Student Success Update
New Office of First Year Programs for Promoting Student Success
To date, for Fall 2019, NSM has observed a nearly 9% increase in admitted FTIC students with an average SAT score 7 points higher than that for Fall 2018 (and 24 points higher than Fall 2017).
Given these advancements, NSM created the Office of First Year Programs that will encompass recruitment, math placement, orientation, peer mentorship, and academic warning. It will also house the NSM Student Leadership team and event programming for undergraduate students.
The goal of this office is to offer guidance and provide support to students from the moment they start considering the University of Houston through the end of their first year. This will help to ensure that students develop a strong academic foundation for success as they transition into advanced courses within their major.
The office has already begun to work on student success projects, starting with the College-specific portion of New Student Orientation. By working with the NSM Undergraduate Advising Center, the orientation process now includes an interactive information session, one-on-one preregistration advising which includes the use of a newly developed orientation workbook, and student registration. The new process helps students understand how to develop a schedule by considering curricular and co-curricular activities, which all can impact their academic success.
The Office of First Year Programs ran two pilot sessions of orientation this summer to get feedback from students and advisors with hopes of gathering more data for implementing meaningful components to the orientation experience for the Class of 2024.