Oregon State University today announced it would release two programs to enhance first-year student retention and parent outreach. Oregon State University will utilize GoalQuest's FYRe™ and PICS:FYRe™ products, which fuse custom-created content with highly adaptive Web-based communication technologies.

Piloting this spring, the new student program will become a central component of a campus-wide retention action plan. GoalQuest is working with OSU to customize the company's FYRe (Freshman Year Retention) tool, a Web-based communications package designed to engage new students through a series of editorial features and compelling online activities. The program will help students achieve greater satisfaction from campus life, increase their knowledge of support services and resources, enhance their academic skills and personal effectiveness and build better working relationships with faculty and staff.

A separate program will work to create a stronger alliance between OSU and its first-year parents. OSU hopes to better involve parents in campus life by deploying a combination of information-oriented content and helpful advice, while allowing participants to provide feedback on top-of-mind concerns..

Both the parent and student programs will give OSU staff the ability to identify issues that warrant university follow-up. GoalQuest's real-time reporting tools will further enable administrators to build iterative survey and assessment modules.

"Creating and implementing a comprehensive retention program at a large university typically requires a number of human resources," said Bob Bontrager, Assistant Provost of Enrollment Management at OSU. "We chose the GoalQuest tools in part because they allow our staff to focus on maintaining our excellent student and parent support services without having to manage content and technology components."

"We believe such a Web-based solution to be an underused yet highly effective means of reaching students in their spare time-on their schedule," said Moira Dempsey, Director of the Academic Success Center at OSU. "We know our students enough to recognize the way they search for information isn't necessarily by knocking on our doors. This program grants OSU an ongoing communication flow that also allows us to identify students who are at risk. From there we can respond to each individual case. We're equally excited about leveraging similar communication and intelligence benefits from our GoalQuest parent program."

"Whether they have a small or large student body, all schools face the same challenge: reaching out to individual students who may be at risk for highly specific reasons," said Tracy Howe, EVP-Sales and Co-founder of GoalQuest. "GoalQuest programs enable schools to create a scalable, one-on-one relationship with each student that allows administrators to respond proactively to individual needs. And unlike tools that rely on historical data, GoalQuest's Reporting Center provides real-time data whenever administrators need a snapshot of student (and parent) trends."

About Oregon State University
Oregon State University is a comprehensive public university and a member of the Oregon University System. It is the state's land-grant, sea-grant and space-grant institution, and has programs and faculty located in every county of the state. OSU views the state of Oregon as its campus, and works in partnership with Oregon community colleges and other OUS institutions to provide access to educational programs. To learn more about OSU, visit http://www.oregonstate.edu.