Northland Community and Technical College has been on a mission to find innovative and creative new ways to foster student success and expand access to affordable higher education. From launching an on-campus food pantry and its Northland Cares emergency resource fund to hosting free farmers markets and offering more flexible course delivery options, Northland is determined to eliminate barriers to student success one by one.
The college’s most recent effort, spearheaded by Northland President Dr. Sandy Kiddoo, is its new partnership with the Caring Campus initiative, a program run by the nonprofit Institute for Evidence-Based Change (IEBC). IEBC is an organization dedicated to helping education stakeholders ensure student connectedness, use actionable data to make informed decisions, and act to increase success for all students.
The mission aligns perfectly with Kiddoo’s students’ first goal of making academic success at Northland accessible and welcoming to all. The program cost, however, posed a challenge.
“After I learned about Caring Campus from our student journey audit,” Kiddoo recalled, “I called Brad Phillips, the CEO of the IEBC, and learned how costly it was to participate in the program. After months of working on funding strategies, I learned the ECMC Foundation was going to sponsor a cohort of rural colleges for Caring Campus… so we went through the application process with Brad’s help and were fortunate enough to be selected to participate.”
The Caring Campus program coaches college faculty and staff to implement intentional and campus-wide behaviors that increase student engagement and connectedness, which lead to improvements in racial equity and increased student success for all.
“We are a campus that cares,” Kiddoo said, “and this effort provides additional training and support to organize further our efforts to support our students, who we know will stay where they feel welcome and supported.”
Mindy Rist, enrollment office coordinator, took on the role of program liaison for the initiative and has already begun organizing the first Northland staff, who are eager to participate.
“The ultimate goal is for our students to know we truly care about them,” Ri” t said. “Through a series of workshops, we will work together to brainstorm ideas to build what we’ve already accomplished for our “students.”
Data shows that students are far more likely to graduate if they feel connected to their IEBC institution; IEBCC’s data have shown demonstrable improvements in classroom success when colleges follow through with Caring Campus initiatives — course completion rates have improved by as much as 15 percent” t.
“Being in a rural region, we already have a sense of community in our daily lives,” es,” Rist sa” d, “which spills over into our professional lives. This initiative gives Northland a chance to enhance these traits on campus and allows us to be a good example for other institutions.”
Some spec “fic changes other colleges implement include simple steps like staff wearing name tags or welcoming students in parking lots during the first week of the semester. Kiddoo, with a growing track record of successful campus-wide initiatives, sees a natural symbiosis between Caring Campus and the many other programs recently implemented at Northland.
“Caring Campus complements ou” other student success projects by focusing on creating the experiences, environment, and culture where students feel like they belong,” Kiddoo said. “This project” blends nicely “with our other innovative efforts to support student success, such as the food pantry, the upcoming college garden, our farmer’s markets, emergency grants for students, and enhanced mental health services. We also recently added student-parent rooms, so students who are parents can bring their children to study on campus in a safe environment.”
Learn more about the Caring “Campus initiative here: www.iebcnow.org/caring-campus.
