The Cardinals’ GSR, most recently reported for freshmen who entered in the 2014-15 academic year, has risen 25% since the reporting began 17 years ago.Ěý
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Nineteen of the Cardinals’ 23 sports attained a GSR above 80% in the most recent report, including baseball, men’s and women’s basketball, women’s cross country, field hockey, football, men’s and women’s golf, women’s lacrosse, women’s rowing, women’s soccer, softball, men’s and women’s swimming, men’s and women’s tennis, women’s indoor and outdoor track and field and volleyball.
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All UofL student-athletes combined to produce an average grade point average of 3.0 or better for each of the last 21 straight semesters.Ěý Cardinal student-athletes achieved an impressive 3.256 collective GPA for 2020-21 academic year.Ěý A total of 360 student-athletes were 2020 Red and Black Scholars, representing a cumulative GPA of 3.25 or better.
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Five Louisville athletic teams – men’s and women’s basketball, women’s cross country, women’s golf and volleyball – received public recognition through the NCAA Academic Performance Program for ranking in the top 10% in the 2015-19 (most recent) multiyear Academic Progress Rate scores, which measures academic eligibility, retention and graduation for student-athletes. Fourteen UofL programs produced perfect APR scores for the most recent single-year figures.

Jim Begany, vice provost for Strategic Enrollment Management and Student Success, provided updates on current student enrollment and graduation rates. The student graduation rate at UofL has reported steady growth over the past six years, increasing from 52.9% in 2015 to 61.6% in 2021.

“Our graduation rate is the real highlight of this presentation. Last year we eclipsed 60% for the first time in the history of the university, and now we have surpassed it and we’ll continue to improve that number,” Begany said.

Total enrollment for fall 2021 was 21,754 students, a decrease of 227 from last year’s fall semester; these figures reflect the national downward trend in undergraduate enrollment during the COVID-19 pandemic. Enrollment figures nationwide are projected to decline significantly over the next five to 10 years. This is due to falling birthrates and a decrease in the population of high school students known as the demographic cliff.

According to Begany, Kentucky’s estimated drop is around 15-16%, which, he said, will be a significant challenge in our regional markets.

Begany informed senators that the Office of the Provost is exploring possible solutions to address this future obstacle, including the formation of the Demographic 25 Committee. This committee will confront the challenge of the projected 2025 demographic cliff by focusing institutional efforts in six areas: academic quality, institutional aid strategies, retention and graduation, academic programs, recruitment and partnerships.

Senators were also joined by M. Rehan Khan, vice president of Information Technology Services and chief information officer, and Katherine Stevenson, executive director of Enterprise Technology Services. Stevenson informed senators that Information Technology Services will start using , a form of multifactor authentication for Microsoft O365 software. Authorization will be a combination user and device identity, location signaling and if necessary, two-factor user verification.

“When we turn this on, what we’re doing is checking the reputation of the IP address that you’re logging on from and your normal login behavior. If we rank that as a high-risk login, we’re simply not going to allow that login to continue. If you were a medium risk login, you would be prompted to do two-factor verification,” Stevenson said.

Conditional Access for Microsoft O365 systems will provide increased security for the university, as well as improving the security of employees’ data and personal information. Conditional Access will go into effect for all staff and faculty Jan. 10, 2022, and will apply to all applications that utilize the Microsoft Single Sign-On system, such as Outlook and SharePoint.

Committee reports and a of the virtual meeting can be found on the . The next Staff Senate meeting will be held on Dec. 13 via Microsoft Teams.

For years, though, the Cardinals have produced consistent success away from the playing surface.

In mid-November, the NCAA released its national graduation rates, and UofL student-athletes combined for a school-record 88 percent graduation rate that was reflected in the Graduation Success Rate report.

The Cardinals’ graduation rate, most recently reported for freshmen who entered in the 2011-12 academic year, has risen 22 percent in a 14-year span, when the GSR was first developed to account for transfers into the university that graduate and those who leave in good academic standing. Six teams achieved perfect marks in the most recent report.

“Our student-athletes have continued to improve upon their academic standing at record accomplishments,” said UofL Vice-President and Director of Athletics Vince Tyra. “It starts with our coaches recruiting the top student-athletes, continues with the commitment from the student-athletes to achieve in their academic pursuits, and also having a dedicated support staff in place to aid their efforts.”

Six former student-athletes participated in last year’s winter commencement after returning to UofL to complete their coursework to graduate, including Bilal Powell, who plays for the New York Jets in the National Football League. Each is a product of the Cardinal Degree Completion program, established to assist returning student-athletes that exhausted their athletic scholarship eligibility, with the costs of full or part-time tuition and books associated with completing their degree.

Thirty-two student-athletes are expected to participate in next week’s winter commencement.

The athletics department’s impressive academic success isn’t confined strictly to student-athletes graduating.

Nine teams earned national recognition during the course of the year in 2017-18 for their academic achievements.

Individually, several student-athletes also earned highly coveted national honors for their feats in the classroom in 2017-18.

