When members of the Alumni Leadership Board (ALB) learned UNCG was losing students just shy of graduation, they launched an old-school letter-writing campaign based around words of encouragement.
ALB members Candace Martin ’10 and Dean Castaldo Jr. ’12 worked with Undergraduate Admissions to identify approximately 300 former students who had earned 90 or more credit hours and were classified as seniors when they left UNCG, and since then had not re-enrolled or earned a degree elsewhere. Supplied with notecards, envelopes, stamps, address labels, and guidance (do keep the tone warm and friendly, share personal stories of overcoming hardship, and point recipients toward help with the process of returning; don’t use language that might inspire guilt over not finishing), ALB members started writing. Most letters mailed around the new year.
While Martin never experienced a break during her student days at UNCG, “I had a few stressful periods where I was almost at that line,” she said. “Things come up, life happens.”
“Stop-outs” happen for a variety of reasons, including financial issues and life events like a move, marriage and children, or a new job, said Gina Ingraham ’16 MA, stop-out prevention and re-entry coordinator in UNCG’s Division of Enrollment Management. It’s a problem across higher ed but UNCG is beginning to see improvement, with an increase since fall 2021 of such students returning.
Stopped-out students often have invested significant time, money, and energy in education and want to complete their degrees but are overwhelmed at returning. The light touch of a letter is just the sort of thing that might prompt a first step, Ingraham said.
By Jill Ingram, Alumni Engagement