Meeting Students Where They Are: Rethinking Retention and Belonging

Want to listen on another platform? Choose your platform here.

Episode Transcript

[Music Intro]

Brian Trainer, Host: Welcome to Trends + Tensions in Architecture and Design, presented by BHDP, where we discuss Trends in Architectural and Interior Design and the competing priorities or Tensions that arise from integrating new ideas into existing organizations, enterprises, and institutions. In this episode, “Meeting Students Where They Are: Rethinking Retention and Belonging,” we are joined by Thys Meyer, Vice President of Student Success and Retention at the University of Pikeville, along with Mike Garvey, Higher Education Client Leader at BHDP. I am your host, Brian Trainer, senior strategist for BHDP. Let’s get started.

Brian: In today's topic, we're talking about student success and retention, and we have a special guest to help us with this discussion. Thys Meyer, would you tell us who you are and what you do?

Thys Meyer: As you said, I'm Thys Meyer. I'm the Vice President for Student Success and Retention at the University of Parkville in Pikeville, Kentucky. 

Brian: Thank you, Thys. And also joining us today is Mike Garvey. Remind people who you are and what you do. 

Mike Garvey: Thank you, Brian. And thank you, Thys, very much for being here with us today and doing this. My name is Mike Garvey. I am the client leader for Higher Education in the southeast with BHDP Architecture. I've been with the firm for a few years have been in architectural design for about 20.

Brian: Fantastic, and welcome back. You've done this before, so you're almost a veteran, but we wanna learn a little bit more about Thys. Can you tell us a little bit about your background and how you wound up in student success? 

Thys: I'm a first-gen college student and an immigrant who came to the US back in 1992. Went through education, got an associate degree from the community college, got a bachelor's degree, got a master's degree, got a PhD in Parasitology in Entomology from the University of Illinois. Then, ended up in East Kentucky at this school of opportunity, if you want to call it, the University of Pikeville. Back then, it was just transitioning from Pikeville College. Taught for a few years and had the opportunity serendipitously to move into some student success programming. I took that over and love what I got to do. Very different than what I did before, but ended up doing this thing. 

Brian: How do you go from parasitology into being interested in, like, student success and retention? So, what was the bridge there? 

Thys: I think it comes from being an educator, right? So, you're in a classroom, teaching, and your students are struggling. You don't always know the context of why they're struggling. So, I think sometimes in higher education there's an inherent dichotomy of faculty versus students, right? I never wanted to have that role, having gone through that process myself, so I really started reaching out to students when they were struggling and saying, ‘How can I help you? What are the issues you're dealing with?’ And realized that oftentimes it was never the ability to do the work, it was the ability to do the work and live life at that point. And so, it became a natural transition where you're like, man, I can make more of a difference outside of the classroom sometimes than in the classroom. You know, dealing with some of these things that make life hard for students. And so it just became a natural transition to get into that part of things. 

Brian: So, Mike, how do student success and retention overlap? Where did that pique your interest, and how did you and Thys connect? 

Mike: Sure, thanks, Brian. At BHDP, we do a lot of research under the umbrella of what we would call thought leadership. And we're always looking at trends and challenges, headwinds, all those things in higher education, and trying to see where those things lead and what they're telling us about where higher education is going and how the institutions ought to be responding to those things. And there was a statistic that we saw in some National Center for Education Statistics data from a study that was done in the mid 2010s about student success and retention where typically, and then this was echoed by a Higher Education Today study that was done in July, 2023, where there's a significant fall off from first year to second year, around 70 to 75% of students come back.

The study I referred to in Higher Education Today, from a couple of years ago, found that there's still a consistent drop-off from second year to third year in student retention, at around 10%. And so, when you put those two numbers together, that's a significant chunk of students who are enrolling in college and then choosing not to return, either after the first year or after the second year. And second year, critically, after they've invested a significant amount of finances. Maybe they've got some student loans, they've certainly got some credits under their belt. They've got some things they've done, so that was a trend that we noticed reading some of these studies and things around the institution. 

