Behavior Analytic Concepts and Change in a Large Metropolitan Research University: The Graduation Success Initiative

ABSTRACT

The Graduation Success Initiative is a complex, organization-wide application of behavior analytic concepts to improving undergraduate student retention and on-time graduation at a large metropolitan research university. The behavior analytic concepts discussed here include culture, supraorganismic phenomena, selecting environments, macrobehaviors, macrocontingencies, interlocking behavioral contingencies, metacontingencies, and rule-governed behavior. We introduce a change template that includes all pertinent agents in the university system and that focuses change efforts specifically on desired behaviors, targeted behaviors, strategic interventions, and reinforcing contingencies for each of the categories of agents. The Graduation Success Initiative produced a 16-point increase in on-time graduation in 4 years.

KEYWORDS:

• Change in complex organizations
• interlocking behavioral contingencies
• metacontingencies
• rule-governed behavior
• on-time graduation
• retention
• undergraduate student success

Funding

Parts of the Graduation Success Initiative have been supported by grants from the U.S. Department of Education’s Title V Program; the Walmart Foundation Student Success Initiative; the Helios Education Foundation; the Helmsley Charitable Trust’s Transforming University STEM Education Initiative; the Kresge Foundation; and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Transformational Planning Grant Program and Transformational Change Collaborative, both administered by the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities and the Coalition of Urban Serving Universities.

Additional information

Funding

Parts of the Graduation Success Initiative have been supported by grants from the U.S. Department of Education’s Title V Program; the Walmart Foundation Student Success Initiative; the Helios Education Foundation; the Helmsley Charitable Trust’s Transforming University STEM Education Initiative; the Kresge Foundation; and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Transformational Planning Grant Program and Transformational Change Collaborative, both administered by the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities and the Coalition of Urban Serving Universities.