What Students Aren’t Telling Us: The Hidden Signals That Predict Crisis, Withdrawal, and Burnout

Welcome. We are so excited to connect with you today for what students aren't telling us the hidden signals that predict disengagement and burnout. Before we begin, let's take a minute to introduce ourselves. I'm Nicole Trevino, Vice President of Student Success here at TimelyCare, and I will pass it over to my colleague to introduce herself. Good afternoon, everybody. I'm Cynthia Hernandez. I am the Vice President for Student Success at Texas State University. Thank you again, doctor Hernandez, for joining us today. Now we know that you all are doing a lot on your campus already in support of student success and retention. So this isn't a crisis talk. It's about what we are missing before a crisis occurs. This session is a recalibration of how to define and detect risk. So let's start by sharing what we track well. As you can see here, we know that we track on our campuses counseling utilization, academic alerts through our CRMs. We track conduct incidents. We also look at campus service usage, the number of students that are attending tutoring, supplemental instructions, entering our campus recreation center, and all of those other data points. So what this misses is the silent disengagement, the emotional depletion, the loss of belonging, and the directional drift. I'm gonna pause here and pass it over to doctor Hernandez to talk a little bit more about her own experience. Yeah. Thank you, Nicole. I I do think we do this well in terms of looking at the counseling utilizations, the academic alerts. I think one of the limitations that we have though is that we tend to do this at a snapshot in time at the end of every semester, at the end of every academic year. And if we're really trying to keep the pulse on students, and looking at, disengagement and the flow of disengagement throughout the semester, we really need to be looking at this this data in different snapshots and time, monitoring fluctuations, and using it to circle back and inform the entire ecosystem. So I I think we're good. I think we get a good b plus on this, but I think there's more that we can be doing. Great. Thank you. So as we look to the next slide, we wanna talk a little bit about who we're missing, that quiet middle. Those students that are academically stable, those students that are not asking for help. They might not be in a crisis at this particular moment in time, and we often label themselves or they often label themselves as just doing fine. So we know they're not our problem students. They're but they are in that fringe group. They're the largest group of students on our campuses often. So with that, we have a question we'd like to engage you all with. So how confident are you that your institution can identify students who are doing okay but may be quietly disengaging? Alright. So we can see here, about twenty seven percent indicated somewhat confident, about thirty four percent said neutral, thirty two percent said not very confident, and six percent said not confident at all. We appreciate you sharing, and we hope to address a little bit more as we continue with today's conversation. So let's take a look at what the national data tells us about this group. In a recent survey conducted by TimelyCare of more than one thousand students at four year colleges and universities, nearly half self reported that they are doing okay or just getting by. So you can see here, when asked what best describes your overall college experience right now, forty five percent said that they were thriving. Six percent admitted that they were struggling. Now we know that neutral is not absence of risk, it's often the absence of visibility. So with that, I want to just emphasize the purpose of this study was really to better understand how early disengagement develops throughout the undergraduate experience. So let's move on to the next slide where we're going to take the next few slides to really dive into this survey findings. One of the first insights from the survey revealed that academic stability is no longer a reliable indicator of student well-being. As you can see, when asked about their academic performance this term, ninety two percent of students replied that they were either very confident or somewhat confident. And when you isolate these responses to just these students, more than half, fifty two percent, that they were often or very often feel emotionally exhausted, and nearly half stated that they often or very often feel overwhelmed by expectations. And another twenty eight percent have considered not returning to school at all. These, again, I want to emphasize, are the academically confident students. So I'm going to pause and see Doctor. Hernandez, if there's anything you'd like to add from your experience on your campus. I do think that, this is the group that is that is hardest to identify, and not only that, to understand what to do with the burnout. When we talk about emotional exhaustion or overwhelmed, with this category of students trying to figure out what are the interventions they need at this point. What is it they're seeking? What will they seek on their own? And what are those things that we need to do to intervene, as part of, the the normal course of the semester as well. Course with everybody, I think everybody would be concerned with that twenty eight percent considering not returning to school. And, you know, we see a lot from our data that about half of the students who leave leave in good academic standing. So there are obviously other underlying issues that are informing students' decision to stay or go. Thank you for, adding that. Again, I do wanna just end