Dr. Maartje Van den Bogaard

Thursday Plenary: 9:00 am – 10:00 am
Tomás Rivera Conference Center 

Student success is the most studied topic in higher education in the past 50 years. Over the years there have been many efforts to create models to explain student success, yet some models have had more influence on how we think about student success than others. In the 1970-s Tinto introduced the Student Persistence Model and coined the terms 'social integration' and 'academic integration', which resonate until today. However, these terms are ill defined, which creates a lot of noise around what makes student integrate and persist. Many researchers have created similar models using other theoretical approaches, however, none of their models can explain more then 40 percent of student variance. Another issue is that these models do not reflect on individual student levels, and as such, often fail to reflect individual student needs. In this short talk I will introduce some of the most prevalent models for student success, their strengths and short comings and I will present a complex model for student success that represents a dynamic way of conceptualizing student success. The aim is to help faculty and staff understand different ways to understand student success, and to inform their work in research and policy where student success is concerned. I have studied student success using different models for the past 15 years, both as a researcher and as a consultant. My dissertation on this topic was awarded an international prize and since I have been involved in many projects and studies on student success. 

Kimberley Poleman 

Friday Plenary: 9:00 am – 10:00 am
Tomás Rivera Conference Center

Employers globally are turning to skills-based hiring to compensate for a labor shortage problem. Many large employers, including Walmart, Delta Airlines, and Apple, are removing the prerequisite of an undergraduate degree for many of their open positions.  Between 2017 and 2019, employers slashed degree requirements for 46 percent of middle-skill and 31 percent of high-skill jobs, particularly within finance, business management, engineering, and health care occupations, according to a 2022 Burning Glass Institute report. The recent partnership with UT System Universities and Coursera has opened up an opportunity to leverage Industry Microcredentials in a variety of ways to infuse skills into the educational experience for all students. We will take a closer look at the Career Academy and the job aligned course material available to UT Faculty to pick and choose as "courseware" to supplement courses and innovate curriculum.