f. Standard Five – Students

The number of students served by Wesleyan’s curricular and co-curricular programs has remained much the same over the past five years: some 2,900 undergraduates and 200 graduate students (this does not include some 200 students in the Graduate Liberal Studies Program). Student culture remains a source of pride.

The Offices of Admission and Financial Aid have continued to bring to campus undergraduates who have a high probability of succeeding in Wesleyan’s rigorous academic environment and contributing to a creative and active campus life. We have certainly succeeded in parts of our plan to increase the size, quality and diversity (including geographical) of the applicant pool. This plan was already on the minds of our Admissions staff when they recruited and constructed the class of 2014, selecting from an applicant pool 6% higher than it was in the year before – that on top of the 22% increase the previous year. With a total of 10,657 applications, the selectivity rate for the 2014 class was 20.5%. The class of 2020 was selected from 12,030 applicants, a selectivity rate of 17.7% — the most selective year in Wesleyan history (update with class of 2021 info later this spring). Over the course of this time, the diversity of the application pool—as measured by the percent of self-identified students of color—has stayed essentially the same as the pool has grown. With respect to geographical diversity in the United States, 2016 applicants from the West (a total of 2,319) represented an increase of 15% over 2010); those from the South in 2016 numbered 806, a 6% increase in that same time frame. With respect to the international applicant pool, our efforts to expand this pool have resulted in its nearly doubling from 1,242 applications in 2010 to 2,258 this year, which was more or less our goal.

In the spring of 2012 President Roth introduced an initiative that changed Wesleyan’s approach to financial aid. The initiative established a “discount rate” that is as generous as possible and also one Wesleyan can afford. The Admission Office does consider the capacity of some students to pay, as was historically the case with transfer and international students. As anticipated, roughly 90% of each class has continued to be admitted on a need-blind basis, and just under a third of the university’s tuition charges now go to financial aid. The percentage of incoming first-year students receiving a Pell grant grew during the first years of this initiative, from 15% in FY14 to 22% in FY16. However, we lost these gains in FY17 as the Pell number returned to 15%. Wesleyan has remained committed to meeting the full demonstrated financial need of admitted students without increasing required student indebtedness. Wesleyan expects to build a more generous and sustainable financial aid program over time by raising more funds for the portion of the endowment devoted to financial aid, while in addition using other endowment funds strategically to keep future tuition increases from becoming outsized

The past five years have seen changes in how Student Affairs provides services and learning opportunities that support students’ work in the classroom and enrich their lives outside it. Resident Advisors (RAs) continue to create activities for their students and build community, but where this used to be their primary duty, now their primary charge is to meet one on one with each of their students student on a monthly basis. These monthly conversations address the specific learning objectives of Student Affairs (fostering critical thinking, effective citizenship, diversity, self-empowerment and life skills, effective communication, and Title IX compliance) and provide an opportunity for each student to reflect on their accomplishments as well as brainstorm opportunities for future growth. Survey data shows that students continue to express satisfaction with their relationships to their RAs — this despite the fact that RAs have also become more active in addressing policy violations, which naturally creates tension.

In principle, Program Housing creates communities among upperclassmen based upon shared interests, but the actual programming in these theme houses has been haphazard. Student Affairs has been considering how to incentivize making that programming more robust. Although the faculty fellows program embedding faculty in the dorms has not proved as successful as hoped, Student Affairs continues to develop plans to be intentional about using faculty in co-curricular learning. “Residential College” and Learning & Living Seminars are both experiments that contained promising elements. In the coming year, Student Affairs will partner with Academic Affairs in developing a proposal for one or more hybrid faculty positions that would have both teaching and co-curricular responsibilities.

Although Student Affairs had for many years incorporated common reading assignments into the new student orientation program, it moved last year to a single common text for the entire class in an effort to reinforce a common threshold experience. The choice of book (The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration the Age of Colorblindness) proved to be a great success, leading in November to five student workshops and a staff workshop on themes related to the role of the criminal justice system in the devastation of Black America.

