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Michigan State University

Undergraduate Education

Spartan Undergraduate Experience Strategy

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Spartan Undergraduate Experience Strategy

The Spartan Undergraduate Experience Strategy serves as a partner in the on-going effort to redesign MSU so that all students can learn, thrive, and graduate, by creating and enhancing the structures and processes for how MSU achieves our student success objectives. The aim is to reduce barriers for every student and to support holistic success. This work supports the MSU Student Success Strategic Plan and the 2030 goal of reaching an 86% graduation rate by closing opportunity gaps.

To achieve this goal, the Spartan Undergraduate Experience Strategy is coordinating campus-wide initiatives and creating common platforms for internal and external stakeholders through different working groups such as the Student Success Executive Committee (EC), Campus Student Success Group (CSSG), Student Success Executive Advisory Committee (SSEAC) and Undergraduate Assistant/Associate Deans, and Directors of Undergraduate Affairs (UGAAD). Additionally, the Spartan Undergraduate Experience Strategy provides the UGS 201 (Big Ideas Seminar) course for students to enable them to understand and participate in each of the five areas of student success.

 

5 Areas of Student Success

Developing and identifying core values; academic aspirations; and meaningful personally, culturally, and socially valuable goals.
Learning effectively through the acquisition of intentionally designed educational outcomes, using academic support services, experiencing culturally relevant curriculum, and effectively navigating academic policies.
Feeling connected to campus community including feeling safe, respected, accepted, and valued.
Learning to engage respectfully across differences to promote trust, respect, empathy, and an interdependent learning culture characterized by hope.
Developing fulfillment and stability regarding physical and mental health, social connections, cultural affinity, finances, and other essential needs that allow people to progress toward their goals.

Resources and Committee Work

Screenshot of first content page of the strategy guide

Spartan Undergraduate Experience Strategy Guide

The Spartan Undergraduate Experience Strategy Guide serves as a collectively developed resource with definitions, institutional commitments, and metrics that guide the work of the campus as we shift responsibility from students needing to seek help to be successful, to the institution providing clearer pathways for engagement, support, and participation in impactful classes, programs, and activities.

Access full report
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Student Success Launch & Summit

Two events that bookend university-wide planning and assessment of strategic undergraduate student success efforts, providing opportunities for the campus community to come together and discuss student success with an eye toward where we want to go and what we want to accomplish. 

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Students walk past the main bus station in central campus, their reflections visible in the windows of the covered waiting area.

Executive Committee

Enhancing the institutional coordination, collaboration, and communication of undergraduate student success projects and initiatives to reform MSU’s practices, processes, and policies so that every undergraduate student can learn, thrive and graduate.

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Aerial shot of students crossing an on-campus road on a crosswalk.

Campus Student Success Group

This group of campus partners gathers monthly to coordinate and prioritize institutional aggregation of all undergraduate student policies, processes, and practices around the five opportunity areas for undergraduate student success.

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Student Success Executive Advisory Committee

Through the MSU strategic planning process, this group coordinates and manages institutional aggregation of graduate, lifelong learning, undergraduate student success projects and initiatives, so that all students can learn, thrive and graduate.

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Undergraduate Assistant/Associate Deans and Directors of Undergraduate Affairs

Building a campus community through collaborative consultation around undergraduate student success that supports an organizational growth mindset for enacting five opportunity areas for success.

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A class full of students, seen from behind, listening to the instructor at the front of the room.

Undergraduate Seminar (UGS) 201

Students in this seminar will be active participants in designing the Spartan Undergraduate Experience, learning about the study of higher education, the five opportunity areas of student success and how colleges and universities are addressing equity in student outcomes.

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University Innovation Alliance

As part of the University Innovation Alliance (UIA), MSU has a resident UIA Fellow who represents the university in a consortium of fellows from 18 institutions. Together they identify projects and opportunities to advance UIA’s goals at their home college.

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Team Leadership

Amy Martin

Assistant Dean
Undergraduate Student Success Strategy
mart1742@msu.edu

Dr. Martin works with colleagues across campus to support student success while also advocating for faculty, educator and staff success. Her lived experience and career in higher education spans 3 decades, beginning as a University of Michigan first-generation student from a rural community in southern Michigan. It was during her roles as dining hall student worker and resident assistant that Amy became aware that not all students had similar experiences to hers, or the ability to fund their educations, and that marginalized students experienced significant barriers to their success. Amy completed a master’s degree in college student counseling from Eastern Michigan University while working full time as a hall director, and graduated in 2014 with a doctoral degree in higher education policy and leadership from the University of Maryland (College Park). Amy continues to reflect on how her identities as a white, cisgender, feminist, woman, parent, grandparent and academic administrator shape her standpoint on the world. She values and advocates for the inclusion of many voices and perspectives in any work the institution engages in around student success and sees the Spartan Undergraduate Experience Strategy as a way to highlight the important research and work of colleagues across campus.

Maria O'Connell, MSW

University Innovation Alliance Fellow
Undergraduate Student Success Strategic Initiatives Manager
jacomema@msu.edu

Maria's professional journey is rooted in social work with a profound commitment to higher education and student success. Maria has over a decade of experience in higher education serving in a variety of roles such as a Success Coach, Academic Advisor and Student Services Specialist. Before coming to MSU, Maria served as a Clinical Assistant Faculty for the Department of Social Work at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs. An MSU alum, Maria is excited to return to Michigan State University as a UIA Fellow, contributing to student success initiatives within a university that has been pivotal to her life.

Contact

Michigan State University
426 Auditorium Road
Room 345
East Lansing, MI 48824

(517) 353-5380