About 11% of Utica College students are placed on academic probation every semester, but there are some arising questions of the assistance these students receive to avoid failure.
Any student who falls under the cumulative grade point average of 2.0 is considered to be on academic probation at Utica College. Each department withholds different requirements for their students. The Department of Nursing requires a minimum grade of C for four of its courses to enter the Registered Nurse-Bachelor of Science nursing program. Then, you are obligatory to maintain a minimum grade of C+ (77%) for all courses. The similar Bachelor of Science nursing program requires overall 80% GPA to enter it immediately as a freshman.
As the department of nursing, accounting majors have special requirements receiving a C in each major course. Majors like journalism only require a minimum grade of C for only a few courses. Other departments may have no particular requirements other than the achievement of an overall 2.0 GPA.
The lack of special requirements for majority of the majors at Utica College may be a slight cause in academic probation. This could pose as less motivation to achieve success. Still, there are many other aspects within the student’s life resulting causing them to be on academic probation.
Megan Balduf writes in the article Underachievement Among College Students examining a sample of college freshmen, who earned academic warnings or had been placed on academic probation, in their causes of underachievement. “Fehrenbach (1993) contended that a student’s personality characteristics such as self-esteem, perfectionism/procrastination, and an ability or willingness to take risks also contributes to his or her underachievement.”
This proves to be a known factor within students on academic probation. A particular student*(see below) is in his second semester at Utica College. Also, this will be his second semester on academic probation. “I do have issues with self-esteem that I have been dealing with for a long time…It always affects my schoolwork because I always put myself down,” He said. He also admits procrastination plays another huge role. “I wait till the last minute to complete everything whether it is an assignment or studying, because I feel like I am more focused.”
The Office of Academic Support opens outward for students to receive services on support of their personal lives. Students on academic probation are strongly encouraged to speak with a counselor in the office. Sometimes these students won’t enter the office to speak with anyone. Their failure to speak with anyone may come from their lack of knowledge amongst their own causes. Balduf makes a great point about incoming freshmen toward their low performance. “From a failure to manage time well to an inability to adjust to independent life, these high ability students no longer succeeded at their expected level.” Students feel they don’t need the help from the services. Still, before the college can actually help, they should understand the reasons undergraduates perform this way.
Richard J. Racioppa is the Coordinator of FY Student Support. He works with students on academic probation on a daily basis. “One of the biggest reasons for new students is they are not aware of the academic rigor. Their study habits, the work level and expectations increase.” He said
In most ways, the college emerges to understand the students’ state of mind. The Office of Student Success has a mission for all students at UC. On the Utica College website it clearly states, “The mission of the Office of Student Success, the locus of expertise in student learning and behavior, is to empower students with the skills and abilities to direct and govern their learning throughout their lives by teaching cognitive strategies and behaviors, facilitating maturity through the development of personal insight, fostering engagement between students and faculty, and ensuring that programs and services of the College are student centered and user friendly.”
Within this mission, it is shown a great understanding of the causes for academic probation. Still, there has been hearsay of more being done for the freshman rather than upperclassmen. There are many ways a great deal of assistance has been concentrated primarily on freshmen.
One way is the creation of conditional students. Racioppa explains they are students who go through the admission process and they are more at risk academically. These students meet with a member of their staff regularly. They can take a certain amount of credits and they are freshman students.
Conditional students are only a small portion for freshman concentration on academic probation. In 2007, there was a formation of the extension to the Student Success & Development Office. There was a smaller office placed in North Hall with academic coach experts. “There are 350 students in North Hall and they work later than the other offices,” Racioppa said. “They work with all students, but primarily helping students transition from high school to college.”
Sherill N. Anderson has worked in the office for 7 months long. According to Anderson, the general offices’ duties reside in assisting students who have issues with time management. Still, she mentions how they primarily work with first-year students in helping them transition from high school to college. On the other hand, they have other obligations to students on academic probation.
