Do you want to know how to improve the completion rate in your classes? Do you know the indicators you should be looking for in your student's behavior that signal potential academic problems? How much do personal problems play in creating impediments for our students? Did you know that there is a large resource of data-driven information on retention? All of these questions and more will be addressed at the next Lunch+Learn event to be held on March 19 at noon in 108 Setzer Center. Dr. Sherri Shoefstall will be facilitating an open discussion designed to uncover your unmet needs. Join us so that we can craft a workshop planned for April that will address your immediate needs in this important area. LU is focused on improving our retention rates but we need everyone to help with this effort. Registration is open and this is an approved faculty development event. Dr. Christy Price's visit last week was a huge success. Not only were the workshops well attended but the conversations have continued even during Spring Break week. If you were unable to attend either or both workshops, you can still reap some benefits as Dr. Price has provided her presentations to us. If you are interested in receiving a copy, please contact a member of the CT+LE staff. Upon your return next week, you will be receiving an email announcing that the application period is open to apply to teach the University Success Seminar (LMAR 1101) to be offered in Fall 2012. This announcement will be followed closely by information sessions so that all of your questions can be answered. We are looking for student-centered teachers who are committed to using active learning methods to enhance student learning. This foundational class is a cornerstone piece to the retention efforts at LU. Matthew Kahn is the first to admit his blog post was poorly crafted, insufficiently researched and offensive. The University of California at Los Angeles economics professor suggested on his personal blog that UCLA’s transfer students were often less committed to the institution than their peers who spent four years in Westwood. He added that the university should admit more of those students as 18-year-olds instead of sending them to two-year colleges where academics might be a “watering down" of UCLA coursework. Before long, the article had spread back to California and drawn the ire of administrators and transfer students – who make up 40 percent of each UCLA entering class and 30 percent of the student body. The issue is particularly fraught with tension in California because the state lacks enough room in its universities and as a matter of policy expects many who will graduate from four-year institutions to start at community colleges. Kahn -- who insists he likes transfer students and wants them to take his environmental economics courses – has started a national conversation about whether faculty are biased against transfers and whether students who spend up to half their undergraduate careers at community colleges can learn as much as their fellow students who spend four years at a university. What if the Federal Government decided to reward university teaching in the same way that it now chooses to reward research? Kiernan Mathews says that there is incongruity in the current reward structure, namely that foundations, policymakers, and executive officers are advocating a reform agenda that requires faculty to be more committed to better teaching, advising, counseling, and assessment. "Yet all of the impulses in the academy’s DNA are driving faculty and the institutions they serve away from teaching and into ever more grant-seeking and research activities," he says.