The Success of our Students
From our earliest beginnings, student learning and success have been at the center of IUPUI’s institutional mission. We have accrued a track record of achievement in developing distinctive undergraduate and graduate/professional programs focused on local and regional needs. The effectiveness of our student success programs for undergraduates, particularly first-year students, has been nationally recognized. In the past decade, we have improved six-year graduation rates at the bachelor’s level from 23 to 42 percent, with numbers of degrees granted increasing to 3,682 in 2013-14 from 2,499 in 2003-2004. Graduate/professional degrees conferred have climbed from 1,907 to 2,417 during that same period—and current enrollments and recently begun or in the works point to further increases in both undergraduate and graduate degrees.
But this is not enough for Indiana. We must do more to assure that our state has the educated citizenry and agile, innovative workforce it will need to thrive in an increasingly global, diverse, and technological world. To further improve undergraduate success, achievement, and completion means that we must engage more students more deeply in learning and campus life and increase opportunities for them to apply learning in real-world contexts. In addition, to meet our goals and those of the IU Bicentennial Strategic Plan, we must continue to expand graduate programs in areas where we have distinctive strengths; leverage the capabilities of new learning technologies to offer students flexible options for pursuing and completing degrees; and adopt more strategic approaches to enrollment and completion.
We have begun this work. A new Division of Undergraduate Education will enable more coordinated approaches to supporting our undergraduate students at each stage of their progress. Redefined leadership for the IUPUI Graduate Office positions us for continued expansion of our capacity for graduate education. New opportunities for training on online course design, provided by the Center for Teaching and Learning, are helping faculty to increase online offerings, particularly at the graduate/professional level. And a new division of Enrollment Management will support a strategic, data-driven approach to enhancing undergraduate and graduate recruitment, enrollment, retention, and graduation.
Promote Undergraduate Student Learning and Success- The Divisions of Student Affairs and of Finance and Administration report that the August 2013 opening of the new University Tower—the conversion of the former University Place Hotel and Conference Center—provided 560 new freshmen a top-notch residential experience. Tower Dining in University Tower gave students the option of purchasing a meal plan for the first time. With their proximity to the Campus Center and many of the campus’s main classroom buildings, Tower Residence Hall and Tower Dining have made the heart of campus busier and livelier than ever. A planned 700-bed residence near University Tower, scheduled to open in 2016, will further expand campus residential capacity to more than 2,600. Both national studies and campus data show that students who live on campus have higher GPAs and are retained at higher rates than students living off campus.
- IUPUI students interested in health and life science fields can choose from a wide array of majors, minors, and certificate programs. The new Health and Life Sciences Advising Center in University College helps undergraduates sort through their options and plan for careers in these fields. In its first year of operation, the center provided more than 1,000 advising appointments and a series of workshops, group programs, and career information sessions. The center partners with all units that offer undergraduate health and life sciences programs and houses advisors from the Schools of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, Informatics and Computing, Medicine, Physical Education and Tourism Management, and the Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health.
- For the first time, U.S. News and World Report’s annual Best Colleges edition included IUPUI among the nation’s Tier One top 200 national universities. IUPUI was ranked 194th on the list and 110th among public universities, and made its seventh consecutive appearance on the U.S. News list of “Up-and-Coming” universities. The magazine also recognized IUPUI as one of the nation’s “Best Colleges for Veterans” and, for the 13th consecutive year, for the quality of its First-Year Experience and Learning Communities programs.
- Amanda Snell ’14 is the first IUPUI undergraduate to receive a Fulbright grant. An English major in the School of Liberal Arts, Snell will spend a year in Germany as part of Fulbright’s English Teaching Assistant Program.
Increase Capacity for Graduate Education- An innovative collaboration among Eli Lilly and Co. and the Schools of Medicine and Science invests in the state’s scientific workforce, while expanding IUPUI’s capacity for graduate education. The new LGRAD program enables Eli Lilly and Co. employees to pursue master’s and doctoral degrees in the biomedical sciences while continuing their careers. The highly selective program is designed for Lilly employees based in Indianapolis, offering them a flexible framework to fully satisfy normal graduate degree requirements. Tuition will be covered by Lilly.
