Q&A with UMGC’s Nancy Trojanowski, EdD
When learners first enroll at UMGC, they are greeted by welcome committee of sorts, led by Nancy Trojanowski, EdD, department chair of the First Year Experience, or FYE.
Trojanowski is a ball of energy and enthusiasm, and her passion for helping students make the most out of their UMGC experience is infectious. Since arriving in 2023, she has expanded and tweaked FYE multiple times in an effort to meet learners where they are.
One of the first steps on the FYE journey is to enroll in PACE 111 Program and Career Exploration, or, for transfer students with at least 60 credits, PACE 100 Professional and Career Exploration. How have the PACE courses changed since you arrived?
PACE is the first course that all degree-seeking undergraduate students take, so we’re talking just under 40,000 new students annually. We strongly encourage learners to complete PACE in their first term to ensure a strong foundation for success.
When I arrived, it was evident that we did not have enough instructors. Teaching novice learners requires a particular skill set, so during the first year, we hired approximately 180 adjunct faculty members, and I also taught the course myself. We realize that one size does not fit all, and we operate on a model of continual improvement.
We've increased the offerings to suit the unique paths that students take. We offer PACE 100 for transfer learners with 60-plus credits, PACE sections for English Language Learners, and six separate PACE111 “flavors”: Business, Communication and Humanities, Multidisciplinary Studies, Public Safety, Health and Sciences, and Technology. We spent a lot of time working with our faculty, because you need a high-touch disposition to teach PACE.
We’ve also built dashboards and systems that provide real-time feedback for teachers, which enable us to move the needle before the session ends. We can take action in the moment, which has been really helpful.
Tell me about the InScribe community that grew out of the PACE courses. How did that come about?
We noticed that belonging was a gap. In a primarily online institution, it was a big challenge. So, we piloted a course community in PACE and it was wildly successful. We're talking tens of thousands of students , which to me was mind-blowing, because it's not connected to an assignment or a grade. Learners needed a space to chat and ask questions and make connections. It was so successful that the same platform is now used for the UMGC student community and many clubs and organizations.
We realized from that experience that the students are kind of in different buckets. You have students who want to do their own thing and not interact with anyone. Then you've got the middle-of-the-road students who are curious. We can see from the analytics how many students go in and look around, but they never comment or give reactions. I call them the lurkers—they're curious and want to see all the things, but they don't really want to interact. Then you have students who want all the things. They attend all the events they can.
How has the InScribe community changed since you stood it up?
In the beginning, we’d have university administrators present in the discussions, and we heard from a lot of students that that was intimidating. Students are there because they want to chat with other students. So we hired peer leaders—fellow students who post content, respond to questions, do live events—and they are phenomenal. They might have a live event on a subject like time management, or just “ask me anything.” Those have worked remarkably well. We also run weekly live events, in collaboration with our tutoring services, Effective Writing Center, office of student success, and PACE faculty.
What did you add to FYE in those early days after you joined UMGC?
We do a few things that are unique, given how important relationship-building is from the start. One of them is an instructor connection, a one-on-one meeting that instructors have with each student. It builds that relationship, answers questions, and gets new learners over the fear of talking to someone.
We also created an assignment where students talk to their Success Network Partner. That’s the term we use to encompass their success coach, military education coordinator, advisor, or program coordinator.
We also reinvented Virtual Orientation to focus on on what students need in their first 30 days to be successful—the basic tenets. And we’ve worked to customize that in a way that’s seamless for students. Students just log in and, based on their profile, they get served up content that is relevant. For example, if they are military and in a graduate program, they’ll see content that fits with that.
We’re creating consistency, but at the same time, offering the customization and individualization students need without them having to think about it. I remember being a new student. Anytime you do a new thing, you have to figure it out. It can be confusing and overwhelming. Sometimes you just have to simplify things and take a proactive approach.
Nancy Trojanowski, EdD Department chair of the First Year Experience, UMGC
What do you find is the biggest challenge students face in starting—and then continuing—their UMGC experience?
One of the things we heard frequently in our new student surveys is that they have low confidence in their ability to master the technological aspects of online learning. To address that, we provided that feedback data to the Tutoring Services & Resources office, and they hired classroom technology tutors who are trained to help students master that aspect. We’re also working to create a new PACE offering that builds that technology-readiness piece right in, because it is a struggle for some of our learners.
With PACE and FYE morphing so quickly, how do the teachers stay current?
A lot of these changes came from faculty ideas, but we have around 600 adjunct faculty teaching PACE, so it’s a large volume. We can’t closely monitor what’s happening in 600 different sections, but we can use our real-time dashboards to look at faculty performance and engagement. And then we have faculty coaches who have taught the course before and can offer feedback. It’s an opportunity for them to have a leadership role, and they have been instrumental in helping us raise the bar. We also work closely with the Office of Student Success and our Digital Student Experience team to understand the student perspective with the hope of initiating proactive support.
Have you found any trends in the data you’ve collected that identify when students are most likely to be successful?
Yes, and we have visuals to illustrate this in both PACE and Virtual Orientation. “Happy Path” is a strategy that promotes taking PACE as the first course and two classes in session I and two in session III, so that none of their classes overlap. Students who do this seem to hit the sweet spot. A lot of students, especially just starting out, don’t realize that at UMGC, session II straddles both session I and III. If they don’t realize that overlap, students can get overwhelmed pretty quickly. That’s one of the many reasons we encourage them to take PACE first. Encouraging students to follow the Happy Path strategy, along with providing course suggestions, yields higher student success and a faster path to graduation. Additionally, learners who complete Virtual Orientation have higher GPAs, increased course success rates, and increased retention, when compared to those who don’t complete it.
Read more about the first year experience on the UMGC blog: UMGC Gives First-Year Students Tools to Succeed.