Back to top Commitment to Student Persistence Persistence to the Second Year by Ethnicity, Bloomington Campus, Fall 1986 through Fall 1997 Freshman Cohorts IU's rising enrollments will mean little if our students are not given access to the tools they need to succeed, to fulfill their educational goals, and to graduate. The university is committed to enhancing the learning environment for all of its students, and to offering mentoring, counseling, and academic support programs that meet the needs of each student. IU is focused on preparing students to join the academic community. For example, the Bloomington campus has redesigned orientation programs to better inform first-year students about the nature and responsibilities of an academic community. Similar efforts are continuing at all IU campuses.
Every campus also offers a set of mentoring and tutoring services.
Some of these are peer programs in which students tutor other students. IU's renewed focus on retention, aided by money from the Lilly Endowment, is having an impact. Retention increased for all students who participated in interventions funded by the Lilly grant. The percentage of freshmen on all IU campuses who persist to the second year has increased slightly in each of the last three years. In Bloomington, the overall retention rate for the 1997 freshman cohort was 86.1 percent, which compares very favorably to that of our Big Ten peers.