Whenever a semester ends at the University of Texas at El Paso, Donna Ekal, Associate Provost in the Office for Undergraduate Studies, asks the registrar to create a spreadsheet that lists all the students who failed a first-semester course.
Then she begins to investigate the reasons behind the F’s. The explanations vary, and not all of them have to do with what does or doesn’t go on in class.
“Students were failing a class but they weren’t failing for academic reasons,” Ekal said she has found.
At UTEP, where roughly three out of four students are Hispanic and many are residents of nearby Mexico, the factors ranged, she said, from family obligations, such as students being the only English-speaker in their home and having to serve as an interpreter for a relative during a doctor’s visit, to problems with transportation or having to work a significant amount of time off campus.
Knowing those particular circumstances, Ekal said, enables the university to develop solutions so that student success isn’t hindered strictly because of family or socioeconomic situations.
“What we can do is work with academic advisers to help pull that information from students and see if this is indeed an issue and, if it is, talk about some alternatives,” Ekal said.
The data-driven approach being taken at UTEP is one of several featured in a new policy brief issued by the Institute for Higher Education Policy, or IHEP, titled “Using Data To Improve Minority-Serving Institution Success.”
