Fostering undergraduate achievement and flourishing
UESS programs provide touchpoints across every step of the student journey
Student success work at the University of Oregon brings together students, faculty, and staff for the shared purpose of fostering undergraduate student achievement and flourishing. Collaboration, communication, and commitment are key to increasing access, addressing systemic gaps and barriers in the student experience, and improving graduation and post-graduation outcomes.
UESS as a division represents the UO’s broad-based commitment to student support, with our programs collectively playing an integral part in the student academic experience. From K-12 pre-college initiatives and early campus engagement to wraparound support, undergraduate research and other experiential learning, UESS programs provide touchpoints across every step of the student journey. This year, over 70 percent (update with this year’s) of all undergraduate students engaged with one of our programs. Many participate in more than one.
Beyond these direct services, UESS provides institution-wide leadership and coordination of the UO’s Student Success Initiatives. Relying on data-based high-impact practices, our initiatives are focused on fostering a sense of belonging for our students and assisting them in their endeavors toward academic goals and degree completion.
Here are some key areas of new and ongoing UESS work from the past year:
Orientation Advising
Our division recognizes the growing importance of early academic onboarding to meet incoming students’ needs. To provide that additional transition support, UESS collaborated with our student orientation programs on new programming this year:
- Development of a 50-minute “UO Academic Experience” presentation delivered to almost 6,000 students who attended an IntroDUCKtion session in summer 2024. The materials provide tools and information on degree planning, support resources, time management, the rhythm of academic terms, and more. A companion curriculum was developed and presented to parents and families as well.
- A survey was launched to gather student feedback on their first advising and registration experience. Based on responses, advising offices followed up individually with 694 students to provide additional assistance with their academic onboarding.
- UESS shared data around students’ first-term carrying loads and helped orientation programs develop messaging around schedule planning for fall term.
First-Year Curricular Engagement
Our longtime first-year curricular programs -- First Interest Groups (FIGs) and Academic Residential Communities (ARCs) -- provide spaces for first-year students that build intentional connections between students, faculty, and staff. Both programs provide co-curricular engagement for a small cohort of students around a shared interest or identity.
The impact is clear: year after year, data shows that students enrolled in FIGs and ARCs perform better on average in first-year GPA, in retention rates to second year, and in four- and six-year graduation rates, compared to UO students who don’t enroll in them.
This year, the UO offered and served:
FIGs
ARCs and residential communities
Students
New areas of focus include our Experience Communities, available to all first-year and transfer students, which offer self-guided online resources, activities, and discussion groups to engage with peers, faculty, and staff. Nearly 40 percent of first-year students and 30 percent of transfer students engaged with communities content this year.
Retention and Graduation Initiatives
Part of UESS’s purpose is to assess the effects of the UO’s student support strategies and practices and to identify barriers that are tangibly impacting students.
In support of undergraduate student retention and graduation, our Degree Progression Team provides campuswide leadership and coordination around consistent proactive advising to targeted populations, data-driven initiatives, and personalized case management. This year, that work included:
- The Student Success Initiative, which preemptively identifies students who are a greater risk of attrition and coordinates proactive advising support for them during their first term on campus. That intervention resulted in a 4.1 percent increase in retention rate for students who received it. Those students had second term persistence rates on par with their low-risk peers who did not receive the intervention.
- Ducks on Track, a new online tool that launched in June to help students better navigate their degree programs and stay on track for graduation. The tool allows undergraduate students to more easily access information on their required courses and graduation requirements early and often, which can help them stay on course for timely graduation.
- Continuation and completion grants to support students experiencing financial barriers to persisting or graduating. A combined $224,191 was awarded this year to 189 students who either had a balance owed that would prevent them from registering for the following term or who were at risk of not being able to complete coursework needed to graduate. This was a 50 percent increase compared to the previous academic year.
Wraparound Support
Wraparound services are a key piece of the puzzle when it comes increasing retention and graduation rates in higher education. That individualized support includes ongoing advising, mentoring, skills and competencies workshops, and social programming to ensure a student’s full range of needs are addressed.
In UESS, programs like PathwayOregon, CMAE, OAA and TRIO SSS and McNair Scholars all provide student with advisors whose work includes helping them define goals, connect with resources, pursue opportunities and overcome challenges.
Given the UO’s increasingly diverse student body, wraparound services are more critical than ever since it is underrepresented students -- low-income, first-generation, non-traditional, and students of color – who most often experience systemic barriers in higher education and stand to benefit the most from this type of support.
An area of recent focus has been early move-in and college transition support for first-year students. Building on the success of CMAE’s longstanding New Student Fall Retreat, the university launched Summer Bridge in 2021 supported by state and federal funds, while PathwayOregon has offered early move-in and September programming to new students through its Engage and Connect bridge program.
These programs all provide participants an early opportunity to build community and connect to campus faculty, staff, and resources. Surveys show that students who participate feel the programs strengthen connections with their fellow students, increases their comfort level for the start of the academic year, and improves their understanding of college expectations. For Summer Bridge, participants have experienced higher retention, GPAs, and credit accumulation rates than non-participant counterparts.
Total advising appointments
Of undergraduate underrepresented minority students served by UESS programs
Students participating in college transition programs
Distinguished Scholarships
The pursuit of distinguished scholarships provides students with academic and personal growth opportunities through undergraduate research, graduate study in the U.S. and abroad, and public service. This year, our office provided guidance to 168 students through centralized advising and mentorship, structured support on applications and mocks interviews, and financial support through a new impact fund.
In an unprecedented achievement for UO, all three of our institutional nominees for the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship were named as finalists. Nayantara Arora, a senior neuroscience major, was later named the UO’s first Rhodes Scholars since 2007 and will study at Oxford in the coming academic year.
The office also fosters a community between fellow applicants and is growing its connections with former distinguished scholars from UO as well as current faculty, with the goal of providing better networking, advising, and mentorship opportunities to students during their application process.
Our office is dedicated to encouraging student to explore and pursue these special opportunities. Through structured support and guidance, we improve access for students, while our community of alumni can help imbue students with self-belief and confidence, which is often the final missing ingredient to a successful application
DucksRISE
The DucksRISE program, first launched in 2022 thanks to a one-year Beyond Completion Challenge grant from the Strada Education Network, aims to expand our wraparound student support in the career readiness and exploration space.
The program serves BIPOC, first generation, and/or low-income undergraduate students, with the goal of promoting equitable student outcomes during and after college completion.
The program helps students build professional and research skills, develop connections for future careers, and form community together. It provides career preparation through a mandatory one-credit career readiness seminar, funded research fellowships, connections to internships, including the Portland Internship Experience (PIE), and participation in the Undergraduate Research Symposium.