Past Initiatives
2021-22
First Generation Student Landscape Analysis
Building on the January 2020 First Gen Symposium, this project aimed to bring awareness to current academic and student affairs efforts related to first generation students, as well as recommend opportunities to strengthen and expand institutional efforts for supporting first generation student success.
2020-21
Academic Case Managers
While Purdue planned to offer in-person instruction during Fall 2020, we knew that some students would be temporarily unable to attend class in person due to isolation or quarantine. The Academic Case Manager initiative was created to provide support for those students so they could maintain academic progress while temporarily remote. While the project was initially a collaboration between Teaching & Learning and Student Life, we hired Academic Case Managers from many departments across campus, and their collective expertise was instrumental in the success of the project.
Student Technology Advocates
Fall 2020 offered many challenges to students and faculty, including increased use of educational technology as we transitioned to a new LMS and adapted to operating during a pandemic. Both students and instructors expressed frustration with technology, and asked for additional help setting up Brightspace courses, managing classroom technology such as BoilerCast, and troubleshooting issues related to the use of video conferencing and online exam platforms. Through a partnership between TLT, college and departmental staff, and Teaching & Learning, we created the Tech Advocates program, hiring students to provide additional support for individual courses.
2019-20
BST Student Advisory Board
Modeled after a similar organization at UC-Riverside, one of our UIA partner institutions, the BST Student Advisory Board was formed to serve as a resource to the BST and the Office of the Provost. BST members nominated students to serve in fall 2019, and in their first year and a half the group provided input on topics including pre-registration for continuing students, communicating about changes in CAPS, the Roadmap for Transformative Education, and their experiences with remote instruction and exams. This group's work is ongoing, but launching the group was the BST's primary initiative during the 2019-20 academic year.
2018-19
Proactive Communication
The impetus for this project was a concern raised by BST members that students were not attending to important email messages from the university, and that marginalized student populations were especially vulnerable to experiencing problems related to lack of information or understanding due to ineffective communication. The project had two main components: one group investigated the problem, talking with students about their experiences with email and collecting data on how many and what type of emails students received in a week. A second group of BST members participated in a pilot in which they scaled the Purdue Promise approach to student communication to the advising realm. Findings from this project have informed subsequent discussions about student communication, including the Transformative Education 2.0 initiative.
2017-18
Exploring Challenges & Opportunities
This project team broke into groups and talked to students, staff, and faculty across campus to find out: What challenges are students facing that affect their ability to be successful? Are there issues that affect particular groups of students that might have been overlooked in the past? Is there a program or department that has really gotten something just right, and there’s an opportunity to scale an initiative more broadly? The group’s goal was to uncover what challenges and opportunities the Boiler Success Team might be able to address in the upcoming year and beyond.
2016-17
Harmonized CODO Process
In August of 2016, and group of academic administrators identified the existing major change process as a barrier to timely graduation. Streamlining the CODO (Change of Degree Objective) process had long been a priority for Purdue Student Government as well. The goals of the project team included:
- Establishing a consistent process across the university.
- Eliminating unnecessary barriers for students.
- Helping students making good decisions that lead to timely graduation.
As a result of the project, the Office of University Undergraduate Advising was named the owner of the CODO process, and all CODO requirements are collected and published in the same format each year on the Advising website. While there is room for individual differences depending on the needs of particular majors, the overall process became far more unified and easier for students to understand.