Key Markers of Success
Review our College Access Grant Evaluation (Year 4).
The year-to-year retention rate of L4L Scholars entering RIC in fall 2014 as full-time, first-time freshmen is 88.5%, an increase of 2.5% since our report for fall 2013.
Despite serving students who meet at-risk qualifiers, L4L’s retention rate is 12.3% higher than the overall RIC freshmen retention rate for students entering in fall 2014 (76.2%).
In addition to the official institutional retention rate, L4L’s project evaluator developed an additional measure of success looking beyond the cohort model. It includes students at all levels of study and captures the progress of students following a nontraditional path to graduation, with “Persistence defined as persisting into the next semester” (Mumm, 2016, personal communication).
“Learning for Life Scholars have a rate of persistence of eighty-four percent…The L4L persistence rate is higher than persistence rate for the RIC campus in general” (Mumm, 2016, p. 23-24).
The full evaluation report provides rates for specific groups, such as persistence by GPA, age, ethnicity and class status.
Since L4L’s start, 123 Senior or Master’s level students have been hired and trained to serve as Network Navigators, providing them internship opportunities and a professional certificate of undergraduate studies.
The experience of more than 12 L4L Scholars was so positive that they applied and were hired and trained to become Navigators.
L4L has achieved national recognition through the AASCU Innovation Exchange.
