If we are to be serious about Michigan State’s role as a student success leader, we must be equally serious about identifying where our systems fall short. Then we must commit collectively to improving our policies, processes, practices, and culture. I have called this “moving the needle.” We know that moving the needle is not accidental. It is the result of naming problems clearly, aligning institutional will, and sustaining effort long enough to see meaningful gains.
Over the last eight years, we have most certainly moved the needle on student success at MSU.
Our approach begins with a simple but powerful shift in perspective. Rather than locating deficits in students, we have embraced an institution deficit model. We have sought out the barriers to student learning, thriving, and graduation, and we have followed a vision that asserts that every student we admit has the capacity to learn, thrive, and graduate.
This reframing has been foundational. It moves us away from asking why students struggle and toward asking how the institution must change to better serve every student. It also creates the conditions for action: when the problem belongs to the institution, so too does the responsibility for solving it.
One example of this approach in practice is our work to improve undergraduate retention and progression. Like many large public universities, MSU faced persistent gaps in student outcomes across demographic groups. We have plenty of data, but data alone does not move the needle. What mattered was how we used it. By disaggregating outcomes and examining the student experience at key transition points, we identified specific institutional barriers, including under resourced and under supported advisors, opaque academic policies, uncoordinated interventions for students not enrolled, and gaps in early academic support.
With the problems that produced differential outcomes in student achievement more clearly defined, we organized a coordinated response. We invested in advising reform, ensuring that students have access to timely, proactive, and developmentally appropriate guidance. We redesigned key gateway courses, particularly in high-enrollment disciplines, to improve student engagement and success. We expanded early alert systems to identify students who might be struggling before they reached a crisis point. And importantly, we aligned these efforts across units, resisting the tendency for well-intentioned but disconnected initiatives.
The most mature form of these efforts to identify and redress problems has come with the work of the Spartan Undergraduate Experience Strategy (SUES). Consisting of nearly three dozen senior leaders, SUES has identified seven “wicked problems” and cultivated their resolution.
None of this work was quick, and none of it was easy. Moving the needle requires sustained attention, resources, and a willingness to learn from failure. It required faculty, educators, administrators, advisors, and staff to see themselves as part of a shared student success ecosystem. And it required leadership that consistently reinforced both the urgency of the work and the belief that change was possible.
The results have been encouraging and instructive. We have seen measurable improvements in retention and graduation rates, alongside reductions in equity gaps. More students are progressing through their programs with clarity and support. More are graduating, and they are graduating more quickly. These outcomes are not the product of a single intervention, but of a coordinated, data-informed strategy rooted in institutional responsibility.
Equally important is what we have learned about how change happens. First, clarity matters. We cannot solve problems we have not clearly defined through strategies like root cause analysis. Second, alignment matters. Fragmented efforts rarely produce systemic results. Third, consistent effort matters. Meaningful change often lags behind initial effort, and institutions must be willing to stay the course. And finally, culture matters. Moving the needle depends on cultivating a shared commitment to student success, and growth mindset among community members that supports learning from trying—transcending individual roles and units.
This work has also reinforced a broader truth: MSU is far more capable of change than we sometimes assume. When we focus our attention, marshal our resources, and hold ourselves accountable, we can redesign systems in ways that materially improve student outcomes.
As I reflect on our work over the last eight years, I am struck by how much potential there is at MSU to further improve our standing as the national leader in student success. By embracing an institution deficit model and committing to sustained, data-informed action, we can build an MSU that is more responsive, more equitable, and more effective in supporting every student to learn, thrive, and graduate.
And when we do this well and consistently the impact is clear. More students will succeed, and more graduates and families will be changed for the better.