enhance that these are the academically competent students. So I want you all to think about that as we continue to look at the survey insights. Another way of looking at this is through the lens of our current GPA. And so you can see here in this slide, again, as we look at students who self reported information related to their GPA, for those who reported a three point zero GPA or higher, nearly a third have considered transferring to another college or university, and just over twenty percent have considered dropping out. So, again, highlighting what doctor Hernandez just referenced as we think back to that twenty eight percent. So I would ask all of you to think about would these students be on your radar for risk? Are you currently tracking, engaging with this population? So next, as we look at the next slide, now's a good time for us to really talk about what's happening on your campuses. What else besides academic alerts are you using to assess student engagement on your campus? And I'm going to let doctor Hernandez talk a little bit about the good work that's happening over at Texas State. And before I begin my remarks, I'm I'm going to do another poll right now because I'm I'm curious right now on what student success indicators do your institutions rely on most heavily today. So what is it that that you are monitoring? If you take a second or two to to answer that survey for us. Alright. So it looks like academic performance in GPA and and the early alert and and conduct systems. And those are probably the easiest if we think about what metrics are available to us that we can glean, from looking at our student information systems, looking at our learning management systems. Those are pretty easy systems to access. When we start looking at some of the qualitative pieces or even the usage data of certain services, it's not unusual to see a little bit of a drop there in terms of the indicators. So so thank you for for that response. I'm gonna share a little bit about what we're doing at Texas State, but before I do that, let me let me share about Texas State. Many of you may not have heard or know where it's located. We are located in San Marcos, Texas. We're about forty minutes south of Austin. We have about forty five thousand students. We're a large public institution on the cusp of r one status division one athletics. And we're proud of our our population at at Texas State really reflects the population of the state of Texas with a large number of first generation students. About forty two percent of our students, forty three percent of our students are first generation, with equal amounts, Pell eligible students as well. So just a little bit about who we are at Texas State. Like many of you, we are using our academic performance systems, our learning management systems to really be those indicators, initial indicators. But that's only one piece of the data that we use. We also, use card swipe data around our residence halls, our dining halls. We have a a program for books called BookSmart that has a platform that we log into and look in to see how students are doing, students swiping in our rec center, and then utilization of the LMS system. And we're doing that mostly in the first two weeks of school, really seeing where students are, and then being able utilizing our staff in the residence halls, our academic advising, our academic engagement staff to really, do that shoulder tapping on students that might be maybe overrepresented in one area and not others, those who have been swiping into the rec center every day but haven't logged into the LMS, or, those who were not really seen at all. So, seeing quite a bit of that. I will say, and I said this at the beginning of the program, one of the limitations that we are still trying to work through, and I've seen some other institutions be successful in this, is doing the monitoring of fluctuations, not just whether they've swiped in here or logged in here once in a fixed period of time. And so I do think that's an evolving conversation of how do we do that, how much do we do that, and then what are the interventions that we use with that data. The other piece I will say is the pulse surveys. And and similar to the data that Nicole's been sharing, doing those pulse surveys throughout, the semester to really understand, where students are and what are the fluctuations as we go through, the rhythms of the the semester itself. The last one I wanted to highlight because I think, this has been a really neat transformation on how we look at student engagement. Jason Velostris, our director of campus recreation, worked with his team, and they put together what they call clutter scores. Our mascot is a bobcat, and clutters are the group of bobcats. But instead of, they really reworked the questions, for students who are engaging with their programs and with their service, and they they changed around, these three questions. I felt that my friend group expanded through involvement, with the particular activity. I feel more comfortable being my authentic self with others through involvement in this activity, and I felt that the environment made it easy to connect with others. And they used those three to develop a score, an engagement score, a clutter score, to really understand how their programs were really contributing to involvement and engagement of our students and fostering that sense of belonging. We saw this mostly. The best clutter scores were around our group fitness classes, and they did a lot of meet your neighbor before the they start the group the class itself. And then it's no surprise to know that our intramurals, clubs, and of course our club sports were the ones that really lent themselves to