Many campuses have launched recruitment and retention programs geared toward im-proving the success rates of low-income and other disadvantaged students. These programs often use several strategies, such as faculty and student mentoring, peer advis-ing, and academic and social counseling to encourage at-risk students to remain enrolled (Sallie Mae, 1999).

Less discussed, however, is the role of the president and other campus leaders in develop-ing, designing, and implementing successful retention efforts. Yet prior research has demonstrated that senior leadership on campus is often the key ingredient needed to im-plement these programs. For example, Redd and Scott (1997) used data from the AASCU/Sallie Mae National Retention Project to illustrate the effects of senior leadership on retention. On successful campus efforts, senior leadership plays two important roles. First, the president and his or her key cabinet officers regularly monitor their institution’s progress toward clearly stated campus retention goals. Redd and Scott (1997) noted, “Nearly 90 percent of the high-rate colleges said that ‘senior administrators regularly monitor information about progress in increasing retention and graduation rates of stu-dents’ was descriptive or very descriptive of their institutions, compared [with] 69.3 percent of the low-rate colleges.”

Second, the campus chief executive officer is usually the one person at the institution who can bring all the interested parties—students, parents, other campus administrators, fac-ulty, and staff—together toward the goals of retention. Sallie Mae, in its Supporting the Historically Black College and University Mission: The Sallie Mae–HBCU Default Manage-ment Project (1999), noted that the president must coordinate “strategies [that] can be developed to help increase student success. . . . The president must remain fully informed of the [campus’s] activities and help each of these units contribute to the goal of raising student achievement. Only leadership from the president or chancellor can bring [campus] units together” for the purposes of raising retention rates (Sallie Mae, 1999).

Presidents can play other roles as well in their institutions’ efforts to improve retention. According to Earl S. Richardson, president of Morgan State University, an HBCU in Balti-more, the president should emphasize four areas on his or her campus to improve retention (Alliance for Equity in Higher Education, 2001):

• Increase need-based financial aid for low-income, at-risk students;
• Use the campus’s social and cultural activities to keep students focused; and
• Encourage academic advising outside the classroom.

According to Richardson, however, presidents “need to deal with all four areas together. . . . Campuses must become a community for students” for retention efforts to succeed (Alli-ance for Equity in Higher Education, 2001). In many instances, the president is the one person on campus who can integrate all four areas and strategies to work cohesively and simultaneously for students (Alliance for Equity in Higher Education, 2001).

James Shanley, president of Fort Peck Community College, a tribal college in Poplar, Mon-tana, adds that chief executives also “need to engage students and families. Students are driven by family issues. However, student services are often designed for working with stu-dents but not for working with families” (Alliance for Equity in Higher Education, 2001). Older, nontraditional students are particularly affected by “day care and other family issues that hinder retention” (Diversity and Multi-cultural Initiatives Committee, 2001). Senior administrators are best able to use their influence on campus to deal with these issues effectively.

Chief administrators’ attitudes about retention can also influence its importance on cam-pus (Diversity and Multi-cultural Initiatives Committee, 2001). For example, one institution reported that its senior administrators use retention goals as part of the staff evaluation system. All faculty and other staff are evaluated on what efforts they have made to im-prove the recruitment and retention of minority students (Diversity and Multi-cultural Initiatives Committee, 2001).