Cultivating leadership, success for faculty and students

The Texas A&M College of Agriculture and Life Sciences is participating in the university Faculty Aspiring Leadership Program to create a faculty-student success initiative aimed at supporting students in their second semester at the university. 

The Faculty Aspiring Leadership project builds on the AGLS 125 Life Sciences Learning Community 1 course, which most of the College’s freshmen take in the fall as their Hullabloo U first-year experience course. Initially, the project will select a small cohort of students to receive the additional support, with the hope of scaling the project in subsequent years.

Starting with faculty leaders

Craig Coates, Ph.D., associate dean for programmatic success, said the project’s long-term goal is to provide continuous support to students in the spring semester of their freshman year. 

Serving as project mentors are Coates; Jenna Kurten, Ph.D., assistant dean for student success; and Patricia Klein, Ph.D., executive associate dean. 

A selected program fellow from a pool of applicants within the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences will lead the project, serving a nine-month appointment. The initial fellow leader is Lauren Coheley, Ph.D., associate department head for undergraduate programs and instructional assistant professor in the Department of Nutrition. Coheley will be conducting general assessments of departmental and university support for students. 

“This piece of the program allows faculty members the opportunity to gain experience on the administrative side of life,” Coates said. “The fellow comes to dean’s meetings and department head council meetings, gaining valuable administrative experience and taking part in other mentoring opportunities within the College and University.”

Coates said the selected fellow also receives funding to participate in professional development and leadership programs on campus and at other institutions. The College provides funds to cover teaching replacement costs as well as matching professional development funds.

Developing the program

Coheley said she will be conducting evaluations throughout this fall with implementation targeted for the spring semester.

“I’ll be developing a set of metrics we want to work toward, ensuring that we provide the best possible way to support students and help them reach their goals,” she said. “We want to help those students target and identify the areas they are struggling in.”

Coheley said the idea is to develop a “community” among students and faculty in classes where they might feel isolated.

“Knowing they have a community they can turn to really helps,” she said. “It’s more than just connecting beyond the classroom. For many of our students without strong support networks at home, a community can help them since they may not have family members to lean on who have been through the college experience previously.”

Workshops and other activities will complement an individual development plan for the students, Coheley said.

Empowering and nurturing future leaders

Coheley will also be conducting general assessments of departmental and university support for incoming students. Students in the science, technology, education and math, STEM, fields are taking challenging coursework in technical subject areas. 

“We may find out that we can provide supplemental instructors, tutors or other things that they are not getting,” Coates said. “Outside of the challenges that come with transitioning to college, we may recognize some other part of their toolbox for success may be missing like writing skills, math knowledge or laboratory experience.

“Dr. Coheley will be doing an assessment of what students are facing as many are taking the second part of those challenging courses.” 

A support program would help bolster those students who are taking math, biology and chemistry and include an early warning system. 

“These reports are sent to academic advisers where we might have a subset of students not doing well in classes,” Coates said. “Those will be identified as needing additional support and developed into a cohort.”

Coates said the challenge is reaching as many students as possible who need extra help.

“We will put an action plan in place for the spring semester as a pilot program,” he said. 

“One of the challenges is scale,” he said. “We want to make sure this program can be scalable to support the full College. Therefore, we need to be careful in thinking about what’s going to work and help the largest number of students that need support.” 

The development of a College-wide plan will be part of the program.

“I think this is a great pilot program because it has such a student-centered focus,” Coheley said. “It will be exciting to see how a student-centered program impacts their experience and beyond.”