Supervisory responsibility for Public Safety, which had experienced a number of difficult interactions with students and lost their confidence, was moved to Student Affairs from Finance and Administration. Since then, a new director has been hired, the office has been re-branded (including a new mission statement, uniforms and logo), and there is renewed focus on relationship-building/community-policing. Public Safety has become much more proactive in terms of sharing information, collecting feedback from constituents, proactively addressing safety and security issues, and making policies more transparent. It has implemented a dedicated dispatch function and is currently in the process of upgrading technology (computerized reporting systems, cameras, card access systems, etc.). Margolis Healy conducted an external review of the office, and most of its recommendations have now been implemented.

Residential fraternities have been a part of student life here for decades, and at the time of our last accreditation the one fraternity refusing to join the program housing system had finally agreed to do so. The expectation was that this would allow for clearer and more consistent expectations regarding Greek life at Wesleyan. However, it was not long before the situation deteriorated. Poor student behavior at Psi U and Beta led to their closure — with the Beta national revoking the Wesleyan chapter. DKE was closed due to its failure to comply with a 2015 mandate to co-educate and decided to pursue a lawsuit against the university. Psi U, which did choose to co-educate, reopened fall 2016. The turmoil surrounding the residential fraternities has had a number of effects over the past years. One has been the reduction of large “party spaces” available to students. Through funds directed through the WSA, the university has attempted to help students fulfill these social functions in other ways, but it remains an open question whether the size and character of these spaces can or should be replicated.

The past five years have seen significant work at the University on Title IX compliance and sexual violence prevention. Over the past five years, nearly all faculty and staff have undergone a two-hour Title VII/Title IX workshop. Incidents of sexual misconduct reported to the University jumped from 1 in 2012 and 17 in 2013 to 44 in 2014, then dropping to 17 in 2015 and 21 in 2016. The University continues to work to improve our support for survivors, as well as improving our reporting and adjudication procedures. In October 2016, however, it became public that an Associate Dean of Student Affairs had been terminated over the summer for failing to disclose the fact that he had previously been fired for grossly inappropriate behavior — leading to an outcry among students (see Standard 9). This spring the Victim Rights Law Center delivered a comprehensive report on how our Title IX policies and practices have been affecting students, faculty, and staff. It is clear we have work to do to ensure that staff roles are appropriate and clear and that our policies and procedures are better understood. Specific recommendations for building trust in our staff and reducing complexity are being considered by appropriate committees.

The work of the Making Excellence Inclusive initiative – designed to promote discussion and action around bias, prejudice, and privilege – transitioned into that of the President’s Equity Task Force. Its recommendations for next steps in promoting equity and inclusion included the creation of a Resource Center, scheduled to open in Fall 2017, and even more attention and resources devoted to the recruitment and retention of diverse faculty and staff. Charged with overseeing the implementation of these (and other) recommendations is the newly formed Equity & Inclusion Steering Committee comprised of students, staff, faculty, and board of trustee members. Fostering equity and inclusion on campus will be helped a newly created staff position, Dean for Equity & Inclusion, just filled by someone with extensive experience in anti-bias education in and out of the classroom.

Class deans have been using the Learning and Study Skills Inventory (LASSI) survey with students having academic difficulty (i.e. on academic discipline) over the past several years. Although the instrument was useful in generating discussion between the student and the class dean, the utility of the tool in improving students’ academic performance was not clear. The class deans are now studying the demographics, characteristics and circumstances of students on academic discipline as well as the interventions needed to support students’ move from an academic discipline status to “good standing.”

The Office of Student Academic Resources has been expanded over the past few years to meet the growing demands from students with physical, psychiatric, and learning disabilities. The dean overseeing this office is a national expert on accommodations for students with food allergies and has collaborated with our dining services to implement the national FARE standards on our campus. Over the past year, peer tutoring services have almost doubled – from 230 students matched with a peer tutor in 2015-2016 up to 399 students matched with a peer tutor in 2016-2017 to date (update # this spring). In recent years, the office has also received requests from a growing number of students seeking permission to have emotional support animals on campus. To manage the growing need for accommodations at the broader campus-wide level, an institutional committee on accessibility was formed in summer 2016 to oversee continuing improvements in accessibility for students, as well as faculty and staff.

