UC San Diego founded the Student Success Coaching Program in 2016, seeking to create a strengths-based approach to removing historical institutional barriers for first-generation college students.
The invite-only program provides cohorts of incoming and continuing first-generation students with one-on-one professional and peer coaching from their first year to graduation. Students meet with their coaches to discuss adjusting to college, leveraging campus resources, balancing family with school, managing their time and more.
At first, Success Coaches relied on emails and phone calls to reach students. But that proved not only excessively time-consuming but also ineffective.
The team considered establishing phone numbers with Google Voice in order to text students—as other UC San Diego departments had tried— but they discovered that the service wasn’t fit for bulk messaging. They could only message a few students at once, and messages sent too frequently would get marked as spam.
They needed a better system: one that would save staff time, meet FERPA standards, target the right students and allow for a mix of bulk outgoing messages and personalized one-to-one responses.
They found all that and more in Modern Campus Message.
In 2016, UC San Diego invited 425 first-year students to participate in its inaugural Student Success Coaching Program. The next year, they invited the same number of first-year students to join the existing group, thereby doubling their total reach.
And in 2020, UC San Diego was able to invite more first-year students than ever before to join the Student Success Coaching Program—a smart way to combat the challenges of connecting with students remotely during the onset of the COVID pandemic.
All told, from 2016 to 2023, the number of participants has more than quadrupled! The program comfortably serves more than 1,800 first-gen students.
The tremendous growth wouldn’t have been possible through email, phone calls or in-person meetings alone. Students are busy and understandably overwhelmed by the number of people trying to reach them. But text messaging cuts through the noise, empowering UC San Diego coaches and students to connect and maintain compelling conversations all year round.
Today’s students want college and university staff to meet them in their existing communication spaces: text messaging. Message enables exactly that, with all of its features purpose-built for higher education.
Coaches’ favorite benefits of Message’s unique two-way conversational messaging approach include:
Texting keeps students and coaches connected all year round, allowing trust to build naturally and the benefits of coaching to extend far beyond in-person meetings.
Students can text their coaches anytime a question or concern arises, without worrying about disrupting that coach’s personal life. Staff only see new messages via Message during business hours.
Staff can quickly survey students, offer last-minute opportunities that arise, inquire about a student’s progress with a task and get answers to yes-or-no questions.
Texting is the coaches’ most reliable way of delivering information to students as they need it, when they need it. Students often don’t check their emails until hours or days after a message is sent, but they typically see texts immediately.
By texting students early into their time at UC San Diego, coaches quickly establish themself as a friendly, go-to resource.
Message helps staff reach students after the start of a scheduled meeting. They can reassure students who are running a few minutes late, give lost students directions to their office or offer to reschedule.
Message makes it easy for staff to schedule follow-up messages after in-person meetings. For example, if a student shares during a meeting that they’re nervous about an upcoming midterm, the coach can schedule a “good luck” text to go out the morning of the exam.
Texting allowed the coaching program to continue during pandemic lockdowns, giving students familiar staff to turn to from their phones.
Message enables coaches to enhance text messages with pictures, links, fliers and more, enabling students to directly access the information they need. Plus, emojis help coaches express their personalities and set a conversational tone. 😊
Coaches don’t always have time to cover every available resource during their in-person meetings with students. But they can use texting to follow up—such as providing instructions for submitting a form or sharing more details about an event. Coaches may also ask students to reflect on given advice and text their thoughts within a few days—no need to schedule an additional meeting.
Coaches will often send students general open-ended questions, inquiring about the student’s well-being. Students often appreciate such messages as a chance to boast about successes, express a concern or share a challenge.
By cleverly building students’ trust, offering reliable responses and connecting students to the right resources, UC San Diego is helping first-generation learners feel confident and connected in order to persist, graduate and thrive.
Even students who don’t often respond to incoming texts from their coaches have expressed appreciation for the level of care.