As enrollment volatility continues to unsettle higher education, a growing number of institutions are treating student success not as a single office’s responsibility but as a campuswide operating principle.

From institutions like Roanoke College to Ohio University and Santa Fe College, the most promising retention gains are coming from coordinated advising models, data-informed interventions, and comprehensive wraparound support.

Building Coordinated Student Success Ecosystems

At Roanoke College, a sharper focus on student success infrastructure has pushed the fall 2024 freshman retention rate to 81%, a near 10-year high and well above the national average of 69.5%, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.

Rather than relying solely on traditional academic advising, Roanoke has expanded its Student Success Division, added a role dedicated to student success strategies, and created a Retention Task Force that brings together representatives from across campus.

These changes are designed to systematically identify why students might consider leaving and what interventions keep them enrolled. The task force coordinates efforts among academic affairs, student engagement, athletics, and campus operations to build a student-ready culture where belonging is treated as a retention metric.

Targeted programming in the first six weeks, expanded academic coaching, and forums that allow students to adjust schedules and learn about resources before the drop period are all part of a strategy to intervene early and often.

Advising is central to this approach. Roanoke has moved from a more diffuse faculty advising model to one that incorporates professional academic coaches and advisors who can provide strategic, intentional, and personalized academic advising on a continual basis.

The goal is to ensure students feel known, monitored, and supported from the moment they arrive, not just during registration crunch times.

Aligning Academic Support and Advising at Scale

Ohio University is pursuing a similar logic on a larger scale by consolidating key student-facing functions into its Office of Student Success and Academic Innovation.

The reorganization unites the Academic Achievement Center, experiential learning, learning communities, signature academic experience programs, and advising, retention, and graduation initiatives under one umbrella.

The structure is designed to break down silos that often undermine retention work. Centralized leadership over advising and student success technology allows the university to align policies and outreach across all colleges and campuses.

Academic support services—including peer tutoring, writing assistance, and large-group peer-assisted learning sessions—are coordinated with proactive advising, major exploration, and degree completion support.

Technology is another pillar of Ohio’s retention strategy. A new version of Slate, a system for managing student data, tracking interactions, and coordinating support services, supports academic alerts, midterm progress surveys, and new-student success surveys.

Success advisors can view outreach history, risk indicators, and engagement patterns in one place, making it easier to deliver timely, targeted interventions.

Learning communities, which reach 98% of first-year students, extend support into the classroom and residential experience, while second-year experience programming maintains momentum beyond the first year.

Targeted Support

Community colleges and regional institutions are also investing in intensive support models for their most vulnerable students.

Santa Fe College in Florida recently received $4.46 million in federal grants to sustain and expand its TRIO Student Support Services programs, which provide individualized academic coaching, financial aid and scholarship guidance, tutoring, mentoring, and transfer assistance for low-income students, first-generation students, and students with disabilities.

“The TRIO SSS grants have had a profound impact on our students for more than 40 years,” said Santa Fe College President Paul Broadie, PhD. “Receiving this grant enables us to continue our transformative work, ensuring that students get the support they need to succeed in the classroom and thrive in their careers.”

The model pairs students with dedicated academic coaches who help them navigate everything from FAFSA forms to course selection and emergency needs.

National data from the U.S. Department of Education show that Student Support Services participants are significantly more likely to complete degrees or transfer than similar peers outside the program, underscoring the impact of sustained, high-touch support.

Adapting Retention Strategies for Prison Education

Retention work is also evolving in less visible spaces, such as prison education programs, where incarcerated students face academic and financial barriers compounded by logistical, technological, and systemic constraints.

Leaders in these initiatives emphasize that advising and student success work must be persistent and adaptive. Some programs employ tenured and tenure-track faculty inside facilities and maintain those relationships after students are released, creating continuity in mentoring and academic guidance.

Partnership-based “2+2” ecosystems, such as the Transformation and Reentry Through Education and Community program at Metropolitan State University, link an associate degree at a partner institution with a bachelor’s program at the university.

Structured learning labs, regular meetings with dedicated faculty advisors, and intentional reentry programming help ensure that education is framed as a long-term trajectory rather than a series of disconnected courses.

Emergency aid, precollege academic preparation, and tailored tutoring address gaps in math, reading, and writing so students can succeed in college-level work.

Common Threads Across Effective Retention Models

Across these varied settings, common best practices emerge. The most effective student success and advising strategies:

• Treat retention as a shared responsibility spanning academics, student life, and operations.
• Use data and early-alert systems to identify risk and trigger timely interventions.
• Build cohort and community structures that foster belonging.
• Combine professional advising with mentoring, tutoring, and emergency financial support.
• Design clear academic pathways—including for nontraditional and justice-impacted students—with multiple milestones and strong transfer or reentry bridges.

In an era when every enrolled student matters, these coordinated models suggest that retention gains are rarely accidental. They are the product of intentional ecosystems where advising is integrated, support is holistic, and student success is central to institutional strategy.