Since its founding in 2007, the School of Nursing at SUNY Empire State College (ESC) serves students who are non-traditional, transfer, and pursuing their degree fully online. Over the past 12 years, the school has expanded into the School of Nursing and Allied Health and now offers four degree programs: RN to BSN, BS in Allied Health, MS in Nursing Administration, and MS in Nursing Education.

The RN to BSN is an online completion program for Registered Nurses (RN) licensed in New York State who seek to earn a Bachelor of Science in Nursing. Each student in the RN to BSN program is assigned a mentor who supports the student in designing his or her degree program plan, identifying opportunities to earn credit through prior learning, and rising to meet academic challenges.

All students entering the RN to BSN program are transfer students, having previously earned an associate degree or diploma in nursing. Many of these BSN students return to their college studies after many years, and most are working professionals. Often students experience a fully online college course for the first time when they begin their BSN studies.

The School of Nursing and Allied Health uses a centralized, supplementary advisement organizational system. Mentors in the RN to BSN program include full-time faculty, full-time professionals, and part-time, off-site professional staff. Nearly all advisement and mentoring activities take place at a distance and asynchronously. Mentor support and development is coordinated by department leadership and the full-time professional advisors, who create, maintain, and distribute materials to support mentor development and facilitate day-to-day mentoring activities.

Students are supported through their mentoring relationships, a required educational planning & transition to baccalaureate nursing course, a designated library liaison to the School of Nursing & Allied Health, and college-wide opportunities for face-to-face and online academic support.

SUNY Delhi has created a new access program to help support students who face struggles when it comes to their academic preparation. Through the use of intrusive advisement, new Starfish technology and a collaboration of multiple campus offices; we are providing support to under-prepared students to assist with a successful transition to college.

This presentation will briefly cover our implementation and collaboration processes, initial student outreach plan and observed successes up to this point.

The Nexus Center for Applied Learning & Career Development ("Nexus Center") at Farmingdale State College was recently awarded SUNY Professional Development Funding for the development of non-credit applied learning co-curricular activities. At FSC, the funds will support faculty and staff in developing and conducting institutionally approved co-curricular activities, including community service and civic engagement. These activities will create non-credit opportunities for students to engage in meaningful applied learning, that will also count towards the FSC Applied Learning Graduation Requirement effective fall 2019.

Through this "Ignite Session," we will invite other SUNY campuses to propose ideas for joint applied learning co-curricular activities which could be funded through the Nexus Center, specifically community service in 2020. This would allow campuses to collaborate on community service activities for students across multiple colleges.

During this Ignite Session, we will describe the necessary criteria for our students to earn graduation credit at FSC. We will invite interested campuses to propose ideas for collaborative community service activities. Considerations for joint collaborations include geographic proximity to FSC, although innovative ideas for joint service projects are welcome - for example, virtual or remote projects.

Campus representatives proposing joint events should be responsible for the supervision of their participating students and would work closely with the Nexus Center in hosting the event and promoting at their respective campuses. The Nexus Center may be able to cover the related costs for all participating students depending on the project scope.

This Ignite Session will provide an overview along with specific examples of opportunities colleges have to support students with disabilities. The session will share statistics regarding the growing numbers of students with disabilities (specifically Autism and mental health disorders) that are attending college. Using examples of universal design principles, the session will explore the shift in higher education toward a social model of disability, which focuses on disability as a diversity characteristic. The slides will provide examples of universal design principles that can be applied as colleges take a proactive approach toward supporting students with disabilities. Examples will address instructional delivery methods, instructional assessment methods, collaboration between disability services and college offices/departments, and professional development opportunities for faculty and staff related to students with disabilities.

Intended Audience: This ignite session is designed for applied learning practitioners who conduct – or who would like to conduct – applied learning research with a view to having their work published in JoSE.

JoSE is a new online, peer-reviewed academic journal dedicated to research into, and to the practice of, all forms of SUNY-approved applied learning as they relate to students’ career- and citizenship-readiness. Housed at SUNY Cortland but committed to developing SUNY-wide partnerships, JoSE’s inaugural issue will launch in June 2020.

Description: This ignite session will demonstrate JoSE’s benefits for SUNY faculty, students, administrators, and community partners. The session’s interactive approach will include a zip chat and a trifold pamphlet for interested individuals.

Goals: The participants in this ignite session will register their interest in submitting their work to JoSE for consideration, and/or register their interest in applying to serve as peer-reviewers or as contributing editors at JoSE. The session’s presenters will collect interested participants’ contact information for a listserve through which people can stay informed about JoSE-related CFPs and upcoming events.

