Creating A Model For High Impact Practices At A Large, Regional, Comprehensive University: A Case Study

Abstract

Student engagement in High Impact Practices (HIPs) has been gaining the attention of higher education leaders and researchers. When students are actively engaged in the learning process they report greater gains in learning and personal development. Students involved in HIPs show better retention, higher GPA and succeed in graduating college in a timely manner. Less advantaged students benefit even more when they participate in these practices. As university funding models are becoming performance based, HIPs are more important in ensuring students success. The following presents a case-study at a large, regional, comprehensive university- California State University Fullerton in Southern California. In 2013, the Strategic Plan was implemented at CSUF. The plan contained four goals. Goal number two was to “improve student persistence, increase graduation rates University-wide, and narrow the achievement gap for underrepresented students.” One of the objectives for this goal was to “Increase participation in High-Impact Practices (HIPs) and ensure that 75% of CSUF students participate in at least two HIPs by graduation.” How do you get a university of over 38,000 students to have 75% of the students participating in HIPs? A strategic plan task force was created to define HIPs, create an assessment report on HIP outcomes (focusing on increased retention and graduation rates), and develop a system for creating HIPs on a campus as large as CSUF (a result of the AAC&U experience).This case study describes their preliminary work.