With a generous donation, Bobet Hall will begin renovations in the fall of 2017 to begin the transition of the Student Success Center’s new location.
According to a campus-wide email from Chris Wiseman, vice president for institutional advancement, the Pan–American Life Insurance Group and an anonymous donor gave a gift totaling $1 million to Loyola.
The donation will be used to move Loyola’s current Student Success Center back from the first floor of Marquette Hall to Bobet Hall.
According to Jose Suquet, Pan-American Life’s chairman of the board, president and CEO, the donation will hopefully continue Loyola’s Student Success Center’ mission to help students meet academic, personal and professional goals.
“Investing in education helps us build stronger communities, shape future leaders across different disciplines and create a talent pool that positively impacts local businesses,” Suquet said.
With the new, permanent location, the center will offer a variety of support accommodations ranging from writing improvement skills to mentoring.
Along with the center’s planned initiatives, they’re putting an emphasis on student retention. Despite the university priding itself on a 93 percent retention rate, according to Brad Petitfils, senior director of the Student Success Center, from the fall of 2016 to spring 2017 Loyola lost 43 students in the class of 2020 alone.
Petifils said that while Loyola’s community is small, every student matters.
“We’re planning to enforce three strategic initiatives, in efforts to build student empowerment. The first is supplemental instructions, for core courses that have high rates of D’s, F’s and withdrawals,” Petitfils said.
Petifils added that the new program is shaped so that the supplemental instructions are taught by previous students of those courses, which will empower students to grow academically by providing a sound foundation for being a college student.
“The second initiative is success coaching, meeting with students to work on executive function, [time management, anxiety, studying skills],” Petitfils said. “The third initiative is related to the Office of Disabilities Services; it’s meant for all faculty to design courses through blackboard so that it’s accessible to all students who are enrolled.”
Through these efforts, Petitfils believes that the newly renovated center will not only retain Loyola’s student body, but begin to ingrain success into Loyola’s community.
