Re-Connect Initiative to Help Students who Have ‘Stopped Out’ to Re-Enroll

Today’s topic is our new initiative to re-engage students who have stopped out of NOVA.

Both NOVA’s Inspiring Excellence strategic plan and the VCCS’ Accelerate Opportunity strategic plan focus on increasing the number of students who complete meaningful credentials; but we know that many students stop just before they reach the completion line. In fact, NOVA has identified all students, 22 years and up, who are within 12 credit hours of the 60 required for degree completion and who have stopped out over the last 18 months. All are in good academic standing, and none have enrolled in or graduated from another college or university.

We want to re-engage these students to provide them with the opportunity to complete their NOVA degrees.

To do this, we are partnering with InsideTrack*, a nationally-recognized non-profit coaching organization, to provide personalized re-enrollment coaching. In their outreach to these recent stop-outs, coaches will highlight the value of completing their NOVA degree. They will also help these students develop strategies to balance work, family, financial and academic obligations, along with giving the students a sense of belonging — putting them on course to success and graduation. 

NOVA’s re-connect initiative is modeled on the successful North Carolina Re-Connect, a national model for re-engaging adult learners who have stopped out of community college.

Beginning next week, InsideTrack coaches will be working to contact, coach and support learners who may be interested in returning to NOVA to complete their degrees. Their efforts will be complemented by a NOVA team led by VP for Student Affairs Joel Frater; this group will be working on-the-ground to assist and ease the students’ return. The team will meet regularly with the coaches to gain insights into the challenges and barriers that led the students to stop-out and to understand what they need to return to NOVA. This ongoing feedback loop will do more than help us help these students: we will take the lessons from this first pilot and make changes both to reduce our stop-out numbers and to develop an ongoing re-engagement strategy.

Should you hear of students who are re-enrolling and mention being coached, please join us in continuing to support them in ways that encourage their return and retention as they seek to complete their programs at NOVA.

If you have questions about our NOVA re-connect initiative or would like to get involved, please reach out to VP Frater.

*If the name “InsideTrack” sounds familiar, it may be because the organization was an early-stage partner in developing the highly successful NOVA-GMU ADVANCE coaching model.

Kind regards, Anne