Learner Success Means Closing Equity Gaps for Iowa State University Through the ACE Learner Success Lab

Recommendations 

​After a rigorous and widespread data collection and self-reflection period facilitated by the LSL process and incorporating input from a breadth of campus representatives, the LSL leadership at ISU distilled specific recommendations. These recommendations align with the three strategic lenses of the ACE Model for Comprehensive Learner Success​, as outlined here.​

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion 

• ​​Launch a university-wide retention initiative that enables ISU to achieve its goal of being the most student-centric research institution by:  
• ​Identifying a shared definition of student success
  
• Establishing common metrics​
  
• ​​Creating regular opportunities to examine and discuss progress and hurdles
  
• Committing the institution to achieve specific goals in the next 10 years by creating incentives to reduce the equity gap
• ​Establish graduation and retention goals and develop a dashboard to track progress
  
• Integrate disaggregated retention targets and plans into the university strategic enrollment planning efforts

​Data-Informed Decision-Making 

• ​​​Ensure that institutional goals are well articulated, strategic choices are grounded in evidence, and learner success outcomes are formally assessed
  
• Have systems in place to help academic leaders identify barriers to learner success across the institution

​Agility and Transformation 

• ​​​Enhance and sustain ISU’s capacity to evolve structures and practices to anticipate or respond to disruptive forces
  
• Establish processes to continuously align and integrate policies and initiatives that serve diverse learner populations, enhance their value proposition, and fulfill their mission
• Create a student success taskforce or leadership position to annually gather key metrics on student success outcomes, brief the ISU community on these metrics, and coordinate other learner success project recommendations
• Develop a comprehensive plan to effectively support the needs of new majority learners; one element of this should be to regularly collect and monitor data on student belonging, which can then be used to develop and implement evidence-based programs to improve student belonging