The administration, among others, can communicate the promise of SI to the various echelons of the institution. SI will likely get a warm reception if administrators and faculty see some potential help in increasing math competencies and, thereby, enhancing retention. Faculty need to know what SI proposes to do. Administrators want to know if they can afford SI programs. Learners need convincing that their competencies can be improved.
Research is the first step for obtaining institutional support.
The university or college, depending on the academic structure, can forge alliances of the college or university to conduct research among the first college mathematics courses. For example, directors of freshman studies programs, institutional research, undergraduate mathematics faculty, and personnel in learning centers can join forces to discover the trends of mathematics enrollment and retention rates from the freshman to sophomore years. If SI can establish correlations between unacceptable attrition rates and initial low enrollment success in mathematics, the administration and faculty will likely respond. Relating your research to current realities should be step two. Increasingly, state departments of higher education and state legislatures are calling for accountability and even beginning to tie funding to graduation rates of particular programs.