SHREVEPORT – As a first-generation college student, Adrienne Davis said she felt intimidated by the college lingo and rude instructors at the beginning of her college career.

Now an LSUS faculty member in public health, Davis is actively working to reduce those sentiments and increase student retention through revamped teaching methods.

She is one of four Meauxmentum Scholars at LSUS, instructors undergoing a set of trainings and professional development, sharing their knowledge with the campus at large via faculty learning communities.

“I was so intimidated when I was younger that I just stopped going (to class) because people were kind of rude and expecting me to know certain acronyms (without prior teaching),” Davis said. “I think it’s really important, especially with our student population, to make sure that we’re not assuming certain things.

“I do things like write out World Health Organization for WHO and the like.”

The Meauxmentum Scholars program is part of the Louisiana Board of Regents’ Meauxmentum Framework, a set of ideas and solutions designed to educate and assist a new generation of student.

Rogers Martin, a veteran math instructor and a Meauxmentum Scholar, is familiar with the “gatekeeper mentality” sometimes found in old-school academia.

Early-college math classes – like college algebra – are often seen as a barrier to student progression. Some professors undertook the mantle of “weeding out” students they deemed unworthy of college.

He’s doing his part to make those classes “gateway classes” instead of serving a gatekeeper function.

“There were some faculty members who radiated that gatekeeper mentality,” Martin said. “Students and others would be put off by the hostility.

“But it’s better to serve as a gateway, to help launch students to successful college careers.”

One technique Martin employed toward the end of one of his spring classes is student-led test reviews as opposed to a teacher-led review.

“I purposefully didn’t print out enough problem sheets for everyone to have one, and that pushed students to share sheets and study together,” Martin said. “Students performed better on that test than other tests that semester – the scores came up a quite a bit actually.

“It’s a small sample size, but it’s promising enough that I’ll employ that method this fall. If students can teach it to others, they understand it pretty well themselves.”

Student-led pretests is one example offered in the book “Small Teaching” by James Lang, which suggests implementing small changes incrementally to significantly improve student learning.

The Meauxmentum Scholars and the 10-member faculty learning community reviewed the book as part of a series of discussions about ways to better engage today’s student.

Math faculty member Melinda Cassel said she strives to connect with students starting on the first day of class.

“My first challenge on day one is to win the trust of my students,” Cassel said. “The next important challenge is to dispel fears they may have.

“When I’ve made that effort on day one, my students are more willing to collaborate with me and not resist growing as students.”

Cassel employs other methods such normalizing making mistakes as part of the learning process and encouraging questions by allowing students to submit questions on index cards in her question box.

Dr. Laura Meiki, assistant sociology professor, is a champion of TILT, which stands for Transparency in Learning and Teaching.

TILT represents ideas like explaining acronyms and other language that’s key to the foundation of that subject but may not have been part of every student’s educational background.

“I’m using that lens and making our assignments and syllabi and other types of instruction more user-friendly and spelling out more of what we’re looking for,” said Meiki, who also teaches a first-year seminar class. “Teaching people with jargon that we use in academia, a student can show mastery in the subject or proving that they belong in that environment.

“But if you don’t slow down and explain that jargon and that idea, it creates an ‘in group’ and an ‘out group’ in the classroom.”

If a student, especially a first-generation student, feels like they are part of the “out-group,” it’s just one more signal for a student who may already be questioning whether he or she belongs in college.

Meiki added that she’s conducting more “check-ins” in her classes, asking students more often about clarity and understanding of concepts.

Davis implements a heavy dose of in-class group work, partly as an alternative to lengthy lectures and to provide a social academic bonding experience.

“We’re moving more toward active learning as opposed to passive learning, like sitting through lectures,” Davis said. “Active learning techniques are much better for your brain.

“Students can play to their strengths in group work and learn as part of a team. We want students to have real-life, real-world applications of the knowledge.”

Members of the faculty learning community, which includes the Meauxmentum Scholars, helped shaped LSUS’s Quality Enhancement Plan, part of its continuous improvement efforts as it relates to accreditation with the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.

Improved instruction, particularly instruction that occurs in more relevant methods and formats to better serve today’s student, is one key tenet of that Quality Enhancement Plan, titled “Navigating Student Success: Charting a Course for Teaching Excellence.”

“I see a lot of overlap between what we started with Meauxmentum Scholars and what’s in the QEP,” Meiki said. “We were tasked to put together a learning group to discuss different things and ways to improve our teaching, and I feel like that model could be used to implement the QEP across campus.”

One facet of the Meauxmentum Framework is to identify and reduce common stumbling blocks for students that result in increased dropout rates.

Expanding access to higher education and improving success rates of students who enroll will assist the Louisiana Board of Regents in reaching their goal of 60 percent of all working-age adults in the state to hold a college degree or high-value credential by 2030.

Four years after the master plan went into effect, the Board of Regents reported that 51 percent of such Louisianans have reached that bar in 2024, up a total of four percentage points from 2021.