expand expanding friend group. So those are just a couple of ways that besides using, the metrics that we have around academic performance that we're also trying to assess the experience and the engagement of students on campus. Thank you, doctor Hernandez, for sharing that. As we move to the next slide, I did just want to answer a couple of questions that we saw come through the q and a. One, we wanted to let you know that this survey data comes from a recent survey that TimelyCare completed earlier this year, and you will have an opportunity to receive a complete copy via email, post webinar. So, we hope to be able to address some of those other questions related to the survey as we continue along. I do want to just take a moment here to come back to our survey findings. There's some interesting insights that are emerging as we started to dig into the question about belonging. And so you can see here on the right side of the screen, students who agreed with the statement, I feel I belong at my institution, were three times more likely to describe their sentiment as thriving. Conversely, on the other side of the screen, students who didn't agree with the statement, I feel as though I belong at my institution, were four times more likely to say that they were struggling. So let's take a little bit of a deeper dive and look at some of that GPA data, as students again self reported. So on the lower half of the screen, those students who felt that they belong were also more likely to be getting better grades. Eighty six percent reported a three point o GPA or higher when they agreed or strongly agreed to feeling like they belong. And so this is really important, especially as we think about some of those indicators and some of those ways, those pulse checks, as I heard Doctor. Hernandez speak to, are occurring on your campuses. So I'm going to pause and see if Doctor. Hernandez, based on your last slide, if there's anything that you want to highlight here. I think it's good to ask both of these questions, right, and where we see people. I think it informs really what helps us understand that those conditions that create a good sense of belonging at our institutions. And and obviously, you know, GPA is gonna be without that one measure, but really trying to figure out what is it that's gonna lead to these these sentiments and and really moving these sentiments from the struggling to the to the thriving side. Agreed. Agreed. And ensuring that we're ultimately getting at that sense of belonging because we're recognizing that it is a big risk risk indicator. Absolutely. So as we look to our next slide, we start to factor in the student voice. All of this, again, was self reported by the students who completed the survey. And so when asked, what helps you feel most connected with your institution right now? We heard doctor Hernandez speak to this just a few minutes ago. And, again, you see it here thematically. Friends are what the students cited most as helping them feel connected to their institution, as well as community campus activities, followed by teachers, professors, academic academic, connections, as well as mental health support staff. So on this slide are some of the verbatim responses that students provided to these open ended questions. And I'm just going to take a minute to read a couple out loud. And I think it really resonates. I think it correlates to what we're hearing is occurring, especially on the Texas State campus. Participating in extracurricular activities and mentoring, tutoring other students. What great experiences. The amount of campus activities is always something to do and always people to do it with. Again, those connections. My professors are interested in my growth in an academic and professional sense. So I'm going to pause and again ask Doctor. Hernandez to chime in on on what's happening on her campus. And, Nicole, it's not at all surprising to see friends. Right? And and the connection to maybe that faculty, staff, peer mentor, connector, navigator. We know that these two things I mean, we have decades and decades of literature that that underscores these qualitative results from from the survey. I think it I think it's interesting because one of the things that we see here is we know that if students do this, they also start to understand and seek these relationships and value these relationships when they move on to the workspace. And when we think about post graduation career outcomes or success outcomes, helping students understand how to navigate an environment is something that our employers are looking for as well. So I think if we can do this here and talk about it here and help students reflect on that skill and ability that they had in this space that will help them in their next space as well. And I think our the Gallup surveys reinforce this quite a bit even when you're doing, you know, q twelves and about having a best friend at work. I I will say right here, and and I think I've got the next slide too, but one of the things that we know in student success work is we have to get better at not just offering opportunities, but intentionally and thoughtfully planning opportunities for involvement along the way. It's got to be part of our content mapping both in the curricular and the cocurricular. And especially when you're working with populations like first generation students, and even though they might be academically gifted, intentionally planting these pieces and these experiences into the journey itself can be helpful. And I'll I'll give one example, just an easy anecdotal example around the value of orientation programs and welcome week programs where the focus is building connections. Not just attending