(323) Promoting Student Success Through Investments in Recruitment Programming and New Student Orientation

Objective : •Examine different types of innovations in retention and new student orientation programming higher education institutions are using.
•Engage in personal and professional digital learning.
•Possess an understanding of a wide range of student services functions, and the knowledge, skills, and abilities necessary to succeed in building services that accommodate and cater to pharmacy students.
•Become well versed in the literature as it relates to student services and co-curricular programming in pharmacy education.

Methods: To expose incoming student to co-curricular programming and to begin to get them engaged with the community, recruitment programming was designed to ease the transition into this pharmacy program. Following implementation of these activities, students were asked to complete a regarding their experience using the Anthology Engage software for co-curricular programming involvement and self-tracking.

Results: Students indicated an increased level of involvement/engagement due to the use of Anthology Engage. There was a significant difference between the number of times a student accessed the online platform weekly and their level of involvement and their autonomy in tracking and navigating their co-curricular requirements. Based on the findings, a structured co-curricular and recruitment programming should increase student involvement, exposure to involvement opportunities, and the learning that is occurring.

Conclusions: Prior research across a range of fields indicates that co-curricular programming assists students in developing their self-awareness, leadership, innovation and entrepreneurship, professionalism, and patient advocacy skills. It also promotes the development of a well-rounded graduate and potentiates greater academic performance secondary to increasing students' level of involvement in the overall learning experience. For recruitment and retention purposes, co-curricular programming and personal and professional leadership development opportunities are provided to students to ensure they are engaged from depositing through matriculation.