Anthony Shields-Fiffe, a student and football player at Fayetteville State University, took classes on campus over the summer and earned six credits. The university paid for his class tuition, room and board.
“It helped me because they allowed me to live on campus and do my classes,” he said. “It really helped out with some of the events that they had.”
Shields-Fiffe said the program was very fun and helped with his grades: “That was a good experience.”
Education news:Fayetteville State chancellor looks to go big with new summer program to boost graduation rates
FSU’s 30-60-90 summer school seeks to boost retention rates and keep students on the path to graduation.
Shields-Fiffe is a sophomore and graduate of Jack Britt High School in Fayetteville. He is majoring in social work at FSU.
For him, the summer program not only helped him stay on course for graduation, but gave him a chance to do additional workouts for the team while on campus. There were also events he attended to brush up on skills he’d need in college and after graduation.
“I went to one of the events where it was showing us how to be professional,” he says.
The 30-60-90 summer school launched in April and refers to the minimum number of credits students need to obtain each academic year to stay on track to receive a diploma. The university is using federal relief funds related to COVID-19 to cover the cost of 30-60-90 and other retention initiatives.
Chancellor Darrell Allison said in April the goal of the summer program is to make the offer so appealing, students cannot say no.
“The students that fall behind out of the gate, it’s hard, very, very hard,” he said back then.
In an interview last Wednesday, Allison said 30-60-90 was off to a promising start. He said the summer program is set up to where full tuition, room and board are covered for the next two years. Going forward, tuition will still be covered at minimum, up to nine credits.
“The key for us is maximizing that opportunity for the students that populate this campus, and really knowing who Fayetteville State University is today,” he said.
He noted the school’s past as a historically Black school and the second-oldest public school in the UNC system.
“We’re an HBCU in 1867, we’re an HBCU in 2021,” he said. “But we’re very different today — but I think for the better.”
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He said the university is 80% rural-county students, nearly 30% military and “we’re the leader in the UNC system for adult learners, nearly 50%.”
Allison added: “We’re an HBCU and more.”
He says that for nontraditional students, adult learners included, many don’t have a lot of time for extracurriculars and want to “get it and go” when it comes to a diploma. Many adult learners participate in the summer program, he says. About 1,400 students total attended classes on campus over the summer.
Allison said FSU had recently gotten numbers on retention; they illustrate the challenges that remain, showing hundreds of students not where they need to be in terms of credits.
The summer program is not the only way the school is looking to help. In July, the school announced it had cleared $1.6 million in student debt, using pandemic funds for any student carrying a past due balance during the pandemic. As a result, 1,442 students entered the fall class debt-free, according to a news release.
The university has nearly doubled the number of academic advisors and is also planning a Bronco “one-stop” operation in the Charles W. Chesnutt Library. It will serve as a place where students can get help with any logistical or other challenges they face in their academic careers. The one-stop is meant to cover “everything you need to know as a student,” Allison says.
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The university has a category of students called “stop-outs” — who for reasons not well-understood stop attending.
“They didn’t register,” Allison said. “Whether it’s advising, or maybe somewhere in that period of time we could have caught them, redirected them and got them back on track.”
He said conversations he had with student leaders showed a need for more advisers and improved communications between students and advisors. Even these highly motivated students found themselves frustrated.
“We cannot be a traditional-minded institution, like we were in 1980, 1990,” Allison said. “We’re not that anymore. Then on top of that — coronavirus. It’s just a different game.”
As for Shields-Fiffe, he is sold on the summer program. He says he would recommend it to any student who wants to catch up.
He said if not for the program, he would have tried to add classes to his fall load — a difficult proposition with football also on his schedule (the Broncos will compete later this month for the CIAA Championship in Salem, Virginia.)
“It really helped me with that,” he said.
Opinion Editor Myron B. Pitts can be reached at [email protected] or 910-486-3559.
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