In a recent interview, Watermark sat down with David Brock, a leader in student success initiatives at Olivet Nazarene University, to discuss his institution’s journey with Watermark Student Success and Engagement (SS&E). SS&E is a software solution tailor-made to boost student retention and improve academic outcomes. Powered by predictive analytics, SS&E helps student success teams provide proactive support at scale and give students a guided path through their educational journey.
David shared valuable insights into how SS&E has become a game-changer for his campus. He highlighted the successes they’ve achieved, the challenges they’ve overcome, and his vision for the future. Read on to learn more about Olivet Nazarene University’s student success story.
David began the conversation by explaining the value of SS&E for his team, “First and foremost, it’s a very user-friendly platform,” he said. Before utilizing the tool, Olivet Nazarene University had “…different departments who pretty much accessed data from the same location, but they’d access different pieces of it. There was not a lot of cohesion between those different departments.” After implementing SS&E, David says, “it has given us an opportunity to bring in some of those fragmented pieces of the data into a single source — into a single location — and to us, that’s the most exciting.”
Now David’s team can more easily track individual student performance and zoom out to witness trends amongst demographics over time. The ability to consolidate data from various sources into one centralized platform has been transformative for Olivet Nazarene University. “It gives us the immediate insight of how we’re going to support students sooner, instead of maybe 3, 4, or 5 days going by before we can actually follow through. It’s immediate,” he explained. “It allows us to identify students who are struggling academically before the semester ends or before midterm grades.”
Rather than waiting for a student to fail and pick up the pieces, David’s team can recognize concerning patterns and provide support before it’s too late. By offering this extra help before big events like midterms or the end of the semester, David and his team can prevent undesirable outcomes and help students persist.
One of the key successes David highlighted was the creation of a comprehensive, semester-long strategic communication process built around SS&E data. “We collect a lot of data, we push it out to Excel, we color code things, and then we turn around and start using that information to communicate back to the students,” he said.
This strategic approach allows David’s team to not only identify struggling students, but also champion their accomplishments. “We don’t just want to tell students, ‘Hey, you need help.’ We want to celebrate their successes as well.” By aligning their outreach with key points in the academic calendar, such as registration periods, David’s team has seen a significant boost in student engagement and retention.
“We start pushing out campaigns, and every single time a campaign goes out, we see a spike in registration,” David shared. Campaigns are a communication feature within SS&E. “We’ve seen a huge boost in our registration numbers simply through the campaign process,” David reiterated.
SS&E helps support teams engage students at the right time by automating and streamlining communications. One way this is done is through two-way texting to help monitor response levels and get a predictor of student success.
More 1:1 student support. With the addition of two team members, the use of the new SS&E scheduling tool, and the increased usage of the student app, Olivet’s persistence team went from about 60 student meetings to over 200 per month.
Doubling persistence team’s reach. Olivet averaged approximately 120 staff alerts per semester using a previous tool. Through increased stakeholder buy-in, there are over 220 alerts in the first five weeks of the current term using Watermark SS&E, allowing the persistence team to connect with a much larger group of struggling students.
Boost in registration and retention. Olivet Nazarene University used a series of campaigns to push registration, with a 33% average registration increase per registration campaign, helping to drive their retention rate to 91%.
While the implementation of SS&E has been transformative, David acknowledges that it hasn’t been without its challenges. “Initially it was just knowing the system well enough to know what’s the best solution to the problem,” he said. “Really, it just came down to a lot of trial and error. Testing, asking a bazillion questions, learning the nuances, and then being okay with failing.”
David emphasizes the importance of being flexible and responsive to user needs. “If someone calls or emails they have a question, that becomes my highest priority. So training, meeting, one-on-one, whatever I need to do to get them into the system, that’s what I do. But it’s not just for them, it’s also teaching me how it works — how I can be a better problem solver.”
Embracing a culture of continuous improvement has been crucial for David’s team. “I don’t like to fail, but I know failure is just part of the process,” he said. “We’re in test mode all the time. We understand the expectations, but are also flexible enough that, if someone calls or emails that they have a question, that becomes my highest priority.”
David explained that with SS&E, his team now understands just how powerful data can be. “There’s a lot of data that lives in SS&E,” he said. “If done correctly, you can see starting points and ending points — you can begin to track and understand the student life cycle.”
Olivet Nazarene University has a dedicated data analysis expert who has been instrumental in leveraging SS&E to inform strategic decisions. “She is excited to partner with us because the goal is to learn student success or failure predictors and hopefully predict things before they happen, to try to avoid some of those larger obstacles.”
The data has also enabled David’s team to support decision-making across campus, particularly with the registrar’s office. “We’ve been able to see some trend lines. Students who end the semester with a certain GPA, what is their likelihood of success into the next semester?” he explained. “Because we are always thinking about resource allocation. There’s a lot of support being administered to fill our students’ needs. Numbers show you, from the beginning to the end of an academic journey, what are specific data points that we have to pay attention to? Where can we be most effective?”
Getting answers to those questions will help David’s team operate on an even higher level, boosting student retention rates and securing the longterm success of Olivet Nazarene University.
Engaging stakeholders across campus has been a key focus for David’s team. “First thing I say is just start small,” he advised. David explained how the journey started with SS&E, “There was a department created called ‘Persistence,’ and we were given a tool to solve problems. That’s our mission. It’s going to take time and energy to solve everything. But we started small and have seen success grow from there.”
David emphasizes the importance of identifying and empowering champions. “If you can get student-facing departments and faculty to buy in, that is a huge win. When you put SS&E in their hands and they see it in action, it’s magic.” He explained that SS&E gives these departments and faculty members the data and tools to share their experiences. “The more they use it and depend on it, the louder their voices become.”
Engaging executive leadership has also been a key focus. “Our hope is for this to expand even more deeply across campus. I’ll admit, I’m impatient — I want everything to be fixed right now. But we’re just starting our fourth semester using SS&E, and we’ve already seen such an impact across campus. It tells me that we got the right tool. From the very beginning, it’s been an absolute game changer.“
As David looks to the future, he has several key goals in mind. “We’re always looking to expand our stakeholders,” he said. “We get stakeholders who only dip a toe in the water, thinking it’s yet another tool to use. But once we show how impactful it can be, they’re sold. So that’s our focus, let’s get more people to dip their toe in the water, because once they do, then we can start getting them on board.”
Additionally, David is focused on continuing to emphasize the power of data for institutional decision-making. “Numbers add clarity to decisions, and I think that can be very helpful in shaping the university’s future.”
Ultimately, David’s vision is to use SS&E to provide proactive student support. “It’s our hope that we discover obstacles to student success before they truly become a roadblock. How can we pivot quickly enough? How can we manage more efficiently before those problems really spiral out of control?”
By leveraging the power of data, strategic communication, and cross-campus collaboration, David and his team are poised to drive meaningful change at Olivet Nazarene University. As they continue their journey, their story serves as an inspiring example of how technology can be harnessed to drive change, transform the student experience, and boost your institution’s educational impact.