Over the past five years student demands on Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) have continued to grow. The team has expanded, and we’ve diversified the staff with recent hires. Half of the full-time staff are therapists of color, and there is now a strong LGBTQ representation as well. Although individual therapy continues to occupy the vast majority of their time, the team has embraced a community mental health model and does much more outreach and education than in the past. CAPS now actively participates in the Students At Risk Committee and conducts threat assessments when necessary.

Usage rates of alcohol and illegal drugs, with the exception of marijuana use, have remained consistent with those of our NESCAC peers (according to the biennial NESCAC AOD survey). After eleven students were sickened in February 2015 from a substance believed to be “Molly,” we formed an Illegal Drug Task Force to see what steps the university should take. The task force found most promise in one-on-one counseling and brief motivational interventions as well as support for students who are in recovery and for those choosing not to use in an atmosphere in which peer pressure often leads to alcohol and drug use. Wesleyan’s director of health education does some of this work currently, but capacity is limited as she is the only person in her office. Recommendations include increasing the availability of Brief Motivational Intervention sessions for Marijuana through WesWell and contracting local therapists to provide individual and group level treatment for substance abuse. This fall we will pilot a partnership with ProtoCall, a contractor who provides direct remote access to certified therapists during hours when CAPS is closed and/or when our “in house” therapists are unavailable. The task force also recommended expanding the Bystander Intervention program (equipping students with the skills to step in and stop risky and harmful behaviors) to include other drugs, creating a social norms marketing campaign to correct misperceptions of drug use at Wesleyan, and increasing awareness among students of the possible judicial and or legal consequences of alcohol and drug abuse. A $4.2M gift in the This is Why campaign provided us with resources to hire a new alcohol and drug educator in WesWell. While survey data from the Class of 2019 indicated a drop in high-risk alcohol and illegal drug use, we will study data from the incoming classes to determine if 2019 was the beginning of a trend or an errant data point.

Graduate Student Services has been gathering data from students via exit interviews and using these data to improve both student experience and outcomes. For example, the information garnered in these interviews, along with the realization that some students needed additional time to complete their research and thesis, has led the office to implement new orientation and support programs. Additionally, academic support (especially writing support for students working on thesis projects), and career workshops have been introduced based on student feedback. Academic Affairs developed an exit survey that will provide useful data on these and other issues in future years.

It’s easy to be proud of what Wesleyan sports teams have achieved in recent years, including NESCAC championships in softball, lacrosse, football, baseball and basketball. In 2012-2013, four of our athletes won NESCAC player-of the-year honors, exceeding the university’s total in all prior years; and there have been six more since. Having achieved success in the high-profile mens sports, the Athletics department will be devoting increased attention to womens teams, which so far have not enjoyed the success achieved by the men. That said, the past two years have seen back-to-back women’s singles national NCAA tennis championships, and last fall the womens crew won first place at the head of the Charles Regatta. The Athletics department is conducting an internal self-study this spring in preparation for an external review next fall.

“Develop civic engagement opportunities across the university” is a strategy in Wesleyan 2020, and this has been pursued with much success through the creation of the Patricelli Center for Social Entrepreneurship (dedicated to supporting students and alumni who create programs, businesses, and organizations that advance the good of the world) and the Jewett Center for Community Partnerships (which now contains the Office of Community Service and Volunteerism, the Green Street Teaching and Learning Center, the Center for Prison Education, and WESU 88.1FM.) Both of these are housed within the Allbritton Center, which serves as the hub of civic engagement here and provides students the opportunity to reflect upon their civic activities and integrate them with their academic work. All together, these programs have changed the nature of the institution, adding structure to make the most of good intentions.