“We have students come in to meet with us for the entire semester for one hour meetings,” Anderson said. “We help them contact professors, set up schedules for the week to do better in their classes. At the end of the semester, we assess where they are at and we usually have students who have done better and other are given the option to come back and meet with us.” She said.
Another example for the college supporting mostly freshmen is the orientation event. Jarrett Kealey is the Coordinator for Orientation working in the Office of Academic Support. He proposes how essentially important it is for orientation mentors to have good grades. Orientation is an event for all incoming freshmen to attend and the mentors are students assisting with the programs held. “We require our mentors to be in good academic standing with a 2.5 GPA,” he said. “It used to be a 2.0 GPA, but it went up because we want role models to model the behavior of incoming freshmen.”
Using students with higher GPAs is another way for Utica College to prevent incoming students to perform poorly in class. “We want them to realize AP [Academic probation] is not something they want to get into. Through the behavior the mentor’s model it will help indirectly prevent students from being on academic probation.” Kealey said.
There is great evidence to show the college preventing freshmen from AP. Still, the assistance students already placed in this position is unclear. Most students feel less compelled to succeed after placed on academic probation. They are more independent and worried about being dismissed after their second semester on academic probation. According to Racioppa, a student can be on AP for quite a long time as long as they are showing improvement.
On the other hand, the student received a different notion. “They sent a letter home to my house stating that I am on academic probation and I need above a 2.0 to stay in school,” he said. “It also said for the next semester if you get a 2.0 or higher GPA, then you would be able to stay in school.” He feels inadequately restricted to stress and overwhelming feeling of having to be off of AP by the end of his second semester.
Molly Nance writes a journal article known as The Psychological Impact of Academic Probation. She states, “When university students face the possibility for dismissal for low academic performance, their sense of self and well-being are likely to suffer. They may have already met with their academic advisor about their grades, but in many cases have not received the psychological support to deal with their situation.”
This committee continuously follows the Utica College Three-Year Action Plan of 2007-2010. This was a proposal to the Broad of Trustees in April of 2007. According to the academic element, they have particular goals for students. The document includes an improvement of student success, particularly retention of freshmen and sophomores. The examples shown are continued incremental improvement in the entering class profile, concentrating more on students who have the motivation to succeed, continued strengthening of the Early Warning System with greater faculty participation, implementation of an intensive First-Year Intervention Program, with the addition of two first-year enrollment specialists who will work in North and South Hall and with commuting students, and who will have a caseload of freshmen on whom they intensively
concentrate and for whom they intervene when necessary.
Students are decided whether to be dismissed under particular circumstances. The biggest issues is the misunderstanding of the assistance students are receiving in between coming in for orientation and being decided upon whether to be dismissed. As the document shows in the three-year action plan, it continues to be primarily prevention.
On the bright side, there are multiple tutorial services available for the students. “An easy-to-use new service for UC Students” is the description for the fairly recent tutoring opportunity. According to the UC website, Smarthinking is an online tutoring service now available to UC students. Smarthinking provides tutoring in a variety of subjects, some of which are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
This is one of the options besides the ability to request a tutor, writing and math center’s services. Many students are unaware of the amount of tutorial services provided for students.
“I didn’t know about Smarthinking and the only one I knew about was the one that my professor referred to,” He said. “They sent me a couple of e-mails to offer the tutoring services.”
Apart from the tutorial services, it becomes easier when students are provided with mentors. The opportunity programs such as Higher Education Opporunity Program (HEOP) and The Collegiate Science and Technology Entry Program(CSTEP) have been given more options than other students. HEOP is for students with educational and economic disadvantages. While CSTEP is here to increase the number of underrepresented minority and economically disadvantaged students enrolled in scientific, technological, health-related, and licensed professions.
If students are not accepted into these programs, it doesn’t mean they aren’t economically or educationally disadvantaged of some sort. These students on the other hand are given much more opportunities and assistance with their work. There is closer attention paid to these students, where a bond is created during their summer session before their first semester. These programs have other options for their students on academic probation.
