By Jeremy Craig, Communications Manager for the Office of the Provost

With lessons learned from Georgia State’s undergraduate student success now being applied to the graduate level, enrollment increased this past fall and the current spring semester.

Collaboration is bringing great benefits across the degree levels in a spirit of purpose, freely sharing good ideas, strategies, tactics and best practices.

“This is not the Student Success show or The Graduate School show,” said Dr. Allison Calhoun-Brown, Senior Vice President for Student Success. “It really is about the institution working together. Together, we have the right attitude toward collaboration.”

At the Same Table

Efforts like those which resulted in the improvements in enrollment in fall 2024 and spring 2025 can’t be done by one division alone. It requires the coming together of different units and leaders to share ideas and develop plans.

A revived strategic enrollment management committee has been essential to this, said Nicolle Parsons-Pollard, Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs.

“It is a collaboration between academic affairs and student success, with much engagement from deans,” she said. “Those collaborative efforts have helped with undergraduate and graduate growth.”

Having multiple parties around the table allows everyone to have the same information in which to analyze issues and develop solutions, she said.

At a large institution, departments, offices, and people may be unaware that an excellent solution to a problem is already being put into action within a college. Having this committee addresses this situation.

“I want to make sure I’m not asking people to do things that they aren’t getting credit for having done well,” Dr. Parsons-Pollard said. “Aligning our actions with how we want to assess the colleges was key.”

Coming together at the highest levels of leadership also led to the success of fall 2024 enrollment, said Dr. Lisa Armistead, Dean of The Graduate School. She, Dr. Parsons-Pollard, Dr. Calhoun-Brown, Jared Abramson (the university’s chief operating officer) and Amber Amari (Assistant Dean for Graduate Enrollment Management and Student Success), met ahead of the fall to devise a game plan.

“We worked together around enrollment goals, and we met early on as we approached this past fall enrollment cycle to think about the appropriate goals for undergraduate and graduate enrollment, and the strategies we can use to get there,” Dr. Armistead said.

From Undergraduate to Graduate: Eliminating Roadblocks

Indeed, coordination addresses the common refrain of student success at Georgia State: getting rid of the roadblocks.

Losing the barriers that stand in the way of student success – or even enrolling at all – demands a coordinated effort that puts the myriad of pieces together.

The Division of Student Success and The Graduate School are both examples how GSU built the institutional capacity to do this.

“A diffusion of responsibility can occur without some centralized structure,” Dr. Armistead said.

This also allows GSU to apply lessons learned and widen its efforts.

“Centralization enables scale,” said Dr. Calhoun-Brown. “The tremendous improvement in our persistence rates, the number of degrees we award, and elimination of equity gaps come from this approach.”

And that’s what’s happening – the scaling of undergraduate students success experience and measures up to the graduate level.

“We try to look at the data, identify the challenge, pilot some kind of intervention, program, policy, something that will either augment or erase what we’re trying to, what we’re trying to create or get rid of, and then when it works, we try to scale it up,” she explained. “And now, we’re doing the same thing in the graduate space.”

A Common Approach: Proactiveness

The proactive approach used at the undergraduate level has infused into the graduate level through several ways.

Proactive Encouragement to Degree Completion: Stop-Out Campaign

Part of GSU’s undergraduate student success achievements have come from the university’s efforts to proactively reach out to students who are off-track to degree completion.

The Graduate Progression System, or GPS, uses data and predictive analytics to give early warning, alerting advisors to reach out to undergraduate students.

It turns out that sharing tools and knowledge helped at the graduate level, too.

“We borrowed the tools that Dr. Calhoun-Brown has in her division, such as Navigate, to minimize graduate student stop-out,” Dr. Armistead said. “That has resulted in the return of about 120 students over just a year and a half that may never have finished their graduate degrees.”

Direct Admission

Faculty make decisions about which students come into their master’s programs, and The Graduate School works with faculty to identify a set of quantitative criteria that typically predict success in their respective master’s program. This can be the overall undergraduate GPA as well as grades earned in particular courses.

The Graduate School then works to gather lists of students who meet the criteria – either with the relevant college or school’s Office of Academic Assistance (OAA), or centrally.

“The list is sent back to program faculty, asking, ‘are you ready to offer direct admission to all of the students on this list, and is there anybody that should be removed,’” Dr. Armistead shared.

Once faculty evaluate the list, students who remain on it and who either recently graduated or will graduate soon will receive a notification that they are eligible for admission into the program.

The application process has become simplified – taking about 10 minutes instead of about two hours, with no letters of recommendation or GRE scores – just the basic information required by the university and the University System of Georgia. The $50 application fee is also waived.

“The student can complete the very small, fast-track application and be admitted right away the next semester into a master’s program,” Dr. Armistead explained.

Building the Bridge from Bachelor’s to Master’s and Beyond

Georgia State is not only applying lessons from one level to another – the university is building a bridge that takes students from undergraduate student success, to the path of graduate programs. Here are a few measures.

4 + 1 Programs

If you are a highly-motivated, high-achieving undergraduate student, there’s an opportunity to both save money and shorten the time to a graduate degree: 4 + 1 Programs.

These programs allow students to work on master’s degrees while working toward their bachelor’s degree, with just one more year to finish up the graduate degree. Plus, students can use the HOPE Scholarship for some of their graduate coursework.

“Our 4+1 programs are the best example of trying to, very systematically and early on, get our undergraduate students, especially our high-achieving undergraduate students, to begin thinking about a graduate degree, especially a master’s degree,” said Dr. Armistead.

