Marian University's Mission for Students
A Case Study in Student Success, Retention & Culture Change
In 2012, Indianapolis’ Marian University was regionally recognized as a strong undergraduate institution. Yet President Daniel Elsener had his sights set on raising Marian’s profile not only in Indiana but across the country. Achieving that goal required improving its retention rate, which hovered around 70%. To do this, Marian turned to Credo’s Moving the Needle program—not once, but twice.
Following the first round of MTN, Marian increased its retention from 69% to 80% in just three years. Seeking to push that success even further, Marian engaged in another MTN partnership that resulted in an increase to 84% retention in 2021.
“Working with Credo was helpful in narrowing down the initiatives we would pursue and giving us permission to take things off our plate in order to focus on new initiatives that were considered the most impactful and valuable."
Jennifer Plumlee, Ed.D. Vice President for Access & Student Success at Marian University
KnightQuest, Clearance & The Business of Being a Student
One of the most significant initiatives to emerge from MTN was KnightQuest, a comprehensive approach to improving Marian’s clearance rate. KnightQuest features an online process and in-person “KnightQuest Days” to help students and families pay bills and complete necessary forms. Staff say KnightQuest is successful because it’s a full-campus initiative, not just something that comes out of the university’s business-related offices. Families report that they appreciate having such a clear process in place to help shepherd them through the business aspects of college.
Taking Time To OnBoard Families to Student Life: The First-Year Experience Done right
MTN modules also helped Marian review and revise its first-year experience programming. For orientation, Marian opted to move to a two-day program at a time when many peer institutions were limiting their orientations to just one day. Marian also enhanced its one-credit first-year experience course, previously taught only by faculty. Faculty, student affairs staff, and older-student mentors now share leadership of these classes. In Marian’s new orientation and first-year course structures, the focus is on helping students not only navigate college, but also find community and build connections on campus—key drivers of retention.
Moving The Needle On Student Outcomes With Data
Crucially, participating in MTN motivated Marian to make significant improvements in its data collection processes. The university was collecting some information, but not everything that they needed to form a comprehensive picture of student success at the university. What’s more, they were simply keeping the data, not applying it. During MTN, Marian established an Office of Institutional Research and hired a seasoned director whose work is vital to the university’s decision-making processes.
Here are some ongoing successes stemming out of the Moving The Needle partnership carried out by Marian's amazing on-campus talent:
- Relationships built between middle talent staff through MTN led to the creation of a co-curricular transcript—a resource Marian had sought to create for several years. The group developed the transcript using the Suitable student success platform, which can track institutional learning outcomes for coursework and co-curricular work. Marian piloted the transcripts with first-year students in 2022 and launched them to the full university community beginning in Fall 2023.
- Cross-divisional teams have worked for the past two years on improving Marian’s engagement with families. Focuses have included tracking how often parents engage with digital content, engaging family members more intentionally in the student experience, and measuring how family involvement can affect student outcomes.
- Student-athlete success was a frequent topic of discussion during Marian’s MTN partnerships, but at the time there was not staff able to own the work. Because of relationships built through MTN and other collaborations prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic response, some of the barriers that once existed have been removed, and Marian is renewing discussions about comprehensive student-athlete support.
“We all wanted things to be better, but we didn’t know how to make it happen. Credo and MTN set the conditions for us to discover ways to make it happen, and to act on them.”
Ruth Rodgers Vice President for Student Success and Engagement at Marian University
Today, Marian is fully realizing President Elsener’s vision, thanks to the central role student success plays in the university’s culture. “How does this impact our students?” is now among the first questions asked whenever a new initiative or program change is addressed. Marian leaders who have been at the university for the past decade plus, credit the MTN experience an inflection point for that transformation.