Category Archives: Provost Announcement

May 2017 Newsletter: Provost Update – Four Pillars Success is Measured through Student Stories

As we end another academic year, I am pleased to share the progress we have made on one of our top priorities – student success. This spring, Vice President for Student Affairs Reggie Blaylock and I updated SJSU’s Four Pillars of Student Success: College Readiness, Advising, Student Engagement and Clearing Bottlenecks, a plan informed by many campus stakeholders who helped us to identify initiatives that will move us toward improving graduation rates, retention, student experience, and preparing our graduates to pursue advanced degrees or to thrive in their careers.

Our 2016 graduation rates, reported in the fall, show that we are steadily moving toward our 2025 graduation goals. We improved our first-time freshmen graduation rate from 10 percent to 14 percent; our six-year graduation rates improved from 57 percent to 62 percent; and we decreased the achievement gap between our underrepresented minority students and their peers from 17 percent to 11 percent.

Other indicators show that we continue to make progress in shortening the time to degree for students. For spring 2017, 36 percent of our undergraduate students enrolled in 15 units or more, up from 25 percent in fall 2015. We have offered additional courses to clear bottlenecks and hired more advisors while increasing awareness that students need to complete 15 units each semester to stay on track to graduate on time. The Office of Student and Faculty Success launched their #FinishinFour and #TakeTwo campaigns during orientation sessions last summer and worked hard to inform students that to graduate in four years for first-time freshmen or two years for transfer students, they need to take 15 units a semester. These communication efforts doubled the number of first-time students taking 15 units. Our efforts are showing returns and undergraduate average unit load is already trending upward.

We still have much work ahead to meet the ambitious goals of eliminating our achievement gap entirely and graduating 35 percent of our first-time freshmen in four years by 2025. I have confidence that as we continue many of the initiatives launched this year, we will meet these goals (see monthly updates online).

In addition to supporting students once they enroll, we are also looking at ways to partner with K-12 and community colleges to prepare students for university coursework. Reggie and I co-hosted two student success summits with Assemblymembers Evan Low and Ash Kalra that brought together partners from community colleges, K-12 and nonprofits to discuss the ways we can work together to ensure students are prepared for college-level math and English when they arrive at CSU campuses. We have created working groups around three key areas in which SJSU faculty, staff and administrators will partner with local high schools: summer initiatives for high school students; teacher professional development; and college readiness presentations for school boards. I look forward to reporting more in the fall after we launch pilot programs in each area.

While we are measuring much of our progress in numbers, students’ personal stories are also marks of our success. I am pleased to share with you some of the ways our Four Pillars plan is supporting students – from ITS’s internship for students who are using predictive analytics to improve advising processes to the African-American Student Success Task Force’s alternative spring break and Chicanx/Latinx posole study breaks to the record number of students who were recognized for high achievement at this year’s Honors Convocation on April 28 – these student experiences are the reasons we remain dedicated to our plan.

AVP for Student and Faculty Success Appointed

Dr. Stacy Gleixner has been appointed as the associate vice president for Student and Faculty Success following a thorough search process, effective immediately.

Gleixner started as the interim AVP for Student and Academic Success Services in February 2016 and oversaw the reorganization of units to the Office of Faculty and Student Success in fall 2017. She has been an integral leader in implementing SJSU’s Four Pillars of Student Success plan. Her appointment will allow us to maintain momentum around our initiatives and make movement toward our 2025 graduation rate targets.

She served as a lecturer at SJSU in the Davidson College of Engineering. She joined the faculty as an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical, Chemical and Materials Engineering in 1999, and became a full professor in 2011. She served as associate chair of the department from 2008 to 2014; and as chief of staff to the president from 2014 to 2016.

During her tenure on campus, she has been committed to improving student success as well as increasing access to STEM programs for women and underrepresented minority students. As interim AVP, she has worked closely on increasing student average unit load; communicating with faculty about high-impact practices that can increase engagement; and on refining metrics to measure the success of SJSU’s Four Pillars initiatives.

Gleixner, who is herself a first-generation college student, holds a bachelor’s in materials science and engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and a master’s and a doctorate in materials science and engineering, from Stanford University.

Winifred Schultz-Krohn chaired the search and worked with committee members to select a top candidate.

April 2017 Newsletter: Provost Update – Community Connections Foster Engagement

Students and alumni clean up Coyote Creek, which flooded in February. (Photo: James Tensuan, '15 Journalism)

Students and alumni clean up Coyote Creek, which flooded in February. (Photo: James Tensuan, ’15 Journalism)

In February, after a season of heavy rainfall, Coyote Creek overflowed.  The resulting flooding displaced nearby residents. As a campus, we quickly offered support to SJSU students, faculty and staff affected by the disaster. Spartans also volunteered to help community members in need, through a fundraiser launched by CommUniverCity that has raised $9,400 to date and by helping with neighborhood clean-up efforts in the weeks following the flood.

As a metropolitan university, we are strengthened by the connections we foster with our community, including the city of San Jose, neighboring residents and the greater Silicon Valley region. SJSU intersects with the city in many visible ways – from the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Library, which serves as a gateway between downtown and our campus, to the Hammer Theatre along the Paseo de San Antonio, where SJSU operates what has become a prestigious arts and entertainment venue. The theater has also become a place for civic engagement and we hosted the launch of our Institute for the Study of Sport, Society and Social Change there.

