Through the Completion Center all FTIC students are connected with an trained success coach and participate in a First Year Experience course. This session will review best practices, focusing on the importance of building connections between faculty/staff and students and the impact on student success, retention and and graduation rates.

- Best practices for implementing success coaching on a college campus- utilizing the InsideTrack model - Utilizing grant funds to strengthen the institution and increase student engagement - Development and implementation of a First Year Experience course (extended orientation) - Creative outreach strategies for first-time-in-college students - Implementation of Starfish Early Alert system to increase student involvement

North Central Texas College (NCTC) is a comprehensive public community college with an open-door admissions policy, serving a four-county area in North Texas. In the past ten years, NCTC enrollment has increased 38% from 7,359 to over 10,000 students. The Completion Center (funded by a Title III grant) implements comprehensive student engagement programs that increase retention and completion rates of first-time students, and expand faculty and staff capacity to serve students and strengthen the institution’s fiscal stability. Major strategies include: • Centralized Completion Centers on all campuses to address students’ academic and non- academic challenges • Career preparation services (partnership with Career Services Center) • Connect for Success (a Starfish Early Alert system) • A First Year Experience course (NCTC 1001) for first-time-in-college students • A professional development institute providing student engagement strategies to full-time and part-time faculty and staff • A faculty-student mentoring program The overall grant goal is to improve the college’s capacity to increase retention and graduation rates. Using the InsideTrack success coaching methodology, success coaches perform outreach to all new-to-college students each semester. The overall premise of the coaching model involves making connections and building relationships with students to collaborate on their educational goals. In the first year of the program, we saw an increase in the number of new students receiving coaching/mentoring from 3% (86 of 2,406 new students FY 2014) to 58% (1515 of 2,616 new students FY 2016). The number of new students that successfully completed (C or better) 24 credit hours or more during their first year increased by 10% (FY 2016). We also implemented a new early alert system through Starfish. This system connects students with the appropriate resource at the first sign of a challenge or issue that could impact their success. In Fall 2017, we piloted a First Year Experience Course for all new-to-college students. The format is an extended orientation utilizing “just-in-time” teaching strategies. This session will review best practices that focus on the importance of building connections between faculty/staff and students and the impact on student success.