Students Share Ideas About College Success on YouTube
Videos Highlight Latest Trend Giving Students an Edge: Personal Success Coaches
SAN FRANCISCO, CA, February 13, 2008 — College students working with InsideTrack Success Coaches are speaking out about their experiences on YouTube, describing some of the challenges they face and how coaching is helping them to succeed at school.
Success Coaches meet with students once a week by phone to help them develop better academic and life skills, set goals and create strategies to meet them, become motivated to take advantage of opportunities on campus, and address obstacles to attaining their degree. The service is available to students at no cost through their colleges and universities and is being adopted by universities nationwide: 85,000 students at over 50 campuses have been coached to date.
Hanging out on his dormitory bed surrounded by open notebooks, Alex Taussig, a freshman at Chapman University in Orange, California, says this about his freshman year: "As a college student I've had to adjust to a lot of things. The workload has definitely increased but the payoff is that it's the work I wanted to do in high school but never had the opportunity to do."
Alex says his coach, Stephanie Sosa, has helped him learn to manage his schedule, improve his study skills, and even manage his finances. "She's helped me solve a lot of problems. For me, Stephanie has helped make college so much more manageable and so much more enjoyable." (To hear more from Alex, go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LWsqPPq570.) The concept of student Success Coaching was developed by Alan Tripp and Kai Drekmeier, the founders of InsideTrack. Inspired by executive coaching, they determined that students, like executives, would be more effective and likely to succeed with the kind of one-on-one motivation and support that coaches provide. The coaching program they developed focuses on seven areas that research shows are critical to student success.
"It takes more than good academic skills to really thrive in college," says Alan Tripp, InsideTrack's CEO. "Students need to learn how to set priorities, plan for the short- and long-term, balance school with other responsibilities and be accountable. They also need to become engaged with school through their social life and extra-curricular activities and stay committed to their educational and career objectives."
Setting and meeting goals is an important part of Success Coaching. Another Chapman student, Genesis Gonzalez, credits her coach, Joelle Pasquale, with "helping me to prepare for classes and to lay out that four-year plan in order to graduate on time."
Coaching has also motivated Genesis to get more involved with campus life — a real challenge since she lives at home and commutes to school. "Beginning in my freshman year, I was encouraged by my coach to join a sorority and get involved with student government. Now I think I'm involved in more stuff than I can imagine. I'm in a business fraternity. I'm in a sorority. I'm on student government. I'm doing an internship right now and on top of it taking classes." (Hear more from Genesis at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lM715P5n6lE.)
Bradford Dworak, a freshman at Arizona State University (ASU), says that his coach, Alex Miller, has helped him to adjust to the new found independence that college offers. "Something I learned in college is that you have to be on top of your own game. You can't procrastinate. No one is there like in high school to hold your hand. Alex is there to motivate me and help me stay on track"
One of Bradford's challenges was finding a way to fit in at ASU, one of the country's largest universities. He decided to audition for ASU's improvisation comedy team and is now one of two freshmen who perform with the group. "When you come to a school with 50-60,000 you have to make it your own. That was my goal to come here and make my own name." (To hear more of what of Bradford has to say, go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZ9I7vJcXq0&feature=related.)
According to Alan Tripp, "By providing students with a higher level of one-on-one support and guidance, Success Coaching helps colleges and universities meet the expectations and demands of the millennial generation and their parents. The result is success for students and institutions: coached students are more engaged with their educations, more likely to overcome obstacles to obtaining their degree and more likely to persist in school and graduate."
About InsideTrack
InsideTrack's mission is to promote student engagement, persistence to graduation, retention and success. Its core solution is Success Coaching, a clearly defined, reproducible methodology that delivers measurable results — up to a 20 percent reduction in student attrition in the first year. The program can be implemented quickly and pays for itself by improving tuition revenues. To date, InsideTrack has coached more than 85,000 students at more than 50 campus locations nation wide, enabling partner colleges to increase student retention, total enrollment, graduation rates and tuition revenue. To learn more about InsideTrack, visit www.insidetrack.com.
Press Contact: Hilary Dunst
212.316.3279
hdunst@hdmediany.com