The Evolving Role of Faculty in Student Success

Posted by Education Advisory Board on August 15, 2016

Report on Faculty Role in Student Success Efforts
August 4, 2016

Faculty members are critical agents in student success but are surprisingly underemployed in that effort, according to a new paper from the Education Advisory Board, a best practices firm advising college and university administrators. “The Evolving Role of Faculty in Student Success” is based on interviews with 120 higher education leaders. (An infographic is available here.) It says that without engagement among faculty, “most top-down student success initiatives are doomed to fail, either through outright opposition or because of a limited reach.” Sometimes administrators don’t communicate their expectations about supporting students to faculty members, according to the report, and best practices — where they are being employed — often remain within pockets of an institution.

“Critical reforms that pertain to curricular requirements, academic policies, advising practices and transfer articulation all rely on the willingness of faculty to redesign the institutional approach and carry out a new set of procedures, but many academic administrators have neglected to involve faculty from the outset,” the paper says.

The most important responsibility of individual faculty members is to enhance the student learning experience, according to EAB. Pedagogical innovations may be plentiful on campuses, but training and support in those practices may be lacking, the paper says. So faculty leaders should be empowered to expand the use of known, effective techniques across departments.

Read more from Inside Higher Ed: https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2016/08/04/report-faculty-role-student-success-efforts

Go to the full report: http://ns.eab.com/DefiningtheFacultyRoleinStudentSuccess