Editor’s Note: This is the third installment of a series of Noel-Levitz consulting articles.

In 2010, President Bill Perry set a goal of an 85 percent student retention rate by 2013; for three years, Eastern’s rate has remained at a consistent 79 percent.

In order to better attain the goal, Eastern entered a one-and-a-half-year contract with the Noel-Levitz Enrollment Management Consulting Services to examine recruitment, financial aid and packaging, and retention.

The Committee on Retention Efforts worked with Noel-Levitz retention consultant David Trites to boost retention efforts.

In particular, CORE members Kimberly Moock, the director of New Student Programs, and Karla Sanders, the director of the Center for Academic Support and Assessment, took the reigns on developing quantitative information for the consultant to analyze.

“We were really excited to have the consultant come as [retention] issues are a little more complex,” Moock said. “We have so many great ‘best practices’ on campus, we were looking for someone to be like, ‘here’s another place to go and investigate.”’

Trites began by asking why retention was included in Eastern’s main goals for improvement.

“(The consultants) were generally really pleased,” Moock said. “We were able to talk about our aspirational 85 percent goal (for retention) set by the university president.”

Reaching 85 percent retention of undergraduates, Moock explained, would put Eastern near the Highly Selective benchmark of 87.5 percent set by American College Testing.

Noel-Levitz offered various recommendations for retention and improved student success.

One of the recommendations involved more systematic planning when approaching retention.

According to Trites’ analysis, distinguishing the institution’s “vital few” student success priorities should help the university set goals that will benefit the highest number of students. The process can be facilitated by awareness of obstacles, unified staff and faculty effort, and “innovative thinking and problem solving.”

Another recommendation was to make better use of data.

In the analysis, Trites suggested breaking down the student body into as many subpopulations as possible in order to identify retention trends and evaluating these trends would help pinpoint problem areas to target for improvement.

Trites also suggested putting more emphasis on orientation and sophomore programming.

Trites identified University Foundations, Eastern’s two-credit freshman seminar, as one of the institution’s “excellent” opportunities for increasing retention.

According to Trites’ report, requiring the course for all first-term students and adding relevant topics like financial literacy should make the course have a bigger affect on student success.

The report also offered the idea of a similar sophomore seminar or transition program to help students segue from a freshman mentality to a graduation-focused attitude.

Trites also suggested modifying the Early Alert System, which was established by CORE to identify and assist students who exhibit signs of “academic, social and/or personal problems.”

Trites emphasized the need to evaluate the effectiveness of the post-enrollment Early Alert System inaugurated by Eastern last semester.

A pre-enrollment system was also suggested so the university can detect incoming students who may be prone to academic issues.

Kimberly Foster can be reached at 581-2812 or kafoster2@eiu.edu.