Retention Council Mission and Goals
Retention Council Steering Group
The York University Academic Plan (UAP) provides the framework for the Retention Council, whose mission is to: create and sustain avenues for communication and collaboration; ensure that program assessment occurs among campus stakeholders in student success initiatives; to achieve excellence in student experience and success as measured by student retention, academic achievement, and a statement of satisfactory experience at York University; and to develop and support initiatives designed to improve the educational experience of York students from the end of Orientation through to Convocation.
The membership of the Retention Council reflects the understanding that faculty, staff and other students all play vital roles in creating opportunities for positive student interactions, experiences, and outcomes and will therefore include representatives from each group. Programs developed and supported by the Retention Council will be informed by current data and research; programs developed by the Council also will provide opportunities for new research. The philosophy guiding the activities of the Retention Council is that a student's optimal experience extends beyond the curricular to include co-curricular and extra-curricular activities as well as the development of life skills and leadership skills.
The goals of the Retention Council are:
- to stimulate communication, collaboration and cooperation between Faculties, Colleges, departments and student resource services so that best practices in student success programming and support services can be identified, developed and made available to all students. Examples of such programming and services include, but are not limited to, peer mentoring programs, student academic advising, and co-curricular programming.
- To catalogue and disseminate current research and practices on student success programming.
- to create models of good practice in student success programming relevant to York University. Models will be characterized by their ability to offer clarity, consistency, and customized success pathways to students and program leaders alike.
- to foster curricular, co-curricular and extra-curricular activities that provide opportunities for student-student interactions as well as for faculty-student interactions, including excellence in teaching, peer mentoring, research projects, outreach initiatives, clubs, campus sports, etc.
- to celebrate student activities and engagement and student leadership achievements
