Dr. Jasso  00:02
And then you said live transcript right? Okay, I think that took care of that.

Claudia Sanchez  00:16
Okay, thank you. Thank you so much. Me show. Okay, that fellow I'm Claudia Sanchez, I am working on the Journal of the plague year exhibit. And our specific subsection is called the hashtag cover your fangs. And the goal of this project is to showcase the St. Mary's experience during the pandemic. And my group's particular focus is on looking at student support services that were provided to students. And as such, my first idea was to interview the office of student retention. So I just have a couple of questions for you guys. Okay, so our first one is, so what kind of what does the office student retention do?

Dr. Jasso  01:15
We both look at each other. I'll start off. So I'm Dr. Jasso. I'm the director of the Retention Center. And we do a couple different things. So I know during the pandemic, one of the biggest things we did, we do have a laptop loaner program for a long time loners. We also have a family engagement program. So we help families that maybe have questions. I know, during the pandemic, that was one of the biggest things or we had parents maybe had questions for other departments, but they primarily send the questions over to us. And then we make sure to give them the answer. That way, they feel more comfortable, because many of our parents are not here in San Antonio. And so we're able to tell them exactly what's going on in San Antonio, our office also helps with student withdraws, or student transfers or cancellation. So students that you know might have needed to take the semester off to to the pandemic. So helping them make sure that when they come back that they're good, making sure that when when they withdraw that they go through the whole process to make sure that they are in good standing when they come back. Charity is there anything I left out.

Charity Brown-Miller  02:26
So, I guess the other thing we helped manage is the rattler navigate program. So we help with that as kind of like the onboarding of new faculty and staff members so that they can be trained and know how to use that program, we helped with the implementation initially, of getting some of the different departments on board. So rattler navigate is kind of a two part system, where there's a student app and kind of like a facing system for just the students. And then there's a faculty staff side as well, where they can, as they schedule students schedule meetings with them, they can record notes, they can keep track of interactions, and just kind of have a, a way to communicate with students a little bit easier through either texting or email messaging in bulk to different groups of students. And so there's some functionality there that really helped during the pandemic. And that advising was one of the offices that first kind of got on board along with retention and financial aid. So one of the things that was really nice about us being able to launch this program at the same time as things starting to go a little bit more remotely, was that it allowed us to share like zoom links with the scheduling functionality of the meeting. So really enabled and made things more efficient as we were trying to transition office work and meeting with students in a digital format. And so it just kind of helps us as offices communicate with each other and collaborate more to so because we can see different off who the different students are meeting with from different offices. So it also like for my office, if someone comes to meet with me thinking about that they're gonna maybe not be able to return to St. Mary's because of finances. I always want to make sure that they've talked with financial aid before they we actually process them out. Make sure there's nothing else we can do for them financially or make sure that if there is you know, maybe they have really good grades, and maybe we can help them supplement with the different scholarship or different things like that. We can kind of explore that. And so rattler navigator allows us one to see if they have scheduled an appointment with the financial aid recently, and to if they haven't, we can actually help facilitate them getting that appointment made which is really nice. And then I can see notes on as a staff member about that meeting and kind of have a follow up conversation with the students about what's going on and how I might be able to help them with that connect with other resources too. So and then the same thing students may want to do have taken a leave of absence for different reasons. So we facilitate that with our registrar's office. And there's a form that students can fill out. But it's nice to have them come talk to our office first, because if they just leave, and they don't, they just maybe don't sign up for classes, they don't fill out a leave of absence form to be able to come back to St. Mary's after taking a break, they then have to reapply, and it's a little bit more cumbersome. Whereas if we can kind of catch the student, when they're making the decision about whether they need to stay or go or take a break, we can help them understand the full implications of leaving for her financial wise, as well as how to come back it with the least amount of work and, and obstacles kind of in place.

Claudia Sanchez  06:06
That sounds great. I've actually used rattling navigate before too. And I really enjoyed it makes it so much easier for the student to schedule appointments and meetings. So that's a service that I've used that I really enjoyed. Have you seen more students since the pandemic started?

