Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Numbers and Sense: Ensuring Student Success One Cohort at a Time

This book highlights the exigency of student success and how higher education institutions are addressing this call. On the heels of the COVID-19 global pandemic, institutions have been challenged further to manage student satisfaction issues, enrollment and financial insecurities, equity, inclusion and access. As starting point to these ongoing priorities, this book aims to raise awareness, questions and suggestions based on examples of courageous leadership that support retention and completion agendas but more so visionary and actionable approaches to ensure student success. The book addresses the various tensions among education stakeholders, the impressions of change, the expanded realities of competition, the casualties of silos, the value of examining and understanding data in advancing options, and the merits of collaboration, and opportunity thinking. Cases and interviews with thought leaders who candidly share experiences and realizations about ensuring student success provide insight about what else can be done to move the needle forward. Review Dr. Salas offers us a very clear and transparent 21 st century hands on approach to advising and student success coaching that takes the fullest advantage of both high tech and high touch methods at a time and a day when both have become essential. Few have the skills and patience to command both aspects of teaching, advising, and student coaching, but Dr. Salas offers a qualitative balance between Them... This book offers a first-hand insight into what the best practices of student success coaching involve in the second decade of the twenty-first century.--Joseph Cronin, PhD, chair, Individualized Master of Arts Program, Antioch University Dr. Salas' book is required reading for community college leaders, faculty and staff. No college can claim it is 'student-centered' without implementing the recommendations in this book. Dr. Salas not only offers crucially important insights about who today's community college students really are, she sets forth a practical guide for achieving student success based on her current front-line experience. Read Numbers and Sense, then take it to your next meeting or retreat.--Mark W. Rocha, PhD, executive vice president, Cardenio Consulting, Higher Education Practice and former California community college president For all of us who yearn to understand student success but find ourselves or our institutions lost and unsuccessful, the work of Dr. Salas provides the advice we've been waiting for. Dr. Salas shows us that the one-size fits all approach does not hit the mark regarding student success. Her book provides insights into how we should provide a "stronger advising pathway which leads to enrollment, retention and completion," for an entire ecosystem focused on student success.--Reggie Smith III, PhD, CEO, USDLA In Numbers and Sense: Ensuring Student Success One Cohort at a Time, Dr. Alexandra Salas provides an important new resource for those concerned about student success. Understanding the need for higher education institutions to change, develop, and evolve to remain relevant, Dr. Salas outlines relevant pathways for those interested in updating their mindset on advising, teaching, and enrollment strategies. In today's volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous global marketplace now marked by a pandemic creating seismic forces higher education will need to deal with for years to come, Dr. Salas offers a reliable blueprint to consider for those willing to update their institutional missions and create the change necessary to prepare students for their future.--Michael Edmondson, PhD, dean, College of Professional Studies, New Jersey City University and author of Agility: Management Principles for A Volatile World The top priority for colleges and universities is student success. Changing student demographics, performance-based funding models, and increased workforce demands make it paramount that educat