I met Thys a couple of years ago through an association that we're both part of, the Appalachian College Association. We hit it off and have remained friends. I would say, since that time. I was very interested in the University of Pikeville because of what I would call their unique and successful approach to student success, to student retention, to meeting their students where they are and helping to solve that problem, at least for their institution. And the guy leading that charge is Thys, and some of the stories he told me about what they do for their students, their sort of novel approach. Thys and Pikeville as an institution, what I've come to learn about them over the last couple of years, is that they are an institution that is not afraid to challenge those things in their face and say, just because we've always done it this way, is that the right way, and is that in the best interest of our students? 

Brian: Very well said. You had mentioned that life and the ability to do the work was what got you interested. How would you define student success, and how do you really meet students where they are? 

Thys: One of the things that really pulled me to Pikeville when I first came here was its mission, and that's what's kept me here. So, we are an open-admissions institution; you have a high school diploma, and we're going to try to make it work for you. And so I think that's it. How do we define student success? I live by the metrics that we all use. What are our retention numbers? What is satisfactory academic progress for our students and staff?

Those are the traditional metrics, but we look at other things. One of the stats that I love to share is from my Dean of Students, Chris Robinson. He does an amazing job with this. What he looks at is the relationship between conduct cases and our care team. So our behavioral intervention team, our team that takes students and gets them the resources they want. From 2017 to 2023, we saw a decline in conduct cases. This is everything from the most minor transgression in the dorms to some serious stuff. We saw a decline of 81.54%, and so this is where we brought in restorative justice, as we call it. Students learn through failure. We all do. I've never learned anything through my success. My dad always used to say, “You only learn through pain.” But students should have the right to fail. Be it academically, be it socially, and stuff. They should have the right to fail, but it shouldn't be catastrophic. So how do you deal with it?

You're proactive; you come in. When we see this decline in conduct, 81% is a mind-blowing number for us. I had to check five times! What we saw is a concurrent increase of 77% in our cases that we have in our behavioral intervention team. And so, what it showed us is that there must be a shift, that students are coming to us earlier, or we become more aware of their struggles earlier. So sometimes conduct is a result of frustration, some anger issues, and stuff like that. So how do you deal with that? And so that's a metric we use. We look at conduct related to the behavioral intervention team, and the help, the resources that we built for them, which is often hard to get them to. How do we get them there earlier? And it turns out that if you tell them about it enough, they'll go themselves. If there's an issue, the only thing you have to do is listen. So those are important ones. But then do they talk to us? Do they trust us? And so, we really look at if something that comes up on campus, and we are not aware of it, why aren't we aware of it? If it comes out of left field and nobody was aware of it, why did that happen? That means there's a trust issue. How do you build that trust? We've seen a 22.6% increase in overall retention, which is mind-blowing to us, right? We often run data three times here because that must be a mistake. Are we sure?

But I think that's attributable to that people feel comfortable coming to you with their problems. We make them aware of resources, right? You tell them once, you tell them twice, then you tell them a third time. Then, when they come to you and say, 'I don't know what to do,' you take them to the resource. And so I think that's incredible to us, that reflects that we've built this idea. Do they talk to us? Do they trust us? Are we aware? That's a question we ask every day. Why aren't we aware of this when it comes out of left field? But usually, if you sit with your team and you start talking, and they're like, ‘We are aware, this is where we predict it's gonna go. How do we ward it off?’ So students let you know, and then you listen. The one thing I can tell you, if you ask them, they will tell you. Give them a space to communicate. That's incredibly important to us. 

Brian: The awareness that you build, you were talking about building your team's awareness, the behavioral intervention team, and being aware of problems before they're bigger problems. Is there an opposite direction in which awareness is built? Like, how do you make yourself aware to the students that this is a resource, that it's available, that this is a behavior that we encourage on campus? Is there awareness from the other direction without being overly oppressive?

Thys: I spoke to my Assistant Dean of Student Success, Megan Childress. She's got basically first-year advising, and when there is an issue on campus, it usually comes out there; they trust their advisors. And so, this morning, they're working on their mission plan, and she said they discussed this: what should students feel? And this is what they gave me. And I'm gonna go from the paper 'cause I think it's amazing.

“Students should feel heard because their story matters. Students should be understood without judgment, supported by practical solutions. They should be empowered without being enabled. They should be relieved knowing that they're not alone. They should be assured that their success is personal. They should be connected through relationships that make a difference, and they should be intentionally and unrelentingly welcome.” 

