SIUE Coaches Share Strategy and Success at National Student Coaching Conference
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic and an ongoing charge to effectively service students, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville has focused on student coaching to meet changing and growing needs.
SIUE coaches shared their expertise as well as gained insights during the national “The Connecting Conference,” held virtually from Wednesday-Thursday, Feb. 2-3. Attending the conference were Makesha Harris Lee, EdD, director of CORE TEAM; Joseph Southerland, director of Student Services; Kelly Atkins, assistant director of Student Success; and Stephanie Simpson, assistant director of Online Student Services.
“We were delighted to give our presentation, ‘From Implementation to Practice: Perspectives on Academic Coaching,’” said Atkins. “We introduced our student success coaches, and their mission, outreach, strategies and projects.”
“The idea of the conference was to find new and effective ideas for supporting students because of the COVID pandemic,” reported Southerland. “The conference was an opportunity to share how various colleges and universities are approaching coaching. Hopefully, regardless of where participants may be at their university, they discovered a way to start doing student coaching or being an advocate for student coaching on their campus.”
The momentum of student coaching has been building at SIUE since 2020, and those involved saw an opportunity to work together and create a silo for student coaching on campus, he added.
“Stephanie and I started the coaching initiative last year,” said Atkins. “We were asked to help students who had to pivot to online courses. We needed to support them. We hired three student success coaches. Two are dedicated to on-ground students, and one is dedicated to online students.”
The coaches are:
“Our thought process was to give students the support needed while taking online classes, but once they started matriculating back to in-person classes, we realized students still needed support services,” offered Atkins.
“The goal in having one specific coach to support students who are participating in fully online undergraduate programs is to bridge the gap for a student who may never set foot on campus,” added Simpson. “For example, the online success coach can share the online student orientation which is a resource that is comprehensive and designed for students who will not walk into Lovejoy Library or Morris University Center or walk onto the Quad.”
Student coaching is also needed from the perspective of pre-collegiate and summer success programming, according to Harris Lee. “A student engagement coach is needed to help students prepare for college in their high school years,” she said. “At the conference, we explained the benefits of coaching pre-collegiate and summer success students.”
“Also, while the coaching model is focused on academic achievements, we also guide students through the process of learning how to maintain a healthy school and life balance,” continued Harris Lee. “We focus on the holistic development of the student as they move towards achieving their educational goals.”
The presentation also included coaching students facing academic challenges. “I work with on-ground students who are in academic distress, those with a 2.0 GPA or below,” said Atkins. “We are more intrusive in our approach. We will email, call, send letters to classes and knock on residence hall doors, if need be.”
“Retention for Black students is up from the fall,” said Harris Lee. “I believe success coaching has attributed to the rise.”
Overall, student retention rose from 86-88% from fall 2020 to fall 2021, according to Atkins.
“Coaching is unique to each student,” said Southerland. “One student may have an academic concern, while another student may have a mental health need. But knowing there is a coach to point them in the right direction is really helpful.
“The idea of coaching at its base is making sure students feel they belong, and there is someone they can go to. Ideally, faculty is where students have gone. However, faculty’s role has changed over time, the same as advising’s role has changed over time. It’s interesting to see how coaching is evolving out of academic advising. Over the last five years, it has become clearer that academic advisors have a clear and important and coaching has a clear and important role. Both are adjacent to each other.”
Providing the closing keynote address for the conference was Courtney R. Boddie, PhD, clinical director at The Counseling Hub, LLC, and former associate dean of students for diversity and inclusion and director of Counseling Services at SIUE.
Photo:
L-R: Makesha Harris Lee, EdD, director of CORE TEAM; Kelly Atkins, assistant director of Student Success; Joseph Southerland, director of Student Services; and Stephanie Simpson, assistant director of Online Student Services.