Our students, faculty, staff and alumni engage beyond the borders of our downtown campus in a variety of ways, from courses that incorporate service-learning projects to internships to research, scholarship and creative activities that enhance the quality of life in our community. We are fortunate to have CommUniverCity and the Center for Community Learning and Leadership fostering partnerships with government agencies, nonprofits and other entities. They provide opportunities for students from many disciplines to further their skills while gaining practical work experience that also prepares them to be engaged citizens when they graduate. Some of our service-learning projects include flood relief efforts, cleaning up our local watersheds and a unique program in which students assist low-income clients who want to expunge their misdemeanor criminal records.

As we focus on student success, we continue to emphasize the importance of student engagement, especially through internships and service learning. This spring, Humanities and the Arts students learned the importance of networking in their industry while interning at the Cinequest Film and VR Festival and engineering students worked in teams as part of the Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS) course to solve problems for nonprofit clients.

Faculty, staff and students are regularly engaged in research that aims to find practical solutions for important issues. Professor Fritz Yambrach designed a vest that will help transport water in developing countries or in times of disaster around the world, while Tom Reisz is leading work with the Eastside Union High School District on the Math Readiness Challenge Initiative Grant in efforts to improve college readiness.

These are just a few examples of the ways in which our campus is involved in the greater community, and I commend all of you who stay engaged in our surrounding neighborhoods. I am proud of all the ways Spartans are influencing our region.

March 2017 Newsletter: Provost Update – Reflecting on Vision 2017

As our university prepares to close out our Vision 2017 strategic plan, it is important to acknowledge the accomplishments related to the five goals that have guided our campus since 2012. The Strategic Planning Steering Committee began work last fall to gather information about the process behind Vision 2017, its implementation and the progress our university made in: Helping and Caring, Agility Through Technology, Spartan Pride, Unbounded Learning and 21st-Century Learning Spaces.

College of Education students learn about career options in their Student Success Center. Photo: James Tensuan

College of Education students learn about career options in their Student Success Center. Photo: James Tensuan

As co-chair of the steering committee with Academic Senate Chair Michael Kimbarow, this closing process has been very informative to me as someone who joined SJSU after Vision 2017 had been initiated. Members of the Steering Committee have been working hard to provide a look back at where our campus was five years ago and how the goals set out in the plan have moved us forward. I am pleased to share some of the successful initiatives that arose from Vision 2017 that relate to our overarching mission of providing a world-class education to students.

In the last five years, we have enhanced teaching and learning spaces in ways that promote student success, including improvements to more than 100 of our most used classrooms. We have launched an “Ask Me” campaign that helps students transition to college life during orientation week. We have expanded our outreach to alumni, and they now serve as a resource for mentoring current students. We have also increased innovative learning opportunities through a variety of new resources from additional internship options to expanded support resources for underrepresented minority students to expansion of faculty-led programs overseas.

The Steering Committee is producing a report to close out Vision 2017 that will highlight the initiatives related to each of our five university-wide goals. The report will also share reflections from campus constituents on what worked during the Vision 2017 planning and implementation process as well as areas of improvement.

I appreciate all the feedback you have shared with our committee along with your work supporting our students over the last five years. We still have more progress to make, and I look forward to having you as partners in our efforts.

College of Humanities and the Arts Dean Lisa Vollendorf To Take Post as Provost at Sonoma State University

Lisa Vollendorf

Lisa Vollendorf

College of Humanities and the Arts Dean Lisa Vollendorf has been appointed Provost, Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs and Chief Academic Officer at Sonoma State University. She will depart SJSU at the end of the spring term and start her new post on July 1, 2017.

The university soon will commence a national search for her successor; information on that process will follow. In the meantime, I want to congratulate Dean Vollendorf on her new opportunity, thank her for her outstanding service to SJSU and acknowledge her many accomplishments.

During her five years leading the College of Humanities and the Arts, Lisa has promoted collaboration, interdisciplinarity and innovative teaching and learning across campus. She led efforts to forge a partnership between SJSU and the city of San Jose that enabled the reopening of the downtown Hammer Theatre Center as a premier regional performing arts center. Since 2015, she has overseen operations of the venue, which has become a coveted space for campus and community performances and events. Lisa also has fostered individual and corporate philanthropy, raising more than $11 million during her tenure.

Through it all, Lisa has remained steadfastly focused on student success. Under her leadership, the university has prioritized writing outcomes by strengthening Writing Across the Curriculum, transitioning from developmental English to a Stretch English option that provides course credit for students in need of remediation and hiring writing faculty to support students at all levels of their education. She oversaw the creation of the college’s Student Marketing Team and Student Success Center; has championed arts, innovation, and technology collaborative projects; and helped implement a student-designed collaboration hub in the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library.

In addition, Lisa founded the Deans’ Leadership Academy in 2014 to mentor and support faculty leadership development across the campus. The program has served 54 faculty members to date.

We will soon announce plans to celebrate Lisa’s service to SJSU. In the meantime, please join me in congratulating her on this exciting new career opportunity and expressing gratitude for her outstanding service.

Sincerely,

Andy Feinstein

Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs