Last year, 593 students were placed on academic warning.

After the Student Success Center‘s first year of operation, 70 percent of them were able to regain good standing.

The Student Success Center is used to identify at-risk students for academic failure through intervention, support to improve their success rate.

Last year was the center’s first full year of operation with a full staff, which includes two full-time professionals and six graduate assistants.

Prior to the Student Success Center, there was the Academic Success Center, which consisted of just Cindy Boyer, now assistant director of the Student Success Center.

A five-year $1.8 million grant Eastern received in Oct. 2006 provided more opportunities.

“We were able to then expand the very limited services that I could offer on an individual basis in my office at the Academic Success Center to then hire a complete staff, expand our programming and reach more students,” Boyer said.

The center offers a variety of services and three mandatory programs, which are a course for students on academic warning, a program for reinstated students and the Building Outreach and Opportunity for Students in Transition.

Students who go on academic warning for the first time are required to enroll in the course EIU 2919, Strategies for Success, through the center.

Prior to the implementation of EIU 2919, 34 percent of students who went on academic warning regained good standing, Boyer said.

Last year, all 593 students that were put on academic warning were placed in EIU 2919.

“Our first cohort of Fall 2007, 70 percent of them have regained good academic standing after completing EIU 2919 and implementing the strategies that they were instructed upon in class,” she said.

The center also provides a mandatory program for students who are reinstated to the university following academic dismissal.

Between fall and spring, the center had 30 sections of the course.

This semester the center has seven sections of EIU 2919.

“All students who are reinstated to the university following academic dismissal are assigned an advisor from our department who works with them to develop strategies to help them succeed and regain good standing at the university,” Boyer said. “Unfortunately many of these students come to our university with poor cumulative GPAs because they were dismissed from the university, so the challenges are greater than those students who initially go on academic warning.”

Boyer said from data from last year, 60 percent of the reinstated students the center worked with regained good standing in their first semester back at the university.

The center is not just for students who are struggling, Boyer said.

“We work with some of the best and the brightest who want to hold onto those 4.0s,” she said.

Students are referred to the center by themselves or by faculty, academic advising, counseling center, athletics, minority affairs, the writing center or any facility that works in conjunction with the center.

The center was made possible from a grant.

The U.S. Department of Education awarded Eastern with a five-year, $1.8 million institutional development grant for expanded student support services, which is entering its third year of existence.

The grant includes money for the construction of a facility, an endowment and the operation of the center.

Steve Shrake, associate director of design and construction for Facilities Planning and Management, manages all construction projects on campus whether performed by internal staff or external contractors.

He said the contractor is currently in the process of installing the foundation and floor slab.

“They will be erecting structural steel and constructing the elevator shaft as soon as the steel is received,” Shrake said. “It might be a few weeks before the steel arrives.”

He said once the contractor completes the structural system, the Facilities Planning and Management internal construction staff would construct the exterior walls, install the roof, finish out the interior and coordinate the elevator installation with an outside contractor.

Jeff Cross, associate vice president for academic affairs, said the Student Success Center is scheduled to be complete and occupied in May 2009.

While construction is in process, the center is in temporary quarters at 1125 McAfee Gymnasium.

Emily Zulz can be reached at 581-7942 or at eazulz@eiu.edu.