Feb. 25, 2026 | Read time 5 min

Collective impact in action: Advancing student success at MSU

By: Amy Martin, associate dean, Student Success Strategic Initiatives

Summary

Each month, the Student Undergraduate Experience Strategy (SUES) team will share updates that shine a light on the collaborative work taking place across MSU’s student success ecosystem. These snapshots are designed to broaden awareness of the ongoing efforts, insights, and learning that shape our collective impact approach. By bringing this work into view, we aim to strengthen connections, highlight progress, and support a community wide commitment to advancing undergraduate student success at MSU.

Review updates on:

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Student Success Strategic Initiatives Portfolio

Called together by Mark Largent and Renata Opoczynski, this group meets monthly to connect across initiatives to fuel collaboration and learning while also ensuring alignment and fulfillment of initiative sponsors’ expectations. Project leads identify barriers to progress with burning questions for Mark, Renata, and other project leads to problem solve and strategize.

As part of our ongoing efforts to share updates with the campus community, we will soon be rolling out a comprehensive webpage that details initiatives that fall within the Student Success Strategic Initiatives Portfolio with project details and contacts included. We will share that resources when available for your continued engagement. 

Additionally, we now have student engagement with our portfolio work. Paige Forbes, Marisol Vega-Gaona, and Suhayla Ahmad Ali, have joined our work through a UGS 292 Capstone Course or paid internship arrangement. These students support three of our initiatives by gathering student feedback through pop up surveys across the campus and focus groups to be conducted in March and April. 

At our February meeting, Rebecca Dean, director, Assessment and Data Analytics in Undergraduate Education provided a short presentation on the role of interviews, focus groups and surveys to inform our project work.

Spartan Undergrad Experience Advisory Council

The Spartan Undergraduate Experience Council is made up of 17 members who are either students from the 2024 and 2025 UGS 201 course about the Five Areas of Student Success and/or participants in one or multiple Undergrad Ed Pathways Persistence Programs. 

In January and February, the Council, along with three students who are interning with Undergrad Ed, discussed what questions to ask of students for the Course Scheduling, Digital Experience, and Learning Goals projects. This month they will spend more time advising the work of the Learning Goals project.

UGAAD: Strategic Engagement for Undergraduate Success

The Undergraduate Education Advice and Deliberation (UGAAD) group provides collaborative campus stakeholder engagement to support strategic initiatives and organizational change activities for Spartan undergraduate success. Find your unit’s representative on the list available here.

This month, Jillian Volpe-White and Justin St. Charles shared results of the Student Departure Survey conducted by the retention team, revealing that mental health and wellbeing, and financial barriers are the top reasons for students leaving.  

Lynmarie Posey also provided a presentation and discussion with the community based on the current progress of the Course Scheduling Reform project. 

Campus Student Success Group (CSSG): Tackling student pain points

The CSSG is a cross-campus committee focused on improving the student experience by advocating for change regarding systemic challenges in policies, procedures, and practices—student pain points. Members represent their units and bring forward feedback, co-create solutions, and elevate promising practices.

Find the list of CSSG members here. 

Feedback via a CSSG Fall 2025 review survey was shared with the group. Key themes included:

  • Participants found the fall semester root cause analysis and cross-unit discussions helpful.
  • Members valued increased understanding of other campus roles (especially academic advising).
  • The process itself (cross-campus problem solving) was seen as impactful, not just policy outcomes.
  • Some respondents noted difficulty finding time to implement changes locally.
  • Many reported:
    • Making new cross-campus connections.
    • Bringing CSSG insights back to unit meetings.
    • Examining internal processes more closely.

It was emphasized that the work is influencing leadership practices even when formal policy change does not occur.

We are finding pathways for enacting the solutions suggested by the root cause analysis last semester and are examining additional pain points:

  1. Mapping wellbeing individual check-ins across the campus to help inform outreach efforts
  2. Mapping the financial aid process and then determining pain points to address
  3. Review of 0.0 trending data to help with academic standing and policy work
  4. Academic Enrollment holds wrap up
  5. Two-year live on policy outcomes review in April

SUES Executive Committee: Solving Wicked Problems

Charged by MSU’s President to embody the “One MSU” vision, the SUES Executive Committee brings together vice presidential level leaders including college deans to address complex/wicked institutional challenges through shared operational strategies and unified principles. The Executive Committee’s most recent meeting was designed to begin tackling strategic enrollment efforts with an approach that helps us design One MSU for the students who seek to be Spartans. The Committee engaged in a case study developed by Deans David Souder, Brent Donnellan, Heidi Hennick-Kaminski, and Matthew Daum with overall guiding questions such:

  • What does enrollment and developing an enrollment strategy mean to MSU?  
  • How do we create an enrollment strategy with institutional deficit vs. student deficit framing?
  • How do we achieve the goal of every student we admit supported and empowered to be successful—socially, financially, and educationally?

This discussion will help inform the Strategic Enrollment Strategy work currently under development by lead Vice Provost Dave Weatherspoon.

SUES Five Areas of Success Learning Community

The SUES Five Areas Learning Community, led by Maria O’Connell, UIA fellow and Undergraduate Student Success Strategic Initiatives manager; Rebecca Dean, director of Assessment and Data Analytics; and Laleah Fernandez, associate director, Institutional Research, continues the work of building and updating the Spartan Undergraduate Experience Strategy Guide. Through engagement of the campus community, the Learning Community works to fill in gaps in the metrics we are trying to achieve in areas of success and design an assessment strategy. 

This month the group will be highlighting and further developing their work at the Student Success Forum on Research, Assessment and Metrics, Feb. 27 with plans to share a draft of recommended approaches at the Student Success Summit on May 7.

Stay informed about Student Success at MSU

As part of our broader effort to foster transparency, collaboration, and innovation across MSU for the Spartan Undergraduate Experience, we will continue to provide important updates from the meetings, conversations and engagement opportunities with the campus community. Explore more Student Success News to stay informed and join the conversation as we work together to build a more student-centered MSU.