At Buena Vista University, there is a program that provides students with resources for academics, counseling, and general support for being a functioning college student. It is called the success coaching program. This service is offered to students during their first two years at Buena Vista, and not many other schools in the Midwest offer similar services to students.
The success coaching program started in 2023, when university leaders decided that first- and second-year students should have someone to look to for any of their problems. Mandi Mollring, the Assistant Dean for Student Success at BVU, referred to this as having “that go-to person for everything.” During an interview with Mollring, she spoke about retention rates and keeping students at BV for all four years. This was the goal of the success coaching program. To support that, they decided to provide students with someone besides their academic adviser to talk to, while also helping with four-year planning.
Mollring said, “This allows academic advisers to not focus so much on the daily items of the students, but also prepares the students for four years, so they can hit the ground running their junior year with their academic adviser.”
She added that the numbers show that once a student has spent two years at BV, they are more likely to stay for all four years. Because of that, the university wanted to give students a resource to help them navigate the first two challenging years of college, increasing the likelihood they graduate.
In an interview with Kolin Peterson, one of the success coaches here at BVU, he said that he struggled to make it through college when he was younger, “bouncing” to three different schools before graduating. When the opportunity came to help students through the process of becoming adults and going to college, he knew he wanted to do it. Peterson is the success coach for the School of Liberal Arts, meaning he is assigned to 148 students. That number is about the average for each of the three success coaches at BVU, with each one being attached to a specific school or group of majors. Peterson said that his main goal is to “ease the gap” between high school and college for these young students.
Ultimately, the goal of this program is to help students transition from high school to college. Success coaches give students someone to talk to, someone they can trust with anything. While not part of academics, they still work with faculty. As Mollring explained, they can be the “go-to person” for the students. The program itself is trending in a positive direction, as retention and registration rates are up.
The program has earned confidence from the university as it continues to try and keep students at Buena Vista and to support their success throughout their college years.