- The Robert H. McKinney School of Law has developed Indiana’s first Master of Jurisprudence degree for non-attorneys. The highly individualized program, launching in Fall 2014, offers professionals in a variety of fields—from life sciences, social work, and law enforcement to corporate affairs, real estate development, and intellectual property, among others—the opportunity to enhance their expertise and advance their careers by gaining expertise in legal issues and regulations relevant to their fields. Students can pursue the M.J. degree either full- or part-time
- Philanthropist and mental health advocate Cindy Simon Skjodt endowed a chair in the M.A. in Art Therapy Program at the Herron School of Art and Design. Unique in Indiana, the program partners with the School of Medicine, enabling students to benefit from groundbreaking neuroscience research on the brain’s response to art therapy. Skjodt’s gift will help the new program, which graduated its first eight students in 2014, respond to Indiana’s need for master’s-level art therapists.
- Jane Chu ’13, a Ph.D. alumna of the School of Philanthropy, is the new Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. Chu previously served as President and Chief Executive of the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in Kansas City, Mo.
Transform Online Education- University Information Technology Services announced that Indiana University has joined three other leading U.S. research universities to form Unizin, a consortium that supports online learning and big data analytics. Unizin will develop an infrastructure that allows member institutions to share educational content. The consortium’s data analytics tools will enable the partner institutions to analyze large amounts of data on student performance to gain insights into student learning and shape online teaching—ultimately helping IU and IUPUI to truly transform online education.
- The School of Liberal Arts reports that IUPUI’s largest-enrolling course, COMM R110, Public Speaking, is newly available online. In addition, the entire first-year sequence of language instruction in French, German, and Spanish is offered online. Last year, R110 enrolled approximately 1,000 face-to-face students; the language sequence enrolled about 800.
- The School of Social Work began its online Master of Social Work degree program with 12 students in December 2012. By June 2014, enrollments had grown to 112. The program addresses Indiana’s shortage of human services professionals, offering working students living far from an IU campus the opportunity to earn an advanced degree.
- The Kelley Direct online MBA program, which is housed in the Kelley School of Business at IUPUI, rose from third to first in the annual online education programs ranking by U.S. News & World Report. Kelley Direct online courses are taught by the same IUPUI and IU-Bloomington faculty members who teach the program’s on-campus courses and include features that emulate in-person experiences, such as collaborative projects developed for real organizations and international trips designed for global leadership training.
Optimize Enrollment Management- The Division of Enrollment Management was established to develop and implement a strategic, coordinated approach to student recruitment, enrollment, and retention. IUPUI’s previous “enrollment services” model focused on providing services to students at key times. “Enrollment management,” by contrast, emphasizes a comprehensive, campus-wide strategy for planning and implementing an integrated student experience. Comprehensive enrollment management, which includes both undergraduate and graduate/professional students, will enable IUPUI to more effectively manage the entire student lifecycle, from students’ initial contact with the campus, to their first enrollment, through their graduation and emergence as engaged, proud alumni.
- More than 150 IUPUI seniors benefited from the Home Stretch Program, created by Enrollment Management to support financially needy students close to graduating. The program provides low-interest loans to help students stay in school and graduate; once they complete their degrees, the loan is repaid on students’ behalf through an institutional grant.
- An analysis by the Office of Information Management and Institutional Research in the Division of Planning and Institutional Improvement found that IUPUI students who take at least 15 credit hours per semester graduate at higher rates that those who take fewer credits. Based on this finding, Enrollment Management and University College launched a Stay on Track campaign that encourages students to enroll in 15 credits per semester or 30 per year. The percentage of beginning students enrolled in 15 or more credits increased from 28 in Fall 2012 to 51 in Fall 2013.