That's it. Give grace, give empathy, and make people successful. Now, every now and then, you can get somebody who just doesn't fit into that block. But, I tell you that's the exception rather than the rule.

Brian: Mike, did you want to add anything to that? 

Mike: One of the things I've learned about Pikeville is that Thys and his team are not afraid to challenge the status quo to meet people where they are. And you're hearing from him the ways that he goes about doing that. What's working for him, and what we've seen across his peer institutions, where they excel at student retention, if we want to reduce it to a metric, and I appreciate that he's saying it's not just about retention, but since that's the subject we're talking about here. It's those institutions, such as Pikeville, that are clear about their mission, about what makes them unique as an institution, who they're serving, and what those people need. And I think if you identify those things: your mission, how you are unique, who you are serving, and what they need. That lends itself a lot more to success than sitting around in a boardroom, and everyone's saying, ‘How come we're not hanging onto our students?’ 

Thys: We always talk about “What's Up Wednesday”, right? The crockpot story. So, in 2011, one of my staff members had run into a student on campus who was incredibly distraught, emotionally distraught. She was like, ‘I'm dropping out today. I'm going home.’ She was six hours away, I think it was Georgia, and she's like, ‘I'm leaving right now. I already packed my bags.’ My advisor, who is one of the kindest, most amazing people I've ever worked with, said to her, ‘I can't take all your pain,’ and it was homesickness. ‘I can't take your pain away, but give me the opportunity. If I can do anything for you right now to make you feel just a little better, what would that be?’

And the student said, ‘I want my mother's mac and cheese.’ Let's phone your mother. We'll get the recipe. It turns out to be craft mac and cheese in a box. She drove. She got it. She cooked it. She fed that student. That student never again talked about transferring. And it got my staff member thinking, and she was like, ‘If this student feels that way, and the way to solve it is just to give them something warm in their belly and a listening ear, we can do this.’ And they started doing an event called “What’s Up Wednesday.” The second one was a crockpot of chili and some toasted cheese in the classroom. It ended up that now 400 students show up for dinner on a Wednesday night. So you don't think about it, but asking a student, ‘What do you want right now? What can make you better, except getting in your car and going home? How do I help you?’ That's how you build trust. That's how you build community; they show up, they love it, and we do it. 

Brian: This has been fantastic, and I've enjoyed it. Do you have any other thoughts or anything else on your mind that you'd like to share before we go? And Mike, I'll give you that same opportunity. 

Thys: I think being authentic, being true to yourself, and caring, the world by itself, without many of the inputs we have, is a cruel place. How do you build a culture of caring? How do you get up in the morning? I tell my students and staff every morning, as I drive in, ‘How do I make the world a better place?’ Even if it's a small thing, how do I make the world a better place today? And every night, I drive home, and I say, 'Tomorrow is another day; I'm going to try again.' But I think if we keep doing that repeatedly, and ask the questions of why we do what we do. It's not that hard to care. And then I think that's it, how do you build a culture that cares? 

Brian: Mike, any final words of wisdom? 

Mike: Yeah, just from thinking back across the course of our conversation here, a number of things that I jotted down and were things I was reflecting about, but Thys has really hit on, I think, a lot of these key things. If we're asking the question of how we serve our students as an institution, how do we retain them, and how do we propel them through four years of study to ultimately succeed in attaining that college degree and going on into the world? It's thinking about that problem the way Pikeville has demonstrated it does. You know, understand who you are and who you're serving, and how you meet the needs of those people. Thys, thank you for joining me today for this. I really appreciate it. 

Thys: I appreciate you guys for inviting me. I had an amazing time. 

Brian: Thys, Mike, thank you both very much. 

Thys: Appreciate you, sir. Thank you. 

Mike: Thank you. 

[Music Outro}

Brian: Thank you for joining Trends + Tensions in Architecture and Design, presented by BHDP, for this episode, “Meeting Students Where They Are: Rethinking Retention and Belonging,” with Thys Meyer of the University of Pikeville and Mike Garvey of BHDP. If you appreciate what you have heard, please rate, subscribe, and give us a review. I am Brian Trainer, your host, and I hope you’ll join us for another episode of Trends + Tensions to see what topics drive design.