About me
My name is Danielle Trueba from the great state of Texas! I am married and we have 6 children. I have worked for Pima Medical Institute since 2002 and I love our school and our students! I have have been an instructor, career services advisor, and for the majority of my tenure, a student services coordinator. I am passionate about helping students reach their academic goals.
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The Career Services team has a significant role in retention. Ensuring students can visualize themselves in the role they are training for is a huge motivating factor. A positive and caring placement department demonstrates the school’s commitment to addressing students’ needs, which directly impacts retention.
This module provided perspective into the importance of connection and social involvement. Students need to feel connected to instructors and each other. The more students connect the higher the probability of persistence.
This was great information. Because we are an Online school, mentorship is a little tricky. However, we do have a mentorship program within our HCA program. One way I was thinking we could informally mentor is by having a "Mentor Monday" post on Facebook. We could have successful students provide tips.
I personally don't work in Admissions, however, I did learn some things that I can take back to our Admissions team.
The stand-out for me was understanding that the time spent during the admissions process and the amount of knowledge the students has about the program prior to starting can have a direct impact on retention. I have always thought this was the case, but it was just observational. For example noticing that students who were rushed in last minute did poorly in their first couple of weeks and ended up dropping out despite efforts from our faculty and staff.… >>>
I really liked the focus on positivity! It's imperative that we all embrace a culture of positivity in order to be successful as an institution.
My biggest takeaway for this section was: Use all interactions with students as extended admissions presentations. Remind students over and over of the WHY and WIIFM (what's in it for me) of attending school. Ensuring student know their WHY and keep it at the forefront of their mind is so very important! - Danielle
This was great information. I appreciated the significance of HABES. I especially enjoyed the reminder in the area of “Beliefs” – it’s so important that not only students believe in themselves but that we believe in them – truly believe that they CAN be successful. I will be aware of identifying possible blind spots with both students and co-workers. - Danielle, PMI
The overall idea of Model, Mentor, and Monitor really is a great way to ensure student success. I think it really speaks to the importance of building trust with the student and letting them know that we truly care about their success. I especially liked the reminder that attention=retention. I plan on experimenting a little bit myself to see how much more successful students are that receive extra attention. Fortunately, the school I work for is extremely student centered already, although there is always room for improvement in this area.
- Danielle
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Jill,
This is such an intelligent and well thought-out analysis of what was covered! Excellent! I could not agree more with you, especially about #1!
I am curious about your live web meetings. We are also a completely online environment and we also implemented live Zoom sessions for our new students. However, we are having trouble getting students to attend and I am not sure the structure is useful for them. Would you mind expanding on your live web meetings? What do they look like content wise? How are you getting students to attend? I would love to hear more!… >>>