events, not just getting the free snow cone from the snow cone truck, and not just being in a space with three thousand or in my case, you know, nine thousand, ten thousand other freshmen. It's about what are we doing there that's creating connections. So I do think, you know, and I am sure students or individuals on this webinar are doing this in these programs, and we need to be better about sharing what's working and assessing what's actually leading to these creations, these relationships as well. I think I have the next slide. So I we're not gonna do a poll for this one, but I'm interested in if y'all will use the question and answer, about answering this question. What is happening on your campus right now to foster a sense of belonging? What are you doing to to start to create, those relationships that are so vital? So I hope we can use the the q and a to do some of that. I'm gonna start a little bit about what we're doing here at Texas State that has been helpful for us. We're very fortunate. We have a live on requirement here at Texas State. I will say when when I I've been at Texas State now about five and a half years. I have a new or I had hired a executive director, Bill Matera, to come in as well. And one of the things that we sat down and did about four years ago was looking at our model, our residential model, and we were very heavy residential curriculum at that time trying to do a lot of programming, not seeing a lot of attendance at that programming, and we might have been oversaturating students when they were first getting here. And so what we decided is to change from a residential curriculum model to what we call our student success model. And what that really means for us is we got back to basics. We really got back to basics of what is it we want students to do when they're in the residence halls, and what we really want them to do is find friends, find connections, help this very large institution not feel so large and so lonely. And so we started to do that piece by piece and how, we started to shape our welcome week around RAs taking students to welcome week programs, really building that bonding, within the hall itself. Some of the things that we saw on campus, we saw we did a survey with our students about the on campus living experience. We did it in twenty twenty three, and then we did it again last year. We saw the question around living on campus enhanced my overall experience at Texas State. In twenty twenty three, eighty two percent were agree, strongly agree. Twenty twenty five, ninety percent were agreed, strongly agree that the on camp they were satisfied with the on campus living experience in twenty twenty three. It was eighty two percent, and then twenty twenty five, ninety percent as well. So we're starting to see some of the the fruits of changing the model and really changing, you know, the last piece we tweaked there was around the recruitment and the onboarding of our resident assistants. We changed the job description, we really leaned into questions during our interview process, and then also our training around how to help build belonging and connections with students. It was important for RAs to see themselves as part of that structure and part of the overall success of students when that's incur when when that's occurring in the hall. So we actually rolled out retention rates with our RAs, help them see what this type of programming can mean to have a student, stay or leave as well. So lots of great stuff happening there. Wow. Agree. That those are some really great ideas, and I'd love to to share more with the audience. And I want to just highlight something, that you said, Doctor. Hernandez, you said getting back to the basics. And I think that's really, an interesting statement and thinking about what you've shared in those different ways that you're connecting, that your teams are connecting with the residential assistants to really reengage or engage students at different levels. I think that's really interesting, and it sounds like, many of the audience members are doing some similar activities as well, and I wanna highlight just a few before we move along. You know, several of you have indicated programming. Some of you have talked about, you know, working online and the sites that you're using to connect with students and engage. Others of you have talked about, you know, dependent upon the type of institution that you're at, some of those different formations and invitations to engage as it relates to building your identity and in some cases, you know, dependent upon if the institution's faith based. And some of you have talked about partnering just as, you know, Doctor. Hernandez said, between the counseling center and residence life to host and craft games, which is really great. Again, so really getting back to sort of the roots of engaging students from day one, you know, post orientation, post those welcome day activities. And I'm just gonna highlight a couple more because there are so many, great ones here. We can see that several of you have talked about developing a first year experience that's more peer to peer, And so that sounds really interesting as well. And hosting an open conversation with one another, which really just, again, starts to engage students and get them connected with one another. And so I would encourage you all to continue to scroll through because there's quite a few different activities that you will have highlighted. So thank you for engaging there. We're gonna continue to move along, and I wanna share another survey finding, from the student sentiment survey, which falls into directional uncertainty. And so you can see here the quiet middle, those who are telling us in