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Pennell - ENGL 3309

Dr. Pennell's Technical Writing course concentrating on Document Design

Assignment Details

Case 2: Recommendation Report: Improve Tarleton’s Student Retention

You have been hired as the head technical communicator in the Vice President for Academic Affairs. You have been tasked with researching and creating a recommendation report to “Improve Tarleton’s Student Retention” problem that will be directed to the Student Enrollment Management department.  You should research and find-

  • What are the current numbers of first year students registering and numbers graduating, numbers of students transferring to and from Tarleton
  • Find information of the number of students dropping out in 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th years
  • Find information on the cause
  • Provide at least three recommendations
  • Share which is the best option

You are in charge of a small team of technical communicators who will be collaborating on completing this report. In addition to the formal report you will produce, you will also be responsible to write –

  • An informal report to your supervisor-either the Provost or the assistant Provost. This report should explain your initial finding that Tarleton has a student retention problem and you require a feasibility report to be completed.
  • A memo to your group sharing the purpose of the assignment, goals you want to achieve, who is responsible for various aspects, and hard and soft deadlines the group will need to meet.

First you will need to identify Tarleton's statistics:

You will also want to know who Tarleton's identified peer and aspirant institutions are to compare us.  Here is last year's article with that information, Tarleton Updates Peer and Aspirant Universities.

To look up  complete reported statistics use IPEDS. (this is the standard data required by the US Gov. for all state or federally funded schools)

  • Choose Look up Institution
  • When you are in one use Data Reported to change the year of the data

Next you will research reasons students leave college and recommendations on how to retain them.

Start in the Education databases. I would specifically recommend the Professional Development Collection.

Use terms like:

  • college or university or higher education
  • retention or persistence or attrition
  • retention strategies