Progress 09/01/24 to 08/31/25

Outputs
Target Audience:The Target Audience is our student body, which approximately 1,300 students per year, 63% of whom are Alaska Native or Native American, and about 4% are Native Hawaiian. The students are primarily in the age range of 25-35, with the second largest group being traditional college age (18-24). This initiative is focused on providing wellness supports to all students, with a special focus on residential and traditional college-age students. Changes/Problems:The only major change that is pending as of the writing of this report is welcoming a new Project Director, Dr. Kristen Majocha, as our Dean of Students and this project manager. Dr. Hal Haynes, Jr., the former Project Director, retired on July 1, 2025. Dr. Majocha is working closely with staff who have been working on the Equity project for years to get onboarded, and she is versed in the goals of this project. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Staff associated with this project have engaged in both local (webinar and on-site trainings) and national (conference) professional development. While not all funding was via this project (ANNH), the knowledge gained was applied to the implementation of our project's goals and objectives. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?llisagvik College has reported results to communities of interest via our Annual Report, which goes out each January (reflecting back on the previous academic year). Our next Annual Report will go out in December or January and include a full report of wellness activities, including workshops and events. Additionally, the Institutional Research Report for the last year (reflecting this report's data), will also be published to Ilisagvik College's website in August 2025. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?We will continue to offer robust Student Services through our First Year Pathway program, SMARTS, and our Wellness Center for students. We want to expand on the types and number of wellness offerings, and collaborate more with partners to provide more comprehensive services and outreach. This project is on track for success. We will also engage in more pre-college, prospective student, and youth outreach via pre-college programming (summer camps, workshops) in summer 2026 with the supplemental funding that is being provided via NIFA.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? The most recent retention and persistence rates are: 46% retention rate (Fall 2023 to Fall 2024), and 67% persistence rate (Fall 2024 to Spring 2025). We are very close to our persistence goal of 68%, and within range of our rentetion rate (though the progress has a been a bit slower there). Our graduation rate vacillates fairly wildly due to the small cohorts of students we enroll. We are currently at a 27% four-year graduation rate and 32% six-year graduation rate, so there is room for improvement with this metric. Ilisagvik College did see some promising trends with our First Year Pathway students who are part of the SMARTS program, an "intrusive" mentoring and advising program that helps students enter and persist in College. Between Fall 2024 and Spring 2025, 80% of the residential students in the First Year Pathways program persisted and returned to the dorm and for classes. This is higher than the institutional rate of 67% and illustrates that the holistic mentoring/advising that SMARTS engages in has a positive effect. The First Year Pathway program was designed to help new first year residential students transition from high school to college. The FYP cohort will have an opportunity to attend set schedule of classes, a chance to be in a team of students learning together and get holistic mentoring and resources designed especially for students during their first full-time year at Ilisagvik College. The Student Success Manager at Ilisagvik College reports that the Student Services department worked with a grand total of 257 students in a variety of ways: Accuplacer test administration, Accommodation Requests, First Year Pathway cohort and completed student admissions. The total number of students who have taken the Accuplacer for AY 2024-2025, was 77 students and the total Accuplacer Test UNITS administered for the same academic year was 188. Regarding holistic wellness outreach services and workshops, the Student Success Manager and Wellness Specialist spear headed several student and community programming to help meet the holistic needs of the student population at Ilisagvik College. The following information provides a summary of the academic 2024-2025 year: Total # of Wellness and Educational Activities for FALL 2024: 11 Total # of Student Participants in all activities: 124 Walking Wednesday (8/14/24) Game Nights (10/12/24) - Mario Kart Tournament and Pool Noodle Activity - Movie Night (10/11/24) RA Dinner (10/18/24) Yoga (9/11/24) Painting Night - Arts and Crafts night for students where they painted and created their masterpieces with various themes such as nature, favorite anime, abstract painting and etc. Constitution Day Activities - 9/17/24 - we had a film showing "A More Perfect Union (1989)" movie, showed the Schoolhouse Rock "I'm Just A Bill" and " The Constitution" short videos, there were different activities such as cross word puzzles and asking inputs about the Constitution painting. Wall of Hope for the Suicide Prevention & Awareness Month Voter Education Awareness (10/25) - In preparation for the November 5, 2024, National Elections, there was a presentation about Voting Education where we talked about the history of voting rights and the roles of the US president. We also talked about what they were looking forward to for the next leader of the country. It was a non-partisan voting awareness presentation and the SGA took photos with the NativeVote.Org posters to showcase their support regarding the initiative to increase native voices on local, state, and national level elections. October 30 - Together with the FYP cohort, we started the mural about Alaska Native Votes. November 5 - We had an Election Day party for all staff and students. I shared information about the poll stations in town and the van services helped to drop off students and staff who will be needing transportation to the voting locations during the workday. Total # of Wellness and Educational Activities for SPRING 25: 9 Total # of Student Participants in all activities: 63 Movie Night (4/25) Game Night (4/25) Superbowl Watch Party (2/9/25) Dating Violence Awareness Month - What is Love? Activity (2/7/25) Dating Violence Awareness Month - Safe Homes & Healthy Relationship - Cookies and Cupcake Activities (2/28/25) Arts and Crafts Afternoon (4/4/25) - To promote the importance of mental health, arts was shown to help in a therapeutic way. We had different arts and crafts available for all students and staff and we had several talking points to help us get to know more about one another. IC Talent Show and (4/11/25) IC Piuraagata (the spring festival parade) - 4/12/25 Sexual Assault Awareness Month and Drug & Alcohol Prevention Initiative - Denim Patches for SAAM, BrickWall Project on how did drugs and/ or alcohol affect staff and students lives, and Mocktails - promoting responsible decision making and enjoying drinks w/o alcohol. Easter celebration was also included where there were cupcake and cookies decorating activities (4/18/25) The college is continuously collaborating with other local and statewide entities to promote and expand mental health awareness, prevention, support, and resources on the North Slope. We just recently met with NAMI - National Alliance on Mental Illness where it's nation's largest grassroots mental health organization. They aimed to revive the North Slope Borough affiliates. They have been working with different colleges and universities via their various programs and community outreach.