Tracey L. Arnold is the Academic Support Advisor for the HEOP program. She explains the different opportunities for the students on academic probation. “We run a study skills group weekly…It’s mandatory for HEOP and CSTEP students,” she said. They hold workshops, work with the ACES, and assist students in making the right choices and hold sessions every week running for 30-minute followed by an hour of study hall.
These sessions are known as the Academic Success Support Group. This semester it ran from January 27, 2010 to May 5, 2010 every Wednesday from 3:30pm to 5:00pm. According to the Academic Success Support Group Syllabus, the first week was an introduction. “To introduce ourselves to the students and provide the students with information on the services available to them by Utica College and The Office of Opportunity Programs.” As the semester went on the sessions were in this particular order of week, discussions on decision making, time management, study skills, procrastination, test taking strategies, mid-term week, mid-term review, program evaluation and drop/add, communication, stress, evaluation of academic support group, and study hall.
“HEOP is for students on potential and may not have great grades,” Arnold said. “Some students may have adjustment issues; they don’t know how to adjust time management. Ours is just a freshman issue for the most part.”
The HEOP and CSTEP students are receiving special attention as participants in the programs. Still, this makes people feel if they are regular students, not as much needs to be done. Nance quotes a college official making a great point towards special attention. “‘We want to empower all students, not just the cream of the crop. We want them to be able to matriculate with their degree,’ adds Manese, director of the counseling at UC Irvine.”
Utica College should have the same vision for these students on academic probation. The prevention and assistance being done for incoming students is only a small part of a huge issue. There should be knowledge on reasons why these students are on the academic probation list. If we only dismiss them after supposedly seeing no improvement, the message being sent out to the world should be reconsidered.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, there is a huge difference between the median annual earnings of all full-time, full-year wage and salary workers between the ages 25-34, who have a high school diploma or GED compared to those who have a bachelor’s degree or higher. In 2006, males with a bachelor’s degree or higher were making 50,000 compared to a 30,000 for males with a high school diploma or GED. As for females, there were 41,000 for those with a bachelor’s degree or higher compared to a 24,000 for those with a diploma or GED.
Dismissal from the college may pose as huge difficulties for the future. It is not permanent that they will not return to another college. Still, there should be more direct assistance provided for them. At the same time, everyone will not be helped.
Peggy Hsieh, Jeremy Sullivan, and Norma Guerra write A Closer Look at College Students: Self-Efficacy and Goal Orientation to give people more understanding. It especially states “There are many reasons that students drop out of college, some of which include unrealistic expectations about college, financial difficulties, stress, and lack of study strategies. College students who are at risk of dropping out tend to have difficulties adjusting to college as indicated by low academic achievement.”
This shows even though they may not be dismissed, they can be considering dropping out of college. There should be more interpersonal communication with these students. Not all students are able to reach out for assistance in the time frame given to them. There should be a consideration for what extent the college is going to put more hands forward.
According to Charles Smith in Personality characteristics of college students on academic probation, he shows the exact reasons for not students not reaching for help. “Three nonaptitudmal factors help to account for the absence of an adaptive response to their academic difficulties defensiveness, lack of positive academic motivation, and dependency with respect to defensiveness, when academic difficulties arise, the first line of defense for probation students appears to be refusal to recognize the seriousness of the situation.”
As a whole, Utica College has had great student success in creating options for students to not end up on academic probation. The failure resides in the assistance for the students actually on AP. The tutorial services and support officials are there, but not required. In many efforts, each college student is responsible for their own decisions. As they have responsibility, the college does as well; their responsibility is to its students. Students who appear to be falling down do not need to be taken care of mentally. They should be noticed and helped more than they already are. As the student said, “I want to remain and succeed in college, but I do need some help from UC and I feel like I’m on my own.”
*Student on academic probation would like to remain anonymous
*Source List: Upon Request
