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Pathways: Completing the Circle

Through Achieving the Dream (ATD), the IAIA Pathways Council is charged with implementing an action plan to engage the entire Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) community in supporting student success in 2022–2023. The Pathways Council developed programs and strategies to improve persistence and completion rates—accelerating progress through developmental education and using a holistic perspective to support student success.

“Completing the Circle” refers to our students succeeding from the moment they enter IAIA, through graduation and returning to their communities as leaders. We will be calling on all IAIA community members to aid in our student’s success.

Priority 1—Expand Developmental Education English and Math

This priority focuses on assessing and strengthening English and math to improve student retention and accelerate student progress through course requirements. Students that test into the developmental education math and English courses take between three and 12 additional credit hours of classes in order to finish their degree program, which can become a financial barrier to completing their degree. Furthermore, students enrolled in developmental education classes are paying for classes that are not credit bearing, adding to their financial burden of college. We have designed the 1UP Math and English program to engage students more deeply while also minimizing the number of the classes that students will need to take in order to hone skills for success throughout their college careers. Students who test into developmental math and/or English are chosen as 1UP Scholars to participate in the program. The participants are enrolled in a college level math or English course and are provided with additional support activities to facilitate their progress. This year will focus on expanding the 1UP Scholar Program.

2019 IAIA Alpha Chi

2019 IAIA Alpha Chi

Expected Outcomes:

  • The majority students complete their gateway math course during their first semester.
  • The majority students will complete their gateway English course during their first semester.

Priority 2—Expand Summer Bridge

This year we will focus on expanding the New Freshman Summer Bridge (NFSB) to allow more incoming IAIA Freshmen with no college experience the opportunity to develop skills for college readiness, leadership, and creativity. The Student Success Team and the Land Grant will partner to make improvements to the NFSB program. Participants are offered a financial incentive to enroll and earn 3 credit hours during the summer program.

Expected Outcomes:

  • NFSB Participants in the will have higher persistence and retention rates.
  • Participants will complete gateway math and English courses in their first year.

Priority 3—Data Use and Analysis

The Office of Institutional Research (IR office) has published several Tableau vizzes that will be available through our website. These vizzes (also known as data visualizations) will allow users to explore multiple years of enrollment and success measures of IAIA students.

We plan to add 2 more vizzes this summer.

In Spring 2021, IAIA entered into an agreement with the Postsecondary Data Partnership (PDP). Through the PDP we will have access to interactive dashboards, benchmarking data, and data files that will allow us to compare IAIA to other institutions. In March 2022, the IR office uploaded 5 years of student and course data to the PDP database.

Expected Outcome:

  • The IR office will provide information and training opportunities to IAIA employees so that all can become more effective users and producers of data in support of student success.
Mary Silentwalker

Mary Silentwalker

(San Felipe Pueblo/Navajo)

She/Her/Hers
Associate Dean
Admissions and Retention
P (505) 424-2307
E mary.silentwalker@iaia.edu