You are key to student success, and we are committed to providing support and resources for you.
Student Success is committed to supporting you on your mission to facilitate student development, success, persistence, and employability. We strive to assist advisors and staff with staying abreast of student trends, best practices, UMass Amherst policies and procedures, and student success technologies.
Resources for You!
Stay to up-to-date! Utilize the Advising & Staff Toolbox to connect with resources on a variety of topics, processes and technologies.
Success@UMass Development Series
Creating a culture of cross-functional collaboration and shared strategy for supporting student success, the Success@UMass Development Series offers year-round sessions addressing topics centered around the following student success category or focus area:
- Supporting Students through Transitions: Connecting with Campus Resources
- Promoting Student Success through Skill Development
- Theory to Practice: Frameworks for Student Success
- Connecting Technology to Practice
- Employability and Success Post-UMass
- Advising Foundations: Foundations of Advising and Student Success Technology
Any UMass employee working with undergraduate students is invited to attend sessions. An RSVP is requested, but not required.
Academic Alert
Advisors play a key role in supporting students who have received concerning course referrals through appointments and resource connections. The UMass Academic Alert initiative partners with instructors and advisors to connect undergraduate students with the resources needed to meet the rigors of college-level academic work and expectations. Through a coordinated referral network, students are guided towards resources that support mastery of course content and academic skill development.
Student Success Technologies
There are three primary student success technologies at UMass: Spire, NAVIGATE, and Handshake. All work together to support a unique aspect of student success and offer student-facing tools as well as staff tools.
Spire serves as the official student information system. Spire offers course registration, the academic requirements report (degree audit), management of service indicators (holds), and additional student academic records information.
Navigate is a student persistence and retention tool. Utilizing all of the academic record information from Spire, Navigate provides advisors and staff tools to proactively reach out to students, track and monitor student performance, easily connect with students through appointment scheduling, and document student interactions across campus. Learn more about Navigate in our three-minute, student-facing view: Your Academic Tech Tools, Navigate. For more information about using Navigate to support your work, including information obtaining access, view the Advising & Staff Resources Inventory.
Handshake offers students the ability to connect with career resources through internships and job postings, scheduling interviews, reviewing upcoming career events, and RSVP, and create a profile for interested employers to review. Additionally, for career services professionals, Handshake provides a tool to streamline and enhance employer relationships, job postings, events, and on-campus interview scheduling.
Access to Student Success Technologies: All student academic record information is protected. Thus, any individual needing access to this type of information through Spire or Navigate must be vetted and approved for access through the UMass Amherst official access request and training process prior to gaining access to academic record information.
Additional Resources
Article from EAB: How Will We Measure Student Success in the 2020s?
A review of how student success metrics have evolved over time—and where they might go in the future.
*Note: to view the article linked above, you may need to log in with your EAB account credentials. Here's how:
- Go to www.eab.com
- Click the orange Login Link at the top right of the page
- If you have already created an account, use your username and password to do so (may be different from your Navigate login depending on how you created the account)
- If you do not have an account, select Create an Account
- Fill out the information on the Register page. Use Amherst as the city to population the “your organization” box correctly. Select “University of Massachusetts Amherst”
- Click Go to Step 2 and fill out the required information.
- Select “Register Now” to finish the process
Questions
I’d like to request or suggest a new resource or development topics for staff and advisors on campus. Who should I contact?
We’d love to hear your suggestions. We are continuously creating and sharing new resources to support your work. Email studentsuccess@umass.edu.
I would like to use Navigate for appointment scheduling. How do I get my services set up?
Great! Navigate offers efficient appointment scheduling for both advisors and students. It offers custom set-up based on your programs and services. Email navigate@umass.edu.
If I need advisor level access to Spire and/or Navigate, what should I do?
Advisor level access to both technologies grants access to student academic record information, thus you will need to complete the access request process and participate in training.