Men’s soccer’s Tim Kubel was named to the 2017 United Soccer Coaches NCAA Division I Scholar All-America first team. Softball’s Jenna Jordan, who graduated magna cum laude last year, and Celene Funke earned 2018 Google Cloud Academic All-America Division I Softball honors, as selected by the College Sports Information Directors of America. Track and field’s Kassidy Manning and Joe Delgado were named to the 2017-18 Google Cloud Academic All-America Division I Cross Country/Track and Field teams.

As fall semester grades are compiled, Louisville’s athletics teams are seeking to extend a notable streak.

The Cardinals’ capped the spring of 2018 with a collective 3.233 grade-point average, marking 15 consecutive semesters with at least a 3.0 GPA. In that academic year, 364 student-athletes were named to the ACC Academic Honor Roll, with 470 student-athletes, managers, trainers, spirit group and pep band members earning Red and Black Scholar status for securing a minimum 3.25 cumulative GPA.

When the Belknap Academic Classroom Building opens in August, employees from the strategic enrollment management and student success office will be running the welcome desk.

That set up is purposeful, as the building itself is dedicated entirely student success. Granted, the definition of “student success” can be arbitrary, but for Jim Begany, vice provost for strategic enrollment management and student success, and Joe Dablow, executive director of student success, it comes down to:

• Graduation rates
• Retention rates

En route to that college degree, the enrollment management and student success team helps students adapt to college life and enhances their academic skills for a better college experience.

“We can define (student success) in other ways, such as the experience students have while they’re here, if they get the services they need, if they get jobs after graduation or go onto grad school,” Begany said. “But the graduation rate and the retention rate is ultimately the end result of most of the work we do.”

To support these objectives, the building will feature classrooms and labs that facilitate active learning, as well as a student success center that offers academic support and advising all in one spot. This proximity should better enable the work Begany, Dablow and team are doing to reach UofL’s goals.

“Now, we have staff all around campus and I am looking forward to being in one place. The building can be a starting point for us to make sure we’re efficient in making enhancements and providing the services our students need,” Dablow said.

Although we’re months away from the official ribbon-cutting ceremony, it is important to note that UofL is already on track to hit its 6-year graduation goal of 60 percent by 2020. This is up from the 48 percent graduation rate from 15 years ago.

“We’ve been doing this great work already and have made significant progress already. What we’re excited about when this building opens is to better create a synergy amongst these different areas,” Begany said. “It won’t make this job any easier, but having these folks in the same space will provide a better opportunity to engage our students.”

Exploratory students

Dablow oversees the Student Success Center, which includes first-year programming efforts to promote retention; advising and support to about 1,500 “exploratory students;” and student success coordinators, who are available to help students overcome obstacles and complete the path to graduation.

The exploratory students fall into two main groups: pre-unit students, which include those who know what path they want to be on but haven’t gotten there yet, e.g. a student who wants to be an engineer but hasn’t yet been accepted to Speed; and students who are undecided majors.

“We have students come in and they say they want to do something, but they don’t really know how and we’re helping them get to where they need to be,” Dablow said.

REACH

Resources for academic achievement – more commonly known as REACH – will also be located in the new building. The primary goals of REACH, overseen by Geoffrey Bailey, are to enhance or improve students’ academic performance, help students transition to college life and support retention rates.

Bailey noted that the transition to the BACB will provide more immediate access to the entire team as UofL works to expand its services for the largest (predicted) incoming class in school history.

The unification of services, coupled with other student success-driven services and programs, will enhance the ability to provide immediate assistance to students and foster a high-touch, high-tech approach to academic support, Bailey adds.

“Students will be able to travel from many of their classes directly to our centers and staff, which helps reduce physical and other perceived barriers for access,” he said. “Further, given our close proximity to our partners, we’ll also see enhanced collaborations and referrals that will directly benefit students.”

Bailey anticipates this ability to facilitate high-impact practices and provide personalized attention to set the bar for learning centers nationwide.

“Although student success has always been an essential part of REACH’s mission, the new space and proximity of our partners will foster additional opportunities for us to collaborate and have an integrated approach to supporting student learning,” he said.

Additionally, the new space will provide opportunities to expand the use of innovative academic support models such as peer-assisted learning (PAL). PAL provides academic support in historically difficult, introductory college courses.

“Given the nature and design of the active learning classroom spaces and support services in BACB, it offers the possibility of an additional tool in our arsenal of academic support mechanisms for UofL students. This is absolutely essential for all students, but it is especially true for serving student populations who have been historically disenfranchised or marginalized and for first-generation students,” Bailey said.

“When a student is engaged, they’re more likely to stay. We want to create that for them prior to getting here, when they get here and while they’re here. That will give us a better opportunity of keeping them here,” Begany added.

Recruitment tool

In addition to streamlining student success and engagement efforts, the team is excited about the recruitment possibilities the new building brings. The nearly 170,000-square-foot structure boasts a number of state-of-the-art features from active learning classrooms to technology-rich lab spaces.

“You can’t not get excited when you look at the building and I’m excited about what that means for us in terms of recruitment,” Begany said. “There is a real energy there.”

“A picture is worth a thousand words,” Dablow added. “We can take a prospective student on a walk-through tour and we don’t even have to say anything.”