Category: News

During fall 2021, Wichita State launched its new 2025 Strategic Enrollment Management (SEM) Plan with the overarching goals of expanding enrollments to 17,000 students, increasing first to second-year retention rate to 75%, and closing the equity gap for underserved students. The success of the new plan is dependent on the contributions of everyone on campus.

Check out the featured strategy this week to see more steps departments can take to promote student success.

Strategy 3.3 Promote faculty dialogue and engagement around best practices for student success

• Promote early feedback and timely grading for students’ awareness of their academic performance (Student Early Alert System reports and early formative assignments).
  • Students may not be familiar with how to view their grades in Blackboard or how to see electronic comments on their graded work. Take a moment to provide instructions for students to track their progress and be responsive to your feedback.
  • Students need graded work before the class withdrawal deadline of April 1 to help them make informed decisions about their progress and likelihood of success in class.
• Encourage departments to establish metrics beyond the Student Perception of Teaching Effectiveness (SPTE) for quality instruction to use in annual evaluations.
  • The SPTE is an imperfect metric to assess instructional quality. Policy 4.31.IV.4.d allows departments to use multiple criteria to evaluate teaching.
• Support ongoing professional development for graduate teaching assistants (GTA) related to student retention.
  • Many of our graduate students will move on to become instructors of record for classes following graduation. We strengthen our graduate student’s ability to compete in the job market when we give them strong teaching skills, while also helping our current undergraduates be successful.
• Create a teaching partnership program that pairs junior and senior faculty to share teaching practices.

Shout-outs: WSU’s College of Applied Studies (CAS) has provided a robust faculty mentoring program for 10 years, with 25 mentor-mentee pairs this year. This program, coordinated by Dr. Jody Fiorini, CAS interim senior director of Faculty Development and department head brings the partners together monthly to engage in dialogue around teaching and research. The Office of Instructional Resources (OIR) collaborates with the Graduate School every semester to provide specialized GTA training sessions at the Academic Resources Conference (ARC) to help our GTA’s learn classroom management skills.

For more information, contact Dr. Carolyn Shaw 316-978-7130 or  carolyn.shaw@wichita.edu.

During fall 2021, Wichita State launched its new 2025 Strategic Enrollment Management (SEM) Plan with the overarching goals of expanding enrollments to 17,000 students, increasing first to second-year retention rate to 75%, and closing the equity gap for underserved students. The success of the new plan is dependent on the contributions of everyone on campus.

Check out the featured strategy this week to see if it aligns with work in your area.

Strategy 2.2 Promote, empower and measure coordinated marketing efforts and campaigns across the campus. Create a successful pipeline of messaging celebrating aspects of the life and work of the university.

• Ideas from the classroom:  Share creative and successful student projects with communication leaders on campus. Our students’ accomplishments should be celebrated. To do this, contact Trish.gandu@wichita.edu, Office of Strategic Communications marketing and advertising manager, Bobby.Gandu@wichita.edu Undergraduate Admissions assistant vice president, or nate.koch@wichita.edu WSU Foundation associate vice president for marketing and communication.
• Ideas beyond the classroom:  Participate in the annual Strategic Communications Seminar Feb. 3. Follow, share and retweet social media posts by campus offices to amplify their impact. View the master list of social media accounts 
• Shout-outs: There are a lot of departments on campus who already do a great job engaging in marketing and external outreach. For example, the Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI) Twitter and ODI Instagram accounts do a great job celebrating different facets of identity on campus, the WSU University Libraries Facebook creates engaging throwback posts using items from Special Collections that celebrate our history and the Office of Admissions provides imaginative videos to the official Wichita State University TikTok.

For more information, contact Dr. Carolyn Shaw 316-978-7130 or carolyn.shaw@wichita.edu.

During fall 2021, Wichita State launched its new 2025 Strategic Enrollment Management (SEM) Plan with the overarching goals of expanding enrollments to 17,000 students, increasing first to second-year retention rate to 75%, and closing the equity gap for underserved students. The success of the new plan is dependent on the contributions of everyone on campus.

Check out the featured strategy this week to see if it aligns with work in your area.

Strategy 1.3: Promote greater campus connections with alumni and community supporters who can become ambassadors for the university with pride in and knowledge of the latest campus developments.

• Ideas for the classroom: Invite alumni or experts in the community to your class or to a department event to share their knowledge and connect them to current students. Share with alumni and community experts the newest developments in your program.
• Ideas beyond the classroom: Develop and distribute regular newsletters for your area that reach an external audience. Include promotion through social media. Invite alumni to meet with prospective students to share the value of their WSU experiences.
• Shout-out: The College of Health Professions has actively engaged its more than 9,000 alumni by creating a family photo album and bringing alumni back to campus for visits. 

