Success Coach

In the Fall of 2017, The Center for Success Coaching was born. Formerly aligned with YouCollege, the academic college for The University of Toledo’s undecided student population, the Success Coaches now had their own unit under The Office of The Provost. A result of the restructuring process initiated by Dr. Sharon Gaber our 17th President who upon her arrival, reduced the number of academic colleges from 16 to 9. In a meeting that occurred the previous spring semester with our department, Dr. Gaber said that her long range goals behind the combining of the colleges where to increase efficiency, and cut down on the strain on the University budget by consolidating positions and processes “Strategic decisions are future oriented, concerned
with long term direction (Chandler 1962; Mintzberg 1994). “Across sectors, a major organizational leadership is the determination of long range goals and objectives of an enterprise, and the adoption of courses of action and allocation of resources necessary for carrying out these goals” (Bolman & Deal, 2013, p. 63). In the readings this week Bollman and Deal helped me to understand more clearly what had happened at the time “Reorganization is often the first initiative of new leaders. It is often their way of putting their stamp on an organization” ((Bolman & Deal, 2013, p. 86). The Center For Success Coaching is under the guidance and supervision of Dr.
Julie Fischer-Kinney, Assistant Provost for Student Success and Retention, The Center for Success Coaching now has is a mission statement and focus “ The Center For Success Coaching is to empower UT students to thrive academically, personally and professionally from orientation to graduation through a holistic, student-centered approach” (University of Toledo, 2017). All Success Coaches report to and receive direction from Dr. Julie Fischer-Kinney “ the most basic and ubiquitous way of harmonizing the efforts of individuals, units, or divisions are to designate a boss with formal authority” (Bolman and Deal, p. 51). Another change that occurred that Fall was that besides becoming our own center, Success Coaches no longer advised students as two advisors were hired that now take care of our undecided students preparing these students for their transitions to the academic colleges of their majors. Each Success Coach is assigned to an academic college or colleges or set of students, for example, my specialization is working with Student-Athletes, Nursing, and The College of Health and Human Services direct from High School
students.
We also have Honors Coaches who are housed over in Libbey Hall to work with our honors population, as well as specific coaches who serve our Miltary, Online, Adult Non-Traditional and College Credit Plus students. Your specialty area is determined by a coaches background and experience. This specialization among coaches allows us to be more efficient, focused and aligned with our academic colleges in serving our roster of students “Groups established around customers or clients, as in hospital wards created around patient types (pediatrcis, intensive care, or maternity) computer sales departments organized by customer (corporate, governement, education, individual) or schools targeting students in a particualr age group” (Bolman and Deal, p.50)

Utilizing weekly department meetings and emails, Dr. Fischer-Kinney keeps the unit up to speed on major happenings across the university as well as communicating key initiatives which come down the chain vertically. I’ll give the most recent example being the registration initiative. Each coach was given a list of students from his or her caseload that were in good standing and eligble to register for Fall classes, but for whatever reason, had not yet registered. Each coach was requried to reach out via phone, text, or email to find out what was transpiring with the student, are they planning on transferrring? Was there a “Hold” on their account preventing them from registering? Or was it just procrastination? This initiative was birthed by Dr. Andrew Hsu, Vice Provost and Executive Vice President for Student Affairs who oversees Dr. Brian Ashburner (Vice Provost For Student Affairs) who in turn is over Dr. Fischer-Kinney. For three weeks the Success Coaches worked didligently to reduce these students from close to 1,000 down to about 150 unregistred students mostly whom rpocratenated or hade to clear a financial hold before registering for Fall. Being a retention focused unit, this is just one of the many retention efforts we will embark on any given semester. This was an example of how Bollman and Deal talked about how “Successful Organizations employ a variety of methods to coordinate individual and group efforts and to link local initiatives with systemwide goals. They do this in two ways vertically, through the formal chain of command, and laterally through meetings, committees, coordinationg roles, or network structures” (Bolman and Deal, p.51).

Among the many functions of our duties, a Success Coach’s primary responsibility is student success and retention.
We set up regular meetings with students who connect with us and a coach has to be able to work with students with a wide variety of issues ranging from academic, to personal or financial. This means that a Success Coach must have the ability to communicate with faculty, advisors, or any office for the benefit of our students. Therefore a Success Coach Needs to be a collaborator or what Bollman and Deal describe a role coordinator, “These individuals or groups are boundary-spanners with diplomatic status who are artful in dealing across specialized turfs….spending much of the day pulling together functions essential to a prodcuts success” (Bolman and Deal, p. 55) or in other words student
success!