It Takes A Campus

15 Initiatives to Improve Retention

It Takes A Campus takes readers on a journey of author Kyle Ellis' experience from a novice in retention efforts to a campus leader in the field of student retention. In 2008, when the University of Mississippi began to take action on their retention efforts, their first time, full-time (FTFT) retention rate was 78.3%. With their recent retention record-setting year (86.5%), they have received numerous accolades, praise, and inquiries from colleagues across the nation regarding their efforts that made such a tremendous impact. It Takes A Campus can serve as a guide for campus professionals who are in the early stages of their retention efforts, as well as for seasoned retention gurus, who are seeking to improve existing programs or identify specific initiatives that proved effective and adapt them to their own student population. This book, which covers fifteen campus-wide initiatives which have been successfully implemented at the University of Mississippi and which have been instrumental in raising retention rates, is designed to be practitioner-friendly, so higher education professionals who work daily with retention efforts, can create, modify, or assess retention initiatives on their campuses. As the saying goes, it takes a village to enact positive change – or in this case, a campus.