Featured Client Case Study 
Monmouth University
Academic Transition and Inclusion
“Accudemia provides easy-to-find on-campus and off-campus access for students to connect with a student success advisor. The aspiration will be to promote active use of academic advising support by students who identify as first-generation as they transition into college at Monmouth and throughout their educational progress toward a degree.”
Claude E. Taylor
Director for Academic Transition and Inclusion
Supporting First-Generation Students
These students are the first of their family to attend college or their parents/guardians may have some college credit but never attained their bachelor’s degree in the U.S.
The center offers individual and small group advising support to help participants navigate the academic, personal, social, and cultural challenges first-generation students may encounter. Support is student-centered, designed to encourage active participation in an inclusive community, and provides an environment that facilitates persistence to graduation.
Setting Up For Success
Being in the first year of implementation, First to Fly has three main goals, each of which is closely tied to the utilization of Accudemia. These goals are to:
- Raise Awareness of support services for first-generation students.
- Encourage accountability for students through making and keeping appointments.
- Gather data and keep documentation in order to learn more about first-generation students and what they need.
Staff members have begun working to grow awareness of the center’s offerings and to learn more about who first-generation students are. Identifying and inviting students to participate in one of the initial steps of this effort. Making sure students are aware of the services available to them is a primary focus. As it is already adopted in several academic resource centers at Monmouth University, Accudemia was looked to as an essential piece in awareness of the program.
“Accudemia provides easy-to-find on-campus and off-campus access for students to connect with a student success advisor,” says Claude Taylor, Director for Academic Transition and Inclusion. “The aspiration will be to promote active use of academic advising support by students who identify as first-generation as they transition into college at Monmouth and throughout their educational progress toward a degree.”
As first-generation students have expressed uncertainty about where to go to get help and advising support, Accudemia adoption is part of the solution in helping to inform students and then will be used to identify the amount and variety of needs or range of issues students are facing and support services theses students are requesting.’
Accudemia becomes an interface for students to make appointments and become accountable, taking a more active part in their own academic success. Automated reminders from Accudemia help the student to stay on track and keep their appointment commitments.
Being able to track which students take advantage of which services will be important for First to Fly staff members and college administrators. It will help to identify which services are becoming known to students and later it will also be extremely useful, especially when comparing student success and retention to participation in the program. These help to determine the success of the program.
“Within Accudemia there are a range of useful data collection and analysis tools to help you see your reach and effectiveness.” -Claude Taylor, Director for Academic Transition and Inclusion
The First to Fly team is looking forward to full adoption of Accudemia and learning more about how to effectively and efficiently use tools and features through online training and webinars that Engineerica provides to all Accudemia clients.
COVID-19 Update
A Year Full of Challenges
The outbreak of COVID-19 made the roll-out of this brand-new program even more difficult. “In 2020-2021, our full implementation of Accudemia had been interrupted by remote learning and instruction due to Covid-19,” stated Taylor. The program roll-out has been slowed, but the enthusiasm for the program has not died down. In fact, the needs of first-generation students have likely grown due to the effects of the pandemic.
Implementing Accudemia will be a priority in the coming months for First to Fly. Taylor said, “In 2021-2022 we will be measuring success around the number of individual appointments during key pressure points of each semester.”