What Works in Student Retention at Four-Year Private Colleges
November 10, 2009
Student Center, President's Dining Room, 3:30 - 4:30 p.m.
This webinar, sponsored by the Undergraduate Retention Committee, will report on the results of ACT's fourth national "What Works in Student Retention" survey. Data from more than 450 four-year private colleges was collected in the Spring of 2009. The webinar will report on the coordination of retention services, retention and degree completion rates, student and institutional factors contributing to attrition, and perceived effectiveness of more than 90 retention interventions. Data will be cross-walked into retention and degree completion rates to ascertain practices that differentiate institutions with high retention and persistence to degree rates from those with low rates. Finally, results of the survey will be compared with those of the 2004 survey to determine if any changes have taken place in the last five years.
The speaker is Dr. Wes Habley, a Principal Associate and Coordinator of ACT's Office of State Organizations. He received his BS in music education and M.Ed. in student personnel from the University of Illinois-Urbana/Champaign, and his Ed.D. from Illinois State University in educational administration. Prior to joining ACT, Habley directed advising programs at Illinois State University and the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.
Habley is co-editor of both the first (2000) and the second (2008) editions of Academic Advising: a comprehensive handbook and the author of monographs on four of ACT's National Surveys of Academic Advising. Habley's more recent publications include two chapters in Fostering Student Success in the College Community and What Works in Student Retention? a series of four research reports on college retention practices He contributed chapters to Developmental Academic Advising, Foundations: a college reader, and Faculty Advising Examined as well as numerous journal articles and chapters in monographs published by Jossey-Bass, the Center for the First Year Experience, and NACADA.