Talking Stick - March/April 2012 - 33

(Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education) conference a few years back, where she learned about a program called MAP (Making Achievement Possible)-Works, which involves high levels of faculty collaboration with residence life and students, to the point where faculty members are encouraged to change their behaviors and strategies based on the results of a student inventory submitted early in the year. The results generated highlight specific needs for each student, meaning that certain professionals can work with students whose responses indicate a need for social intervention, while others can work with students whose academic responses raised some red flags. “We were looking for an organized way to help students help themselves, help us identify and work with the students most at risk early in the semester, and track the interactions,” says Arthur. “MAP-Works enables us to identify students most at risk of leaving the university very early in the first semester and provides us with information the students supply themselves, which helps to jump-start conversations geared toward helping the students get back on track.” If there is any common thread that might be considered essential to the development process, it is departmental collaboration. While both Arthur’s and Jacques’ programs originated within their respective residence life departments, they both became a reality through consultations with higher offices or connections with other institutional organizations.

the program under close scrutiny as it was put into place. At Iowa State, Arthur has been using MAP-Works for four years now. The program is presented to the freshman population during the third week of their first semester; marketing materials are disseminated at table tents in the dining halls and via posters and social media such as Facebook. Arthur’s version of MAPWorks begins with a student inventory that is distributed on each floor of each residence hall, with prizes offered to floors with an inventory completion rate of 85 percent or higher. These inventories are used to identify student

concerns and perceptions regarding a variety of subjects, including academics, social interactions, homesickness, and communication scales. The results generated by these inventories allow faculty and residence life professionals involved in MAPWorks to offer customized content and to decide what to focus on each year, making it a very malleable program. Multiple faculty members and entire departments are tied into the program, offering localized academic help to students within the residence halls. It has taken four years for the program to reach this point. In the first year,

After Before

n On Site n No Downtime n Refinishing n Upholstery n Touch Textiles© n 10-20 Rooms per Day n Sustainable

Before After

Putting It into Action
Once a program is developed, connections between departments are made, plans for action are agreed upon, and then it must be brought to the student population for implementation. For the professionals profiled here, implementation was a gradual process that stretched across one entire school year, a process that involved further reaching out to other university departments and keeping

1.800.523.9448 www.therefinishingtouch.com sales@therefinishingtouch.com
march + april 2012

33
http://www.therefinishingtouch.com http://www.therefinishingtouch.com
Talking Stick - March/April 2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Talking Stick - March/April 2012