For more information, contact Dr. Carolyn Shaw at 316-978-3010 or carolyn.shaw@wichita.edu

During fall 2021, Wichita State celebrated an end to its first five-year strategic enrollment management plan (SEM). WSU completed 34 tactics in the original plan and established an additional 97 tactics as ongoing practices, successfully incorporating these initiatives as part of its regular processes. This lead to an increase of 7% in overall enrollment since 2016 despite the pandemic. 

Also in fall 2021, a new 2025 SEM Plan was launched with the overarching goals of expanding enrollments to 17,000 students, increasing the university’s first to second-year retention rate to 75%, and closing the equity gap for underserved students. The success of the new plan continues to be dependent on the contributions of everyone on campus.

For more information, contact Dr. Carolyn Shaw at 316-978-3010 or carolyn.shaw@wichita.edu.

Fall 2021 Student Perception of Teaching Effectiveness (SPTE) packets were mailed to each department Jan. 6.

The SPTE Request Form for spring 2022 pre-session courses is also now available. To access the form, fill out the online SPTE Request Form. Faculty members can also contact the Social Science Research Lab’s office at 316-978-3384.

The Shocker Neighborhood Coalition works to drive prosperity for our neighboring community. A collaboration among the SNC, WSU KSBDC, and Create Campaign have coordinated three free workshops in January.

• Marketing Mindset at noon on Jan. 13.
• Business Budgeting and Planning at noon on Jan. 18
• Hiring 101 at noon on Jan. 27

If you know a business in the neighborhood that could benefit, please share the information with them. The coalition is a collaborative effort and an all-hands-on deck approach.

Hear from International Buddy Program participants about their experiences in the program. Featured is Alle Fielding who was paired with an exchange student from France.

Hear from International Buddy Program participants about their experiences in the program. Featured is Alex Sterzing who was paired with an exchange student from France and from Paraguay. 

Time is running out to nominate an outstanding WSU staff member for the President’s Award for Distinguished Service.

This award recognizes the dedication and excellence of WSU employees who have provided exemplary and caring service to the WSU community, beyond the expectations of the duties and responsibilities of their position. Selected honorees are recognized at the annual Shocker Pride Celebration.

Submit a nomination by 5 p.m. Jan. 28 to amy.belden@wichita.edu.

As community leaders plan for the future economic prosperity of our state, Wichita State University and the University of Kansas schools of Medicine and Pharmacy in Wichita are moving forward with plans to establish a joint WSU/KU Healthcare Sciences Educational Center (HSEC) in Wichita.   

The center — which is a combined effort among Wichita State, WSU Tech, the University of Kansas School of Medicine-Wichita, and the KU School of Pharmacy in Wichita — will centralize health care programs from each institution to provide state-of-the-art health care education that would ultimately improve the quality of health and health outcomes for Kansans.   

In addition, this collaboration will strengthen synergies and teamwork and allow for interprofessional learning activities while drawing from a long history of successful academic programs, and a health sciences educational center would greatly contribute to our community.   

“Not only is this new center important to improving the health outcomes for Kansans, any city that’s growing or wants to grow, has this type of facility at its core,” said Dr. Rick Muma, president of Wichita State. “Building an academic hub to educate a proficient and highly skilled medical workforce is critical to increasing health care access and outcomes for everyone in our region.”  

Muma — who is a licensed physician assistant and has been integral in reshaping health profession education at Wichita State — said that bringing together the educational facilities from several institutions into one shared health sciences complex would help WSU meet community needs and demands and provide state-of-the-art care and technology to Kansans.  

The HSEC will also serve to attract and retain talent in the Wichita area, as well as boost the economic success of Kansas.   

“The health care sector has enormous growth potential, and it’s critical to the prosperity of the greater Wichita area as its population grows and diversifies,” Muma said. “As we continually work to meet the needs of Kansas employers and improve the economic vitality of our region, we must offer new opportunities that attract and retain talent to Wichita.”   

Given the current headcount for the four institutions involved in the center, it’s estimated that the HSEC’s combined enrollment should start at more than 2,500 students.   

A generous grant from the Kansas Health Foundation will supplement the universities’ funds to commission services of an architect and other professionals to integrate the vision for the project, affirm space needs, explore ways to create efficiencies, validate site information and location, and create a conceptual plan for pricing the facility.