We begin our series of blogs on the roles of Student Success Coaching Model with the faculty of your PA program, because the process simply does not work without their investment and cooperation. The implementation of a Student Success program without the faculty’s “buy-in” is a program destined to fail. The faculty is responsible for assessing student performance, providing feedback, and engaging in overall academic advisement. We enable faculty with techniques for in-class interactions that vastly improve how students process, retain, and use the information the instructor teaches – to the benefit of all students, not just those who require remediation.

Success Coaching does not replace required course instructor and advisor meetings with students; it cannot work without those touchstone interactions. In fact, success coaching enhances the faculty/student relationship by providing a framework for making plans and following through. We expect faculty to actively engage and implement the resources provided by the program, and members of faculty should endeavor to improve their advising skills.

Principal faculty serve as advisors for students throughout their didactic and clinical years. Following each meeting with a student, the advisor completes an Advisor-Student Contact Sheet and uploads it into the student’s file in the PA Program’s Master File. This serves as a crucial step in the accountability system, meaning tracking each student’s progress from the beginning so that no students fall through the cracks. Many problems are headed off when they are still relatively minor.

Meetings between the student and advisor occur at these times:

• Initial, first contact (Review Student’s VARK Results and Time Management Plan)

•  Mid-semester meeting

• End of Semester / Beginning of Semester meeting

  • Personal Professional Behavior Evaluation Reviewed 

  • Clinical Year Matrix Reviewed

• End of Didactic Year meeting

  • Assessment of Student Professional Behavior 

• End of Clinical Year meeting

  •  Assessment of Student Professional Behavior

• End of Program / Graduation meeting

• As needed

Some faculty members, for example those who have been “in the job” for a long time, may resist this model initially. Human nature is such that we resent someone showing us a new way to do a job that we’re already doing effectively. Requiring full faculty investment, however, does not equate to extra workload for busy instructors. Step for step, the Student Success Coaching Model does not ask faculty to do more, but simply to manage the same matters differently. Additionally, the Student Success Coaching Model saves considerable time for individual faculty members by avoiding duplicate academic mentoring and tutoring services. 

Once implemented, use of the Student Success Model results in greater efficiency and, moreover, better students and a better PA program overall. This is to everyone’s benefit. We will continue to detail the involvement of the various participants in upcoming blogs, discussing the roles of the Success Coach and of the students themselves.