the survey that they're doing okay, that uncertainty, again, is another persistence factor, we see. And so you can see at the top, thirty two percent self reported that they're considered considering changing their major. Another twenty eight percent have indicated they're not confident in their current major or their academic path, and we know the importance of students to committing to their major, committing early on, identifying those pathways so that they can continue to progress. And you can see here, twenty six percent said they do not understand how their coursework connects to their future goals. And lastly, I wanna highlight that fourteen percent, which indicated that they're not confident that they will return next year. So again, uncertainty contributes to disengagement long before academic failure or often long before withdrawal occurs. So students rarely are leaving, you know, all of a sudden, they tend to drift first. So in a pause, I see Doctor. Hernandez shaking her head. I don't know if there's anything else you want to highlight here on this slide. I don't. I I'm not surprised by, you know, about a third quarter of students around their career academic career goals. Right? That's pretty typical of what we see. The hard part is trying to find these students. They're not the ones and and I think, Nicole, you talked about this. They're not the ones that are necessarily gonna show up on our doorstep. So what is it or how is it that we are finding, these students and helping them, understand? I do think one of the things and we talk about this at orientation a little bit because we know that about twenty percent of their students will will change their major at some point. Most of those are gonna change within the college, though some will change to a different college. But part of what we talk about with students as we prepare them and transition them is, a lot of times we're just helping them understand the structural system. So even when you change your major, you'll have the structures in place to help you. And so regardless of where you start, it's okay if you change, but, we're gonna help you figure out how to navigate the resources and supports, that are here for you. And I I the only thing I will will point out about this data these data is that the majority of our students aren't in these buckets. Right? And according to, you know, some of the the data that we're seeing here. And so that's always the hard part. What do you do for all, and what do you do for some? Yeah. Good question. Thank you for sharing that. I'm gonna move us to the next slide where we're going to, talk a little bit about the impact, you know, as we think about those students who, as Doctor. Hernandez said, might not be in these buckets. I'm going to pass it back to her. A fourteen percent decline in enrollment mean for our institution, I think, like all of us, that would be really, really hard for us. Right? If we're thinking about the millions of dollars lost, right, fourteen percent of our population, somewhere about six thousand students. Right? It's close to maybe about sixty million, lost, and that doesn't include, state appropriations and, auxiliary impacts, right, when you have that that big of of loss of students. So financially, just even from a pure financial standpoint, this would be really really tough for us. And this is not an unusual picture either. We're seeing some of this across the country in different areas, and, we're seeing institutions adjust to that, having to freeze hiring, cut budgets, and we're even seeing some shutter their doors or merging with other institutions. So but from a pure pure retention standpoint, we don't wanna see this. We don't wanna see that loss of interest in the institution. We're trying to build that institutional commitment from the beginning, not only from a financial standpoint, but just in a responsibility to the students that we have, the communities, and for state institutions, the state the state that's entrusting us to help educate students as well. So what are those factors that we can control? What are those factors that we can really impact to be able to create environments that are that students want to stay, that students want to come, and that students want to graduate from. Thank you for sharing that. I agree. The impact is huge. And so the importance of identifying those opportunities to connect early, to engage with students, and to ensure that they're committed, of course, to the institution, of course, to their major. But also what I'm hearing too is ensuring that we're supporting students overall as they think about long term, short term goals as it relates to careers and how they're starting to build upon those experiences. And so with that, I wanna move us to this last slide really to talk a little bit more about detecting risk. And so you can see here, and we all know, I know that, all of you are highly engaged. You're reading all those articles. You're connected within the higher education community. And what we're hearing and what we're learning is that the research is really pointing to a shift in terms of how institutions are defining and detecting risk. And we also know the importance of that early proactive engagement, just as we've heard from Doctor. Hernandez around the ways that Texas State is engaging with their students early. And we've also heard through the q and a from many of you who've shared, different experiences, different programs and events and initiatives that are really focused again on that early proactive connection. So here's just a few takeaways. And as we consider moving forward, institutions, you know, must move beyond academic and utilization based metrics, and