BOOSTING ACADEMIC SUCCESS

PASC helps students get on track and stay there

Students and their families didn’t just receive some popsicles to help cool down at orientation this week. They also got assurances that if they can’t seem to hit their stride academically in the fall, help is right around the corner.

ECU student Davarion David gives directions to the West End Dining Hall to a family during new-student orientation Thursday.

Rising sophomore Davarion David was passing out those icy treats Thursday, and he knows firsthand how the Pirate Academic Success Center can help students. He even works there now.

“High school didn’t prepare us for anything in a college classroom,” he said, citing fast-talking professors, fast-moving lectures and classes where no one knows your name. “That was the biggest gut-punch.”

But a professor in COAD 1000, the first-year seminar class, saw the potential in David, a 4.0-GPA student in high school, and referred him to the PASC. There, he got involved in the Male Achievement Crew, a non-residential learning community that’s helping students improve their grades and stay in college.

According to PASC director Elizabeth Coghill, ECU statistics showed males of color who were receiving Pell grants were the most likely group to experience academic difficulties. David was part of that demographic. So the learning community was one way to target resources to these students to help them succeed.

Here are four other PASC non-residential learning communities created to help students succeed:

• Freshman Immersion Program Scholars, a yearlong learning community that helps students transition from high school to college, including study skills assistance, and get engaged in the ECU community.
• Buccaneers, a semester-long learning community that offers peer mentoring and enrollment in common classes for one semester.
• Mindset for Success, aimed at freshmen in the spring semester who received below a 2.0 GPA in their first fall semester.
• Transfer Crew, which helps transfer students connect to the campus community and stay on track for success.

Coghill said retention rates for students in these programs range from 5 to 10 percent higher than campus averages.

As part of the University of North Carolina system strategic plan, ECU is committed to improving its five-year graduation rate to 70 percent from 61.3 percent. ECU is also committed to reducing by half the achievement gaps among male students and female students.

On June 7-8, ECU hosted a Southeastern College Learning Center Association conference on student success. ECU’s Coghill is president of that organization. Jake Jenson, assistant professor of human development and family science and licensed marriage and family therapist, was the keynote speaker.

“We’re really seeing a gender gap at East Carolina University,” Jensen told the crowd. “Guys don’t come to tutoring as often as females do. They just don’t.”

Graduation rates also show a gap. Between 2003 and 2009, six-year graduation rates among women ranged from 57.8 to 62.6 percent. Among men, it ranged from 50.2 percent to 55.8 percent, according to university figures. The gap is larger for four-year graduates, reaching 16.7 percentage points for the 2013 cohort year, or year of expected graduation, according to ECU’s Institutional Planning, Assessment & Research office.

Aiming to tackle that and similar challenges are programs such as the Male Achievement Crew and PASC tutors, mentors and staff members who keep tabs on students to make sure they don’t fall behind, isolate themselves and then drop out of college.

“That’s what our students need,” Coghill said. “They need someone who’s going to reach out, knock on the door and extend help.”

Soon, one of those knocking on doors and sending texts and staying in touch in other ways might be David.

“They cut a deal,” he said of the PASC staff. “If I make straight A’s this summer (and so far he’s on track), I can be a mentor in the fall. I feel like I have a lot of wisdom to give to incoming students.”

ECU student Davarion David puts together a smart board at the Pirate Academic Success Center on Wednesday.