Connecting Your Campus

Community colleges are widely recognized as an important cornerstone of our economy. You are preparing the next generation of workers while responding to unprecedented enrollment spikes and budgetary pressures. However, too many of your students are not able to accomplish the goals they set out to accomplish, whether it be to transfer to a four-year school, to get a certificate, or just to take a few classes to be able to get a better job.

How do you keep track of your students to ensure they are not falling through the cracks and are receiving the support they need to achieve their goals?

Providing Resources That Can Help

Your students are performing the ultimate juggling act. While keeping up with the incredible task of balancing home, work, and school responsibilities, your students often don't know where to turn when trouble presents itself. When they need help, they are looking for convenience and access. Starfish CONNECT gives students 24/7 access to see who can help them address their concerns - whether it be a counselor, an instructor, or a financial aid counselor - and to reserve time with that person immediately over the Web. At the same time, your advisors and other service personnel can efficiently keep track of their students and manage their efforts to help. See Features and Benefits of Starfish CONNECT.

Tracking Student Cohorts

Most community colleges have large populations of students who are enrolled in developmental coursework that must be completed before the student can start receiving college-level credit. Tracking these students closely is an ideal way of ensuring that they have every chance possible to continue their college career. Starfish EARLY ALERT helps your full-time and adjunct instructors and your counselors efficiently and securely share information about their students so they can together help a student overcome a potential barrier to success. Starfish makes it easy to get feedback from instructors to identify potentially at-risk students, route those concerns to the students' advisors and other support services, and then keep track of the efforts to intervene. See Features and Benefits of Starfish EARLY ALERT.

Outcomes You Can Measure

Starfish offers comprehensive reporting where you can evaluate potential trends within your student success initiatives to help guide your decision making. Through the use of the Starfish systems, clients are routinely reporting improvements in a number of areas, including:

• Institutional accreditation or reaffirmation of accreditation support data
• Student persistence and retention measures
• Correlations between services provided and impact on student outcomes
• Overall course completion and pass rates
• Referrals to support services (e.g., tutoring)
• Appointments scheduled with support services
• Active instructor participation in early alert process
• Evidence of students being helped through the number of cleared flags
• Number of students completing term in good academic standing
• Insight into challenge areas (e.g., courses, cohorts, demographics)