Background: The Journal of the Scholarship of Engagement, JoSE, is a SUNY-sponsored, online peer-reviewed academic journal that addresses the currently unmet need of dedicated research by SUNY’s applied learning practitioners. JoSE distinguishes itself from other journals in that it focuses on relationships between SUNY-approved applied learning strategies and students’ readiness for careers and for citizenship.

Articles will explore, but are not limited to, the role of SUNY-approved applied learning in
• Assessment of student learning outcomes
• Assessment of applied learning faculty members’ professional development
• Contemporary and emerging issues, such as climate change, civic participation, and perceptions of public higher education
• Criticism and innovation in applied learning methodology, where methodology is understood to encompass both theory and practice
• The intersection of education, business, and government in the applied learning classroom
• Narratives about applied learning experiences
• Nurturing students’ leadership skills

JoSE incorporates a Research Feedback Loop, through which applied learning practitioners reflect on their use of strategies published in JoSE. JoSE also provides students with opportunities for mentored leadership in published research and in journal peer-review. It will be published in January and June.

In 2007, the School of Nursing at SUNY Empire State College (ESC) welcomed its first cohort of 40 RN-BSN online nursing students. With institutional commitment, the School of Nursing has transformed into the School of Nursing and Allied Health (SONAH), and offers four unique degree programs. In a mere 11 years, the SONAH has grown exponentially with over 1200 transfer students matriculated between the fully online programs. The expansion and sustainability of the programs can be credited to the department leaders, who have secured two SUNY Performance Improvement Fund grants as well as a SUNY High Needs grant.

In order to meet program and student needs, new faculty members along with adjuncts have been hired. SONAH leadership, faculty and full-time advisors are engaged in student success efforts through outreach efforts across the state. Seamless transfer into the program is enhanced by our dedication in obtaining 20+ community college partnerships. Most recently, the program has partnered with Ulster Community College to create a hybrid program of study. These efforts have resulted in increased enrollments, retention and completion rates. To meet the needs of an evolving healthcare labor market, the program works with transfer students from a variety of disciplines including nurses, radiologic technologists, dental hygienists, respiratory therapists, physical therapy assistants, occupational therapy assistants, massage therapists, medical assistants, surgical technologists, emergency medical technicians, and paramedics.

Student success is supported through institutional scholarship opportunities and application fee waivers. The SONAH programs promote effortless enrollment through transfer of community college and prior learning experience credits. A variety of academic technology tools are available support student success such as an online orientation, an online library, bookstore, Smart-Thinking tutoring service, peer tutoring, writing and math assistance and well as learning support study skills.

The mentoring model at Empire State College is unique, faculty and academic advisors create individualized mentor-student relationships to guide student success. All mentors work with students to clarify academic goals. Every student has access to a degree-planning tool which provides a visual record of transcript credit and courses needed for completion. The degree-auditing tool assists the mentor and student in understanding transcript credit, course completion sequencing, liberal designation, upper and lower division credits, concentration and general education requirements, ultimately ensuring all degree plan requirements are met.

As more faculty campus-wide are becoming interested in helping students develop their metacognitive and noncognitive skill sets in the context of content-area courses, we have developed materials from our many years of experience in teaching these very ideas to share with our colleagues. In addition to teaching study skills to a wide variety of students, we have experience in teaching in both supplemental instruction and co-requisite instruction models. The training we built for faculty helps elucidate the differences between and the relative benefits of each of these models and build a cache of strategies they can use to help their students succeed.

The decline in college students’ mental health is impossible to ignore. In 2018, a poll from the PEW Research Center reported that 70% of US teens see anxiety and depression as a major problem, greater than bullying, drug addiction, alcohol consumption, poverty, teen pregnancy and gang activity. The same report showed that of the pressures teens face, academic concerns were cited most often, greater than the pressure to look good or to fit in socially. Furthermore, the National Alliance on Mental Health (NAMI), reported that “37% of students with a mental health condition age 14 and older drop-out of school,” a staggering number that demands mental health be addressed as a retention best practice.

To address these concerns and “help students stay on path,” we created a crisis action guide to help faculty and advisors be better prepared to act as first responders in addressing the mental health crises within our transfer student population. Developed by targeted professional development workshops and our faculty-advisor led mental health committee, the guide is the product of “authentic engagement of college faculty and staff” to improve student success. In particular, the guide encourages an empathetic approach with every student and includes phrases to help faculty and advisors validate student concerns, referrals to appropriate local resources, as well as a quick reference to university protocol. Our goal in this presentation is to broaden the definition of factors that place a student “at risk” by acknowledging mental health and wellness, in addition to the economic and academic factors that influence student success.