“They can do that if they’re efficient, using some HOPE Scholarship dollars, taking 12 credit hours of their graduate coursework as an undergraduate funded by the HOPE Scholarship, and then leave here in five years with both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree,” she continued.

The Center for the Advancement of Students and Alumni

As mentioned earlier in this series, the Center for the Advancement of Students and Alumni (the CASA) is another effort that helps build the connection between undergraduate and graduate study.

It works to inspire and support Georgia State’s incredibly talented and undergraduate students from all backgrounds as they think about leadership-driven careers in graduate and professional (law, medicine, etc.) programs.

At a university with many first-generation undergraduate college students, they may need a hand in considering and pursuing post-baccalaureate education.

“The program works very well to prepare our undergraduate students for pathways into doctoral degree programs, which students have the talent and the intellect to accomplish but don’t necessarily have the models that show them those pathways, and the CASA does a great job of supporting their concrete steps toward those outcomes,” Dr. Armistead said.

Students participating in the CASA’s programming have gone on to graduate programs, not necessarily at Georgia State. But many choose to remain a Panther.

“They’re deeply connected to Atlanta,” she said, and they remain in Atlanta for different reasons.

What Will Enrollment and Student Success at GSU Look Like in 2033?

When it comes to strategic planning, ambition transforms into reality as an organization expresses its expected, targeted, and planned goals and initiatives. Execution to realize a strategic vision is no small feat, and results can take shape in unexpected ways.

Georgia State is not the same as it was 10 years ago. And it’s safe to say that it won’t be the same at the end of the BluePrint.

It’s exciting to think about what GSU will be.

As Provost, Dr. Parsons-Pollard and her team have oversight of the strategic plan’s initiatives and making them happen.

Her vision for enrollment and student success in 2033?

It matches the watchwords that are at the heart of the BluePrint: GSU: A University for All.

Here are a few ambitions for the decade ahead in executing Student Success 2.0.

Undergraduate

At the undergraduate level, it’s not just about enrollment.

“My vision is for us to reach pre-pandemic levels as far as the enrollment numbers, but not at the cost of persistence and graduation,” Dr. Parsons-Pollard said.

In addition to tracking, analyzing and taking action upon DFW rates, there’s other ways persistence can be boosted. Connection and community is important, especially at a large university like Georgia State where students are finding their place.

“We know that putting our students in first-year learning communities is extremely helpful, and it works,” she explained. “I, myself, in 1985 was in a freshman learning community.”

“If we can stabilize undergraduate enrollment and provide the kinds of support and resources to as many students as possible, I think we can solve for the fluctuations in enrollment, as well as student persistence,” she continued, “and then have that transition into a higher graduation rate for the undergraduate population.”

Perimeter

Perimeter College is an essential part of Georgia State’s efforts in student success – to open access to higher education for all.

Dr. Parsons-Pollard would like to see further advances in Perimeter College enrollment and a focus on the transition of students from Perimeter College to the downtown campus.

“We want to ensure that students have something to look forward to, and that transferring downtown is a possibility,” she said. “We want to look at all the ways we can it as seamless as possible.”

Graduate

Georgia State experienced a surge of graduate enrollment around the time of the COVID-19-induced recession. This gave the university some insight into demands for particular programs.

“The experience showed that we did have some of the right programs because people were interested in those programs that we offer,” Dr. Parsons-Pollard said. “But it also spoke to the idea of modality. When everything is online, you don’t have to think about coming to campus.”

The university dug deep into data found during the university’s “call-back campaign” (getting in touch with potential students), as well as looking at students who remained in programs – and if they transitioned from online back to in-person (“on-ground”), versus students who had a hybrid experience.

“I knew that we needed to grow the online option,” Dr. Parsons-Pollard said. “Because of the transition during the pandemic, even some on-ground class programs where most of the program is offered in person had the opportunity to have some courses that were online so that also made it easier for people.”

That doesn’t mean forsaking in-person programs, either. Different people learn in different ways, and some learn better in certain modalities than in others.

“There will always be some students who would prefer to come to campus, and we want to make sure that we provide those kinds of opportunities,” Dr. Parsons-Pollard said.

The call-back campaign also found that graduate students desired more advising, which allowed GSU to change thinking about support for graduate students – who are often older and are working adults. The university also heard from graduate students about barriers to completion, such as internship requirements (difficult for those who already working), or not having a non-thesis program option

.“We’ve got the right programs,” she continued. “Let’s make sure that we offer them in the right modalities, move some of the barriers out of the way for people, and provide the right kinds of support.”

❦ ❦ ❦

Acknowledgements

Thank you for your interest in this series. Normally an acknowledgements section is not added at the end of feature articles, but as this is a series, due to the extensiveness of the content, and the significance of Student Success 2.0 and the strategic plan, we’re including one here.

The communications staff of the Office of the Provost wish to express gratitude to Senior Vice President Allison Calhoun-Brown, Dean Lisa Armistead and Provost Nicolle Parsons-Pollard for their time, insight, suggestions, and feedback. This type of in-depth series is new for the Provost’s Office: going beyond the initial news release and expanding upon it, showing not just the what, but also the how and why. To be more thorough in exploring this magnificent institution and what makes it tick takes time and energy. But it’s necessary to tell the larger story of Georgia State, and our colleagues’ time and attention are dearly appreciated. — JC