"Super senior" graduation rates improving

Students who don't graduate in four — or even five — years at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln are still more likely to graduate than not. The UNL 2005 entering class graduated nearly 67 percent of its remaining super-seniors in 2011.

William Nunez, associate to the chancellor and director of Institutional Research and Planning, presented the numbers to the University of Nebraska Board of Regents Jan. 27.

Nunez said in an interview, when looking at the range, the six-year graduation rates have gone from the 40 percent range in 1990 to the 60 percent range in 2005.

Ellen Weissinger, senior vice chancellor of academic affairs, said she didn't have an explanation to why the six-year graduation rates for UNL have grown in the last decade.

"But my guess is it would be related to a couple of other things that have trended the same way," Weissinger said. "One, of course, is the academic profile of our undergraduate student body as a whole … I think the other thing that has trended over that decade is the quality of our faculty."

While reaching the 67 percent graduation rate is a proud moment for UNL, Weissinger said the university is dissatisfied at where it is compared to other institutions.

Nunez agreed.

"The question is, what do we compare ourselves to?" Nunez said. "Us to us is really good progress … but then you got to say, compared to what?"

UNL's six-year graduation rate is placed against a group of peer institutions, such as Colorado University, Colorado State University, University of Illinois, University of Iowa, Iowa State University, Kansas State University and the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.

The graduation rate of the peer institutions averages at 70 percent and the immediate goal for UNL is to get a litter higher than the 70 percent, Nunez said.

"It's an ambitious goal," Weissinger said. "It's difficult to move that metric."

UNL began taking steps in order to move the percent higher than its peers. Nunez said the university is looking carefully at information gathered about students during the past years.

"We just had programs for the masses in the past. We put in place learning communities, we had mid-semester check, we had several programs like that," he said. "Now we're pretty much looking at the student."

When students are accepted, the university looks at their potential for success or being an at-risk student, based on statistical modeling, Nunez said.

Certain students who are at-risk are contacted by advisers, he said.

"We're trying to unify the advising system," Nunez said. "We now have a system in place … so a student can go anywhere on the campus and that advising material that he or she has been advised on is online."

This system is called MyPLAN.

"Broadly, MyPLAN is a computer application that allows an adviser and a student to keep a digital advising record," Weissinger said. "So it's not in a file folder in a desk drawer anymore."

Weissinger said the problem with a file folder in a desk drawer is only one person can look at it at once and if a student changes his or her major, the file folder tends not to go anywhere.

"(MyPLAN) creates the ability to create a digital advising record rather than a paper advising record," she said.

Weissinger said she believes student success comes from the influence of everybody on campus, from the person who cleans the offices to the people in Landscape Services to people who work in the Nebraska Union.

"Everybody who works on the campus has to think it's their job to support student success," she said. "And to contribute to a student, each in our own unique way, staying in college, getting through their program and graduating."

When graduated students are asked why they stayed in college and graduated, a faculty member is often involved, Weissinger said.

Weissinger — who dropped out of college her second semester of her sophomore year — said a faculty member kept in contact with her and encouraged her to return to college.

And she did, after one semester off.

"Often, there are people who aren't faculty members who make that difference," she said. "So everybody on campus has to think it's their job."