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Invest in IT Resources

 Institutions across the U.S. are utilizing data and technology to improve student retention,increase degree completion, boost learning, inform administrative decision-making, and modernize to meet consumers’ expectations. NWC’s IT office this year alone has created several new programs to boost efforts related to student academic success and student well-being. However, NWC staff report that innovative and efficacy-boosting initiatives – in […]
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Leveraging Existing Areas of Innovation

 For a couple of decades, the Honors Program languished as an underfunded afterthought to Northwestern’s academic mission, despite the yeoman work of several past faculty directors. In Spring 2016, this changed when the faculty unanimously passed a major overhaul to the honors curriculum.  Among the numerous changes, two aspects of this overhaul were significant:  […]
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Integrating Campus Experiences for Enhanced Learning

 Although the vast majority of NWC undergraduate students participate in athletics, fine arts, or other campus groups, about 23% of the student body does not participate in extra-curricular activities. This is problematic for retention, as students who are involved in co-curricular activities both at NWC (and in higher education in general) have better retention […]
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Revamping survey courses

“An important thread running through those conversations: A good survey course is, most emphatically, not a content-driven information transfer; it’s more like a curated collection. Some of the smartest advice I ever received about this came from a senior professor who told me, when I started teaching a survey: “Dare to omit.”” “If a survey course […]