College of University Studies

Improving Retention: A Promising Path

The College of University Studies has a very successful first year.

Plymouth State student reviewing catalog

Robert Fitzpatrick, dean of the academic experience and Matthew Twomey, a College of University Studies student.

The College of University Studies helps students who have not yet chosen a major (known as “deciding students”) by providing the resources and personal attention they need to select the right field and plot the most effective route to graduation.

Fifty first-year deciding students were accepted into the pilot program that began in the fall semester of 2005. By the end of the academic year, 98 percent of these students were able to choose a direction for their further studies in such areas as business, criminal justice, health and human performance, English, social work, mathematics, geography, environmental biology, education, meteorology, political science, philosophy and art.

“For many, the choice was an easy one, the natural result of learning more about themselves and about the available options,” said Robert E. Fitzpatrick, dean of the academic experience at PSU. “Each student met with an advisor several times, completed multiple self-assessments and refined his or her choices, often after taking introductory classes in fields of interest. At this stage, many students are prepared to declare both an academic major and a minor.”

Long before the end of the 2005–2006, the College of University Studies began preparing for the next academic year. Seventy new students have been accepted for 2006–2007, and any students who remain undecided from the previous year will continue to receive advising. When the renovations to Mary Lyon Hall are complete, the College of University Studies will be headquartered there along with a cyber-café and a large meeting room.

“We’ve assembled an advising ‘dream team’ that includes key members of several vital university offices, people who are exceptionally well qualified to provide the highest quality of academic advising and who’ve each committed to working with a very small portfolio of University Studies students,” Fitzpatrick continued. “These advisors join us in our commitment to facilitate a smoother transition to academic life for our students, helping to ensure they will enroll in courses that will fulfill the requirements of the General Education program and meet the criteria for the First Year Experience.”

Fitzpatrick explains that the continuation and growth of the program is in part thanks to the new Donald P. Wharton Endowment, a $100,000 fund named in honor of the 13th president of Plymouth State University to support the work of the College of University Studies and deciding students.

The College of University Studies, said Fitzpatrick, “is expected to improve the rate of graduation in four years for committed, participating students, saving them and their families the extra tuition dollars and costs associated with an extra year or more of undergraduate study.”