Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

Members of the Student Government Association (SGA) developed a plan they believe will raise UTEP graduation rates to 50 percent by 2015.

Analisa Cordova, SGA vice president for external affairs, led the team of students that conducted the research for the plan. The group surveyed and interviewed UTEP students about advising, program curriculum, professors and student life. Cordova said students were concerned with having to take remediation classes, advising, confusing degree plans and the fact that there weren’t enough classes for seniors to take in order to graduate on time.

“We felt this was a direct correlation to the low graduation rates,” Cordova said.

This plan would mainly accommodate incoming freshman if implemented and may not accommodate the lifestyle of schedules of returning students, according to Cordova.

The four components, as listed in the report written by Cordova, include:

Online Degree Plan – This is a plan that most universities are adopting, including UT Austin, in order for students to keep track and have control of their degree plan and make registering less complicated.

Contract for the Future – This plan encourages students to finish their degree in order to be accepted into law school, medical school or enter the work force sooner with incentives of advanced registration, a locked tuition for four years and proper advising. Texas Tech was the first in Texas to create a model for this plan and has seen successful results.

Top Draft – This portion of the plan is about keeping El Paso’s best students at UTEP by offering them job internships, scholarships and leadership opportunities as high school juniors.

This plan was then presented to the UT Board of Regents, which passed a resolution supporting the increase of four-year graduation rates of UT campuses statewide.

Natomi Austin, a student who worked on the Top Draft portion of the plan, said that her focus was to find a solution to reverse the brain drain in El Paso that involves talented students relocating to major cities.

“With Top Draft Initiative in play, everyone in El Paso wins. Students will have an educational opportunity of a lifetime, UTEP will reverse its daunting graduation rate and the El Paso business market will double,” Austin said.

Another student on the project, Nick Zarazua, a junior at Notre Dame, assisted in the honors program. He said he was in charge of analyzing the UTEP honors program and comparing it to UT Austin’s plan. He also gathered information for a comparative study between UTEP and other schools in the UT System and researched aspects such as graduation rates, remedial enrollment rates and tuition costs.

“I was extremely happy to be a part of this project because it gave me the satisfaction of knowing I contributed in a significant way toward the development of a local institution of higher learning,” Zarazua said. “Through my research, I feel that I helped give UTEP a better understanding of its relationship with other universities within the UT System, thus brining into light certain aspects in need of change.”

Although the plan has not been directly implemented at UTEP, the SGA will continue to push for the synchronized online degree plan or reinforce it so that it gets applied, according to Cordova.

“One of our SGA goals is to look more at academics and everyone can benefit from having a better academic experience,” Cordova said.

UTEP administrators have been working to improve graduation rates and the quality of students’ experiences at the university since 2003. Associate Provost Stephen B. Aley chaired the Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) that was developed by the curriculum and advising workgroups.

“I was pleased to accept the challenge of implementing the ideas delivered last November by those workgroups,” Aley said.

Aley said that while the UTEP 2015 document was delivered two months after the workgroup reports, it is not surprising that there is overlap. According to Aley, better communication of degree plans and catalog information was a challenge independently voiced by both the advising and curriculum workgroups. The UTEP Student Success Plan that resulted from the QEP calls for developing a clear and consistent format for customized degree plans in both print and online formats.

“The entire process that led through the QEP to the UTEP Student Success Plan was a dialogue across UTEP and the El Paso community – a dialogue that UTEP is committed to continuing,” Aley said.

Some of the people involved in the workgroups were also part of the 2015 plan.

“I’m certain that some of the approaches in the report echo proposals in the UTEP Student Success Plan,” Aley said. “I must emphasize, however, that the UTEP Student Success Plan was a team project, with many voices presenting similar ideas from different points of view. The test for inclusion was not who or how many voiced the idea, but rather how well it resonated with a community dedicated to helping its students succeed.”

This plan was initiated after a University of Texas System (UT System) performance report revealed UTEP’s graduation rate ranked among the lowest in the state. Only 4.5 percent of UTEP students graduate within four years and the university has the highest remediation (students requiring developmental education) rates in Texas.

Senator Eliot Shapleigh asked a group of students from UTEP as well as students from other universities to address the issues related to graduation rates and together they came up with UTEP 2015 report.

“It’s important to give credit to the students that crafted the plan,” Shapleigh said. “They made it their number-one goal; it’s a student-driven idea and it benefits the students and their academic performance.”