Publications

Progress 09/01/23 to 08/31/24

Outputs
Target Audience:The target audience for this project are Ilisagvik College students, most of whom are Alaska Native/American Indian (64%), firstgeneration college students (73%), and nontraditional students (60%+). We will target both nontraditional and traditional-age college students, as Ilisagvik is currently trying to grow its population in the latter cohort. All students will have access to the Wellness Program. Workshops will be tailored towards managing stress from a cultural focus (Inupiaq, but open to other cultures, too). Changes/Problems:Realignment of the student services department at Ilisagvik College has now been in place for a full academic year. It took us a full semester to finda suitable candidate to fill the unexpected vacancy of the Wellness Coordinatorposition. Otherwise, I think we are on target to move forward signifcantly to meet our goals with this terrific grant resource. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?We sent both Wellness Specialistand the Student Success Manager for attendance and participation in the national ACPA convention in Chicago, Il (March, 2024) This is the American College Personnel Association. While there, they both were able to network with other college/university health and wellness professionals and also attend relevant workshops/trainings. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?We are presently compiling our programming reports for Board of Trustees meetings, sharing at monthly campus Cabinet meetings, and utilizing to the greatest extent possible, our marketing department to use social media and share our programming stories with the citizens we serve in northern Alaska. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Utilize the established "Wellness Wheel" to address the many aspects of student wellness. We also want to make sure we re-engineer some of our processes that challenge us with the successful onboarding of new students. With our Wellness Specialist full time - we anticipate seeing a significant increase in the number of programming efforts from the wellness office. Increased collaboration with the recruitingoffice will also be essential. We want to especially continue to collaboratewith our cultural wellness programming to address indigenous needs for our students.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? The most recent Ilisagvik College persistence numbers available are from Spring 2023 and that figure was 54%. We anticipate the publishing of the Spring 2024 numbers later this semester (Fall, 24). They are not available to us at the time this report is being filed. The most recent retention numbers for Ilisagvik College are from Fall 2023. Our retentionrate for program active students enrolled was reported as 45%. We anticipate the publishing of the Fall 2024 numbers later this semester. These numbers are presently not available to us at the time this report is being filed. I believewe will be able to give an accurate progress being madefor persistence, retention, and graduation rates with the filing of this same annual report next August, 2025. Wellness Activities and Programs for the Spring, 2024 Semester It is important to note that the student services department at Ilisagvik College experienced several transitions. Our Wellness Coordinator departed in early summer, 2023. It took until late November 2023 to find a suitablereplacement. We also restructured -in so much that the Student Success Manager became more closely aligned with the Wellness Specialist and the Cultural Activities Specialist in an effort to address the holistic needs of our students at Ilisagvik College. Total # Wellness Specialist activities: 6 Total # of students: 35 Total # of participants: 35 TGIF game nights (2) Thank Goodness It's Friday are game nights where students were able to come get to know one another with some friendly competition. 02/02/24- 10 02/16/24-8 Open Gym Volleyball @ Pirruguvik Community gym we went to play open gym volleyball with community members. 02/05/24-5 02/12/24-5 Ice cream social + Timely Care (Take a Scoop into Timely care). Our new Wellness Specialist reports the following student contact numbers: Significant Contacts for the Wellness Specialist: - 80 Casual Contacts for the Wellness Specialist- 200 As part of wellness we are working on securing a mental health service application for students. An event was held in the Spring 2024 semester for our students to ask questions about a potential vendor and how it cansupport them. We anticipate the implementation of a Wellness application for students no later than October, 2024. This will include access to speak to licensed, trained mental health professionals. We also moved forward with the continued implementation of the SMARTS Program. Student Mentoring Advocating Resources for Total Success. As a part of this mentoring effort we created a First Year Pathway cohort led by our Student Success Manager. This is an intrusive effort made by the student services department to successfully mentor all of our students especiallythrough the onboarding process, and the monitoring and support ofour studentsas they navigate theirway through the complexities of the entire academic experience at Ilisagvik College. FALL 2023 SEMESTER - FYP Cohort ·First Year Pathway Cohort (FYP) - 10 FYP residential students under the FYP contract ·10 FYP students followed the contract and enrolled to CCS101 - Tools for Success class ·10 FYP students carried12 credits and above based on their discussion with their advisors. ·Retention rate based on the FYP cohort that we physically recordedin the residential hall = 70% (7 FYP students from Fall 23 semester returned for Spring 24 semester) The Student Success Manager at Ilisagvik College reports that the student services department worked with a grand total of 306 students in a variety of ways; Accuplacer assessment , FIrst Year Pathways cohort and completed student applications. The Ilisagvik College Student Services Department had the Cultural Activitites Specialist ( a temporary position created in Fall 2023) to assistus with addressing cultural sensitivity and indigenous student programs utilizing local elders. In so doing, we wanted to address the importance of culture and mental health wellness for our students. This specialistworked closely with 63 students. A largepart of that effort was focused on indigenous wellness.

Publications