we've heard a couple of different ideas today. We have to really treat belonging as a leading indicator. And I love what we're hearing from our colleagues at Texas State and how they're really connecting with their students, with their resident assistants to help to really build this and move this initiative along as it relates to creating that community, that sense of belonging. We also have to recognize that burnout, recognize burnout before it becomes a crisis and looking at those different ways to identify and to detect it. We must surface directional uncertainty earlier and ensure that we're really helping to to guide students and to step in sooner rather than later. And lastly, really listen intentionally to your students who say they're doing okay because we know often they're not. And so again, these surveys, these survey findings along with the current research really just reinforces that early listening and sustained engagement are really essential for supporting persistence and really the overall well-being of our students. And so with that, I'm going to pause and see if Doctor. Hernandez wants to add anything else. No, I think these are good. Know, Nicole, the only thing I would add to this, and and this is where we're we're really looking at, you know, how do we use all of the data that's available to us to be able to do some of these things. You know? And and I talked about poll surveys, and I talked about clutter scores, and that is a great way to get some student feedback on things. But we also have other data available to us in the co curricular and curricular space that might help us with this. And then we also have this shouldn't just fall to one, and and in most institutions, it does not, to one office leading the charge. This really is a university wide effort to be able to understand where students are and to help detecting these risks because they are moving in and out of our divisions and across divisions in a way that, one single system is not gonna be able to to keep track. And so, I I do, ask my colleagues on the call if there's anything that that we take from this is that, there's even more of an emphasis of us being able to put more heads around issues and more heads around all the data that we have available to us to be able to detect these risks. Yeah. I really appreciate, you calling that out and having, you know, been on a campus for over twenty years and having had that experience. I always would say to my colleagues, there's such a wealth of information that exists. But exactly how do we pull it together? How do we, look at all of those data points to really get a clear picture of what that student experience is? And then I think what I'm also hearing you say really understanding that individual student experience because that's at the level that I believe we have to be today to really impact each individual student. Well, one of the things, Nicole, if I can just for a moment, because I see some some questions around some of this. Many institutions have some sort of student success platform that they utilize. What I've seen across institutions that many times this might not be housed in a division that houses cocurricular experiences. It's usually more you see it typically more in academic affairs, mainly because a lot of these student success platforms started as support systems for academic advisors. But as we've seen these systems evolve and grow, you know, one of the the successful institutions that I have seen incorporate care units, support units from across campus in these systems so that people who come with different experience and view student issues with different with a different lens might be able to detect something in a student record, or in a student, ask for help, that's a little bit different. And so, I would encourage people as we talk about creating collaborations, being able to collaborate and be part of those systems is helpful as well. Whether it be how many you know, if they're attending tutoring or if they're attending SI or if they're attending a session with their peer mentor or their RA or what are the case notes over here that are informing the conversation that the academic advisor is having or what are the conversations in these spaces that are informing the the chats that our RAs are having with students as well. So, all appropriate information sharing. Right? You gotta you gotta be good with that data, and good with the privacy, but we should all be partners in this. Agreed. Agreed. And and it sounds like, Texas State has some of those initiatives already set up and in place. And so I know there's a couple of other questions that I'll be sure and and pull back up in just a few minutes to to get some additional information from Doctor. Hernandez. But as we move to our last slide for today, I do want to share, you know, as we continue to talk about how we pull that information together, how we listen to our students, I wanna share that TimelyCare has just introduced a new proactive engagement and directional insight solution for listening to students' needs and guiding them to the support earlier. So this product really amplifies the student support ecosystem you've already built on your campuses. And and we've heard we've seen in the chat, and we've heard from doctor Hernandez. We know this exists on campus, and so how do you really pull it all together? And so you can see here, Timely Pulse, here's what students' needs are sooner using a consent based SMS check-in to really surface those signals and those, data points as it relates to belonging, well-being, and basic needs. It helps your teams to focus where it matters and priority signals really that give advisers and staff that early