What began at the beginning of the academic year as an investigation by the IEP Advisory Board marketing committee into how to strengthen our recruitment and retention practices, morphed into a much more comprehensive program designed to target key areas of development possible through participation in the IEP as well as to encourage and reward students who take initiative and engage in the smorgasbord of available opportunities offered by the IEP and its campus partners.
The new IEP Marketing Committee, chaired by SIEP alum Meghan Soens, featured a mix of IEP faculty and staff (Drs. Berka, Erickson and Pérez-Ibáñez, together with IEP Coordinator Melissa Schenck) and other IEP alumni (Sarah Koenig (FIEP), Filip Losowski (GIEP) and Kristen Riley (GIEP)). Together, we started by analysing data from students who had chosen to drop the IEP from their academic plan to see what the most common reasons they cited. It became very clear that even during a non-pandemic year, students who left often felt overwhelmed by the amount of work required by their dual majors, and therefore chose to prioritize the opportunities/experiences they found to be more meaningful instead. So our challenge then became: how can we encourage students to participate in activities that do greatly pay off in the long run (proficiency, intercultural competence, and professional development) while also re-marketing the IEP in a way to those students who already are in it to increase retention. Incorporating mentorship and networking with those further along in the program was something we began looking into, in addition to the possibility of establishing a linguistic excellence academy to reward those who performed well within their language classes.
Not too long afterwards, we hit a crossroads in regards to inclusivity, at which point we pivoted towards a program that enabled leadership, community building, service and engagement as opposed to overemphasizing pure academics. These elements began to coalesce into what we had called the IEP Leadership Academy. Taking this draft, we polled IEP directors and students of different years for their opinions and met with representatives from similar on-campus leadership programs. From these conversations we gathered that 1) students needed tangible outcomes or rewards for the program to be considered worthwhile, 2) we needed to narrow our focus a little further as to not overwhelm students with what we expected from them (defeating our original purpose for organizing this), and 3) we should recognize students for the work that they are already doing in our important focus areas, in addition to whatever else we will provide to them in the future.
With this feedback, the IEP Team designed the IEP Leadership Endorsement in its current form. This program (see image below), meant to cover at least the four years that our students are physically at URI, presents students with a menu of engagement opportunities that they can choose from in order to achieve a couple of different distinctions. The six different themed “buckets” are: diversity, equity and inclusion, intercultural competence, leadership, outreach and service, linguistic proficiency and community building. Completing at least one activity in a minimum of four different focus areas and reflecting upon each of them (like a mini portfolio) would earn a student the overall IEP Leadership Endorsement. If a student participates in three activities within the same focus area, they could earn a badge in that area, e,g. an intercultural competence badge. Since students can complete this program at their own pace, we decided that it would be great for students to be recognized along the way, prior to earning the full endorsement, through special academic and professional networking events. That way, they can continuously see the value in this program. Our ultimate goal is that as this initiative gains traction, students will be leading by example, supporting each other, and will be overall more invested in everything that the IEP has to offer without feeling overwhelmed.
Our goal this summer is to build out this endorsement within an online platform such as Badger – by formally creating pathways and badges, recipients of these acknowledgements can readily display them not just in their resumes but also in their online social networking profiles. Following that, we should be able to have a hard launch of this endorsement for the start of the fall semester.
