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Courses Serve as a Bellwether for Student Success
and Require Timely Problem Identification and
Intervention
Arlington, Va – Dec. 3 2009 –
Starfish Retention Solutions, Inc., a leading provider
of student success systems, announced today that
San Jacinto College
has adopted Starfish® to streamline and standardize its
approach to student tracking and success intervention
for the institution’s college preparatory courses.
Now in its 48th year, San Jacinto College is a public
community college serving East Harris County, Texas.
Comprised of three campuses and seven extension centers,
the institution serves more than 27,000 students,
offering more than 140 degrees and certificates in
university transfer and technical programs. As a
Title V institution, the college works to enhance
and expand its capacity to serve Hispanic and low-income
students.
“Approximately 53 percent of the students at San Jacinto
College are first-generation college students,” said
Niki Whiteside, vice president of educational technology
at San Jacinto College. “We have a tremendous
opportunity to introduce a whole generation to the
benefits of higher education. At the same time, we have
a responsibility to teach them how college works and how
to get through the system. As a result, we need support
tools to keep track of our students in a more efficient
and effective way.”
Nearly a quarter of all students are enrolled in a
variety of college preparatory courses in reading, math
and writing. These courses lay the foundation for future
coursework and provide valuable insight into a student’s
ultimate ability to be successful in college. Given the
importance of these courses and the logistics of
offering the courses at each of its campuses, the
institution has sought to standardize its approach to
student tracking and success intervention.
“For obvious reasons, we pay a lot of attention to
students in college preparatory courses,” said
Whiteside. “We have selected Starfish to help us make
certain that our faculty and advisors are looking at the
same indicators of student success and following the
same workflow to ensure that we are getting to students
as quickly as possible to offer help and keep them on
track. With Starfish, we are now able to spend more time
helping students instead of being caught up in
paperwork.”
Accessible with a single login to an institution’s
portal system or course management system (e.g.,
Blackboard, WebCT or ANGEL),
Starfish EARLY ALERT™
is an early warning and student-tracking system that
makes it possible for instructors, advisors and academic
staff to identify at-risk students in real time.
Starfish CONNECT™, an
education networking support system, helps students
access a personal contact list of instructors, advisors
and counselors who are dedicated to helping them
succeed. Together the systems generate valuable
performance and resource utilization data for the
institution, which help optimize future service
offerings.
“Starfish Retention Solutions is pleased to be
supporting San Jacinto College as it develops new and
innovative ways of improving student performance in its
developmental courses,” said David Yaskin, CEO and
founder of Starfish Retention Solutions. “Decades of
research support the importance of ensuring that
students have a solid foundation for college-level
coursework. Starfish is committed to helping
institutions identify students who are having trouble so
that the appropriate support services can be provided –
before it is too late.”
About Starfish Retention Solutions
Starfish Retention Solutions is a leading provider of
student success systems. The company offers a collection
of software solutions that harness the power of the
campus community in order to engage, motivate and
graduate more students – securing valuable tuition
revenue through student retention. Specifically, the
solutions help institutions identify at-risk students in
real time, based on their daily coursework performance,
and then connect them to the resources designed to help
(e.g., advising or tutoring), all while assessing which
services and interventions are working. For more
information, please call 703.260.1186 or visit
www.starfishsolutions.com.
Contact:
John Plunkett
Vice President, Marketing & Operations
703.260.1185
jplunkett@starfishsolutions.com
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