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What the Heck is a QEP?

By Noah Flowers and Alyssa Sharp, Staff Writers


More than a century has passed in higher education, and institutions are now seeking new and inventive ways to gauge student success both in and out of the classroom. Current and prospective students, as well as their families, want to attend somewhere that is successful not only in athletics but also in academics.


One of the programs designed to accomplish such a feat is the QEP.


What exactly is a QEP? Why would Lindsey Wilson College need this? How will this help students? What does all of this entail?


Head of QEP and The Writing Center Dr. Eric Carter working diligently in his office in the Writing Center (W.W. Slider Humanities Building, Room 200)


What is a QEP? Dr. Eric Carter, Vice President for Student Success and Academic Growth at LWC, describes the QEP, Quality Enhancement Program, as a university-wide plan for improving student learning in a five-year period.


“Generally, we thought about a few things we could do that might enhance the student experience."

“Generally, we thought about a few things we could do that might enhance the student experience... This starts with lots of work on our tutoring programs, working on providing more workshop opportunities, working to help students that are struggling and intervene with them as quickly as possible.”

When asked about what this would do for the student body, Dr. Patricia Parrish, Vice President for Academic Affairs, said, “Setting up students for success. It will help with the retention rate, tutoring, and writing consultation process. While also providing success coaches.”

Carter elaborated on success coaches by saying that a success coach is someone that will be a resource or a guide to all of a certain class. The first class this will be implemented on will be the Sophomores of the upcoming Fall of 2023 as they transition out of FYE. Then, adding another the following year to do the same thing and follow these classes till they are Juniors and then repeat the process and drop back down to the next Sophomore class.

“How would this help students that are off-campus and attend online?”


“It benefits them if they access tutoring,” Parrish said, “The main focus is writing success to help their degrees. The online students already have success coaches.”


Diving into the intervention process, Carter said with targeted interventions they can look at a certain population of at-risk students and try to intervene before it’s too late.

“We start this by identifying what we call the ‘Murky middle’ which is students that reside within the 2.0 and 3.0 GPA and have had some trouble in the past, whether that be failing a class or they’ve withdrawn from a good amount of classes in the past couple semesters,” Carter said, “With this we are able to try and intervene with these students as quickly as possible and are able to offer them the resources they need.”

Carter also talked about the process of enhancing the Writing Center by adding a dedicated Writing Director to provide tutor training, put on workshops, work with faculty, and just make sure students have the best resources available to succeed.

Regarding the budget and funding for these programs, Parrish said, “It is new, so there is no previous budget, the QEP will officially start in August, hard to say what the proposed budget will be but, it will last for five years. The funding will come from general funds with retention. Hopefully, it will cause more students to stay and pay for themselves.”

To enhance this process they are looking to make the Writing Center a more inviting place to visit.


“This would be something that isn’t QEP related, but we are looking at trying to figure out a way to have a more dedicated space,” Carter said, “To have a ‘one-stop-shop’ kind of thing with the other tutoring areas that are in a more centralized part of campus and make it easier to hit all the points in that regard of being accessible.”


All are welcome in The Writing Center on Lindsey Wilson College Campus (W.W. Slider Humanities Building, Room 200)



With the new QEP being implemented at Lindsey Wilson, Parrish was asked what their personal opinions on the future success of this program are.


“Most things get more effective as time goes on," Parrish said, “The QEP will have that built and it should be more effective by day 1. The whole goal is student success. Looking at successful course completion, graduation rates, satisfaction rates of student surveys, and the tutors will get surveys after their sessions to really give us a good view on how well this is being received.”


Carter also expressed his positive outlook for the QEP.


“I think it will help put students in a better position to get help and be able to help themselves."

"I think it will help put students in a better position to get help and be able to help themselves," Carter said. "Of course there are so many variables involved in this, but I think what we can do is just provide as many resources as we can to all of our students. If these resources are then used we will be able to see better academic experiences and then that will translate into better student success rates.”



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