Amanda (Cooper) Lebrecht, Director of Student Success and Retention
Greetings Alumni Community!
From the Offices of Student Success and Retention, New Student Orientation, and Parent Relations at Vanguard University
As these offices are more recent developments, I am excited to tell you about what we do and how the university continually strives to support our current Vanguard students and their families.
Support
Did you ever wish you had one office that could help you sort out a variety of concerns? Our offices exist to engage both students and their families with the Vanguard experience in multiple and meaningful ways. From orientation through graduation, Shelley (Kilcrease ’99, MS ’01) Youd and I are committed to supporting and celebrating Vanguard students to achieve their academic goals. To do so, we work to recognize the unique characteristics of each student and seek to provide an atmosphere of inclusion that helps them flourish in our community and persist to graduation. By listening to the needs and concerns of students and families, we provide programming, tracking data, and facilitate connections to fulfill the universities commitment to our students’ success and retention.
Although we’ve served in our new roles for nearly three years, we’re still amazed by how much joy we get out of sharing both the beginning and culmination of our new students and their families experiences with Vanguard. We’ve had the opportunity to partner with the Admission Office in a several meaningful ways. We now host a parent track for prospective families during Pre-VU as well as during Academic Registration Days in both the summer and December preceding new students’ arrival on campus. This is designed to allow new students the chance to register for classes, become familiar with our campus, and secure their student identification card, mailbox, parking pass and much more.
Welcome Week continues to Grow
Our Welcome Week program continues to grow and become more robust and now includes the opportunity for Frontline Leaders to serve as peer mentors in Cornerstone classes. This gives our student leaders the chance to help new students with their transition throughout the entire semester. Shelley and her team have added tremendous aspects to Welcome Week which include a prayer of dedication over new students and their families, academic sessions and a commencement dessert, discussions on diversity, community standards, campus traditions as well as a separate orientation program for our transfer and international students. Her team continues to maintain the integrity of some of our most beloved Welcome Week traditions like faculty and staff desserts, worship and communion, beach blast and buck buck.
Once students and families are a part of the Vanguard Community we look forward to reuniting them at our annual Family Weekend each fall and are delighted to be hosting the first ever Grandparents Day on Friday, April 13, 2012 which will allow students to share their Vanguard experience with those they love.
Amazing Vanguard Students!
As many of you who served in the Frontline program know, we could not do our jobs without the help of a group of nearly 65 student leaders who serve as Frontline Student Directors, Crew and Group Leaders, as well as students who assist us with our Parent Relations endeavors. This amazing group of students continues to make our jobs exciting and enjoyable.
Vanguard Commitment
We’ve also had the opportunity to launch many exciting programs designed to ensure that our students not only survive but thrive during their time at Vanguard. I have the privilege of co-chairing a faculty/staff committee with Dr. Dixie Arnold that provides supportive processes enabling students to succeed and graduate in a timely manner. The committee works to coordinate campus-wide efforts to promote student success and retention by evaluating programs and resources as well as foster communication between all campus departments and amongst faculty, staff and students.During the first year of its existence, the committee facilitated several successful initiatives including those aimed at helping our undeclared majors and first generation students succeed, and as a result, freshmen retention rates improved by 4%(a dramatic increase)!
I have been at Vanguard for more than a decade, and have benefited from being a member of both the staff and alumni community in ways I never imagined were possible. Vanguard has truly shaped me into the woman I am today and I am honored to be able to say that at Vanguard: Your story still matters. As you can see we have a lot to be thankful for and so much more important work to do. We invite you to get to know more about our departments and the exciting changes that have taken place in many of our programs by checking out our website and Facebook pages. It is our hope that our alumni family benefits from the programs we’ve put into place and that each of you will be able to experience Vanguard in a new way as a result.
Blessings,
Amanda Cooper-Lebrecht ’09 MTS
Director of Student Success and Retention
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