The Associate Vice President for Retention and Student Success serves as the University's chief retention officer and is responsible for coordinating institution-wide efforts to improve student persistence and graduation outcomes. The AVP oversees professional advising, retention analytics, and intervention systems, and works collaboratively with leaders across Academic Affairs, Student Affairs, Athletics, Enrollment Management, and Student Financial Services to address academic, personal, and financial barriers to student success.
The Associate Vice President will coordinate and align retention initiatives across the institution. While many offices contributing to retention outcomes do not directly report to this position, the Associate Vice President will facilitate collaboration, establish intervention protocols, monitor outcomes, and recommend strategies to improve student persistence and completion. Success in this position will be measured through improvements in retention, persistence, progression, graduation, and re-enrollment outcomes, as well as the effectiveness of institutional intervention strategies.
Reporting to the Vice President for Enrollment Management, this position will serve as a campus-wide leader who is responsible for coordinating interventions, measuring outcomes, and driving institutional retention strategy within the interconnected set of academic, personal, and financial factors that influence student persistence. The Associate Vice President for Retention and Student Success serves as the coordinating leader who aligns these functions, ensures accountability, and drives data-informed interventions across all three pillars.
Pillar I: Academic Success
Strategic Objective: Ensure that students receive the academic support, interventions, and accommodations necessary to remain in good academic standing and make satisfactory progress toward degree completion.
Pillar II: Student Success
Strategic Objective: Address personal, social, behavioral, and wellness-related factors that affect student persistence, belonging, and engagement.
Pillar III: Financial Success
Strategic Objective: Identify and seek to mitigate intuitional barriers impacting persistence.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
Strategic Retention Leadership
- Lead the development, implementation, and continuous refinement of comprehensive, data-informed retention strategies aligned with Marywood University’s mission and enrollment goals.
- Serve as the primary institutional leader for undergraduate and graduate retention, persistence, re-enrollment initiatives, campaigns and enrollment drives.
- Identify barriers to student persistence and recommend policy, process, and programmatic solutions to improve outcomes.
Data-Informed Decision Making
- Partner with Institutional Research, Academic Affairs, and Financial Aid to analyze retention and persistence data, identify trends, and develop targeted interventions for at-risk student populations.
- Maintain and oversee institutional retention dashboards, intervention tracking systems, retention workbooks, and persistence reporting processes.
- Establish and monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) related to retention, progression, and degree completion, to identify enrollment trends.
- Utilize dashboards, reports, and predictive analytics to inform strategy and communicate progress to develop high-level analysis to the Vice President of Enrollment for institutional leadership reports.
Program Development and Oversight
- Design, implement, and oversee retention programs including early alert, outreach campaigns, re-enrollment initiatives, and coordinated intervention efforts.
- Collaborate with faculty, advisors, and student support units to strengthen early identification and response to academic, personal, and financial challenges.
Team Building and Supervision
- Build, supervise, and lead a retention-focused team of professional advisors, including hiring, training, and ongoing professional development of staff as resources allow.
- Establish clear goals, expectations, and assessment practices for retention personnel.
- Foster a culture of collaboration, accountability, and continuous improvement within the retention team.
Cross-Functional Collaboration
- Work closely with Academic Affairs, Student Experience, Advising, Financial Aid, Residence Life, and other campus partners to promote shared ownership of student success.
- Serve on institutional committees related to retention, assessment, and student success.
- Communicate retention priorities, initiatives, and outcomes effectively to campus stakeholders.
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
- Doctorate in Higher Education, Student Affairs, Educational Leadership, or related field.
- Experience with retention technologies, CRM systems, predictive analytics, or student success platforms.
- Experience supervising advising or student success personnel.
REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS
- Master’s degree in Higher Education Administration, Student Affairs, Educational Leadership, Data Analytics, or a related field.
- Minimum of 5 years of progressive professional experience in student success, retention, enrollment management, advising, or a closely related area within higher education.
- Demonstrated success using data and assessment to improve student retention and persistence.
- Experience leading cross-functional initiatives and collaborating with academic and administrative partners.
- Strong analytical, organizational, and communication skills.
CORE COMPETENCIES
- Strategic and systems-level thinking
- Data-informed decision-making
- Collaborative leadership and relationship-building
- Commitment to equity, inclusion, and holistic student success
- Ability to translate data into actionable strategies
Completed applications must be received by August 14th.