visibility. And I think that's what we're hearing is we we hear from doctor Hernandez about some of the work that's happening over at Texas State. And then how do we, you know, increase awareness and and use of the support? So really providing students with that personalized guidance and connecting them to those on campus resources, which we know oftentimes they, you know, forget to exist. And then lastly, really moving from outreach to follow through. And so and not just, you know, through the alerts, but then also, creating those pathways, to really help students get connected sooner rather than later. And so I know that that poll just disappeared, but if you'd like some additional information, I would encourage you to to reach out. So with that, I'm gonna take it to our next slide. I want to make sure that we get to your questions. And so, doctor Hernandez, if it's okay, I'm gonna throw a couple of questions out at you that from the audience, and then I'll also, join in. But I know that, you've you've talked a little bit about this, but one of our attendees, said, you know, academics is, you know, sometimes easy to track, but not a good indicator. How do we track the students that are struggling in other ways? And I know you've talked about that a little bit already. I don't know if there's anything else you want to highlight as we, address this question. I think I think a lot's gonna depend on on how students interact with your community, your campus, your university. For us, right, we talk quite a bit and and I think I think that Kate answered in the chat who is our new executive director of Housing and Residential Life here about some of our our bobcat chats, RAs going in and really, you know, it's a person to person poll survey. Somebody asked, I think, little bit earlier about how do you get students to answer surveys. And I will say, I think the way that TimelyCare has designed theirs is very helpful because it's quick and it's short and it's, you know, you're not sitting there trying to fill out, you know, fifteen qualitative questions on your phone. So so I think part of that is is that check-in. The other piece and, you know, many institutions have some sort of first year seminar or introductory to major classes. And really seeing the the faculty, the instructors, the staff who might teach those classes as extensions of your student success team. You know, what is the opportunity for them to be trained around, not only delivering the curriculum of the of the seminar itself, but also understanding engagement cues and disengagement cues. And then, being able to, equip them with, oh goodness, intervention strategies or conversation starters and then reporting rate. So when you work at a large institution, sometimes it's hard to say, you know, you want to scale up in one particular area to meet all students. Well, that's not going to probably be possible. So how do you how do you add, more to the to the student success force? So Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for addressing that. I'm wondering, if you can also answer this particular question. You know, you've talked a lot about, some of the traditional population you all are focused on, but I know that you have, a large population. You have different modalities. And so one of our attendees asked what are some best practices for assessing student engagement and belonging for fully online students. And I would assume some of those practices you've talked about are can be utilized across those different populations. But more so, I think they were interested in students who are traditional coming right out of high school, as well as those working professionals who might be returning to college. And is there anything else that you want to highlight from some of the practices that you've seen work before? Yeah. I think, you know, I have a couple of thoughts on that. And one, I think that really illustrates that you can't have a blanket approach for everything, for everyone. And, I was talking with a colleague at the ACE conference and and, you know, we're talking about that, you know, when student success really matters, it's really about hand to hand combat. Right? You're really working with the individual students and understanding individual student need. And when we work at limited resource environments, which I don't I can't think of anybody who doesn't work in a limited resource environment, you've really gotta be you really have to have a strategy around how you're working and meeting the needs and doing the appropriate interventions and the appropriate pathways for students. I will say that we also have to recognize the expertise of people in these areas. The the online student experience is very different from the face to face traditional student experience. The concepts might be the same, but the interventions and the mode of delivery is gonna be a little bit different. You know, we are growing our online population. Our Texas State Global division, does a really good job of hiring individuals as connectors, as navigators who understand that space and understand those students. It's a little different. And it's not that you can't move from space to space, but it's about understanding and learning that environment. Same thing with our adult learners and what they want and what they need from the population. And then, for example, Texas State has two campuses. We've got one here in San Marcos. We have one in Round Rock. We can't run engagement for Round Rock from San Marcos. We need to have people in Round Rock who understand Round Rock and the culture of it, to really work with those students and figure out how to how to engage them. So, you know, what I would say for that is, look at