katie Johnson (Ad Hoc), Lindsey Wilkinson (Ad Hoc), Greg Flores (Ad Hoc), Dan DeWeese (Ad Hoc)
Collaborators: Ilka Bailey, Shoshana Zeisman-Pereyo, Kim Willson-St. Clair, Taylor Schwab, Misty Hamideh