Charity Brown-Miller  06:25
So funny story for Sonia and I, Dr. Jasso night is that we both kind of started in full time in this role only a few months before in our roles and retention a few months before the pandemic started. So it's hard for us to really quantify if there was an increase or not as far as like, how many students were actually coming through. But I would say we have a steady stream of students that come see us for various reasons. Throughout the pandemic, so.

Claudia Sanchez  06:58
What type of students are you seeing primarily enter your office like freshmen, sophomores or upperclassmen?

Charity Brown-Miller  07:06
I  would say we see the majority, probably first and second year students that are coming just because generally, they know less about the resources. And they're getting referred a lot more often to our office through our referral system that navigate also has their work from like their first year seminar professors or their advisors, things like that, because they're just have more touch points with various offices already. By junior and senior year, students usually know how to navigate, I would say more of the offices on their own without having to come talk to us about things as much but doesn't mean that they don't get referred or they don't need us. But probably if you're looking at at numbers between the two to kind of groups earlier on in their time at St. Mary's is when we have more touch points as students, I would say.

Claudia Sanchez  07:58
And what kind of issues are students concerned about that they meet with you.

Charity Brown-Miller  08:04
Finances is a big one, I would say, you know, there, they get referred to us when they're thinking about not returning because of finances or because they haven't made maybe been able to make their payments. And we're they we want to touch base with them because they have a hold on their account do to to, you know, business office kind of like hold based on like they're trying to register, but that they can't because they have that. So we'll we'll talk with them about some options, give them some other financial resources they may not have heard about before. And then be able to also, like I said, help facilitate that conversation with financial aid as needed to other things we get referred to students referred to us a lot for our academic kind of concerns for upperclassmen, when maybe they haven't been attending, or their professors concern that they are not as engaged in the class as much. And they just want to make sure that there's not something else going on with the student that, you know, needs some special attention. So sometimes, you know, it was within the pandemic, people were getting sick, family members are getting sick, there are different things that were going on. And so we would just try and make contact with the student because sometimes they maybe weren't checking their emails or things like that. So we'll text or phone call students from our office to try and connect with them as an additional resource that any faculty don't have time to utilize or don't don't know how to utilize as easily. So we'll do that as well.

Claudia Sanchez  09:38
Are there any new updates that the office of student retention has had to do because of the pandemic in the way that you meet with students?

Dr. Jasso  09:49
Maybe not in the way we meet with students. I know one of the things that came out because of the pandemic was the reorientation. So there was the fall 2020 students that, of course, would have had the orientation fall 2020. And then they were brought here to campus fall 2021. When, you know, Charity, myself, financial aid, register's office and student life really got together and decided that they needed more, they needed a little bit more than just, you know, coming to class, because even though most of them were already sophomores, they hadn't spent any time on campus and weren't really familiar with some of the resources here on campus. So that is something that changed. We've never had a what would which is really considered like a sophomore orientation. But that was definitely a change that took place because of the pandemic.

Claudia Sanchez  10:45
Wow. Is it just generally, is there any advice that you would like to give to students?

Dr. Jasso  10:52
I know on my end, it's, it's really just reach out to us. I know, we get students, we talk to students on different occasions. I know on my end, I do deal with more of juniors and seniors that maybe are having trouble with their path, their last semesters. And so just reaching out to us, it's one of the biggest things that I tell parents, to have their student really reach out to us because we can at least direct them to where they need to go. Before it becomes always say, like really early intervention. So we can talk to the student, the first couple weeks of classes, or know that there's an issue, we're able to help out a lot more.

Charity Brown-Miller  11:31
I think I'd say for for me, if you're struggling in some way for student, like come ask for help like us and advisor, we want to help we want to make sure you're not going through any issue alone, and that you know about all the resources that are available. And that we as a community want to see our students, you know, supported and graduated, and so and so go on to have successful careers and everything. And so anything we can do to help get them to that point in their life and kind of overcome some of the obstacles that can have been presented in the pandemic, but just in general, as a college student things that come up, we want to make sure that they they know that as a community we can help and we want, we're looking for ways to help them too.

Claudia Sanchez  12:25
That's great. Thank you so much. That concludes all of my questions, if there's anything else you would like to add. If not, that's fine. If you could please fill out the consent form and just confirm that you've done it. Also, is there any way that I can have access to this record?


Transcribed by https://otter.ai