a lot of data, look at a lot of research, and trying to figure out how to meet the needs of these nuanced populations. Yeah. I love that. I'm gonna just call out a couple of different comments here and give doctor Hernandez just a break for a minute. But a few of our attendees, shared out some of the practices that they have implemented across their campus. One thing I wanna share is, one of our attendees said one way to create a sense of belonging for incoming students is to create a space and promote these resources at conferences. So educating others is key. So, again, you know, just as we dig in and understand our data on our campus, connect with colleagues, but then also it sounds like connecting across the board, attending conferences when and if it's possible, but looking at at all that that's that's occurring across the higher ed landscape. Another, person indicated faculty can help, by their course curriculum to have an assignment that pairs students on an activity that they visit resources on campus. So visiting those buildings, visiting those other resources, perhaps connecting with other faculty and staff, that's a great way to, again, help to engage students and and in some ways, mandate the experience so that they have that experience and know at least one other person on campus. So great connection. And there's a couple of other questions here in terms of just interest understanding other ways and other, data points that you're looking at, doctor Hernandez, as it relates to building that sense of belonging. I know that you talked about those pulse checks and what I understand you saying that those are really one to one, so it's a little bit different than completing a survey. But are there any other ways that you're capturing Texas State, that sense of belonging, those those ways in which students are engaging? Yeah. I'm trying to think beyond, you know, what we're what we're doing, kind of the clutter scores, what we're doing in the residence halls. You know, some of it we're getting when we have other flash points that are coming up. So with our Bobcats Bounce Back, which is kind of an academic recovery program, there's a whole space in there where our navigators are really talking to students or success coaches talking to students to understand where they are. So if they kind of blip on the radar, the conversation is not just gonna be about why they're there why they're in that office, but what are the factors that are contributing to that. Now that is when academics are telling or or that warning signal. But we might see another space as students who miss payment deadlines, the reach out that we've got navigators that reach out to them. And, know, what put them on our radar might mean be that they missed a payment deadline, but really there's something else going on that is contributing to some of that as well. Those are probably the two other examples that are a little bit outside. All of us know about conduct issues. All of us know about org conduct issues. So we're seeing some of those things. I think the last thing I will say is also engagement through social media. And this is something and it's not that you wanna chase down every complaint, but those complaints and how they're written and when they're written might be able to give some insight to to students or students emailing the university, emailing the president, those types of things. Those might be other other big indicators, and I'll keep thinking on on some of that, but that's probably my biggest right now. I I will say, and and I said this before, I still think we all have work to do. We have we we tend to really tout how many clubs and organizations we have and how many service hours we have. But, you know, sometimes I think we preach to the coalition of the willing. Right? Those who want to get involved, those who take the initial step. So we miss that middle, who may not feel secure in engaging or how to engage. One of the projects we're working on right now is, how do we utilize application data to help us understand and curate messaging and involvement experiences that is tailored towards students based on their past interests and their past involvement. And so, again, I I think we need to be, we're really, really good at, putting out the welcome mat and saying if you walk through the store, you can get connected. But we know many students won't do that, either by a, mostly from a lack of navigational capital of our institutions. And so, how do we make that easier in a way? Wow. That's incredible. I love that. I think what I'm hearing you say is really, you know, tailoring that that information to the particular student, helping them to create those pathways to make it a little bit easier as they enter into the campus community to help them get engaged. I I so appreciate you sharing that, and I think that's that's really important, especially as we think about some of our more traditional students, right, who might have a harder time navigating and knowing where to connect. Think about, you know, different populations of students and how valuable that can be. So thanks for sharing that. And I do wanna just take a moment to, again, thank doctor Hernandez for joining us today, for sharing such valuable information and all the great initiatives that are happening at the Texas State campus. We really appreciate you being here with us today. I also wanna thank all of you for your time and your participation, for all the great comments, all the the really good questions. Again, I wanna just let you know if you wanna receive an emailed copy of the full report that we referenced today, just complete the survey after the webinar. And so, again, thank you so much for your time.