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ASCENDER Activities:

Activity Component I: Strengthen First-Year Experience

• Create a First Year Experience and Engagement Center.
• Create a Student Retention and Persistence Coordinator position whose initial role during the project will be to spearhead student retention and persistence efforts of the project, including project-level data gathering and analysis for interim and annual reporting functions of the project.
• Create First Year Experience courses and experiences with embedded college success, career and transfer exploration, skill building workshops, academic, and non-cognitive supports, such as Peer Mentoring, Peer Coaching and financial literacy.
• Align Course Learning Outcomes, degrees and certificates to industry and employer needs.

Activity II:  Strengthen Institutional Management through Equity-Centered Professional Development

• Provide incentivized, equity-centered, faculty and staff professional development through ESCALA Educational Services, participation in conferences, workshops, intensives, institutes and events that strengthen pedagogical practices, especially for faculty teaching First Year Experience and gateway courses, front line staff, and academic advisors.
• Provide resources to classrooms, labs and experiential learning for faculty to incorporate active learning and other promising pedagogies and High Impact Practices into courses.
• Provide course redesign incentives to faculty as allowable per NMSU Carlsbad policies and procedures to embed transfer and career learning outcomes
• Provide student-centered academic advising professional learning and development opportunities to Student Services staff and campus staff who have high frequency interactions with students.

Activity III: Strengthen Fiscal Stability and Community Resilience through College Outreach and Financial Literacy Interactions

• Conduct extensive in-person and virtualized outreach activities intended to broaden community awareness of the advantages of earning a college certificate or degree. The project will customize outreach and communication activities to engage and educate students’ families about the benefits, challenges and potential outcomes of college.
• Support creation of digital outreach resources geared toward helping prospective students and their families and other members of the target population understand the college planning, application, enrollment, degree selection, course selection and other processes.
• Create gamified orientation that educates First Year Students, and students returning to college after an absence, about how to make the most of their college experience.