Welcome to Mile Markers, a bimonthly newsletter about rural higher education. I’m Nick Fouriezos, an Open Campus national reporter who grew up at the crossroads of suburban Atlanta and the foothills of Appalachia.

Today’s Roadmap

01: Postcards: From advising to coaching

02: Roadside Attractions: Rural colleges at risk

01: Postcards

When a rural Oregon Tech student was struggling to get through their curriculum, they didn’t turn to a fellow classmate or to an academic advisor for help.

Instead, they turned to a coach, provided to them by the college through a partnership with the Oregon nonprofit InsideTrack.

“I am wanting to have my textbooks on audio file or audiobooks and be able to listen to it in my vehicle or when I'm at the gym. I have an hour commute each way to work and it's the perfect time to be able to listen to my textbooks,” they wrote, in an exchange Oregon Tech shared with Open Campus while withholding the student’s name to protect their privacy.

The college’s ‘Read&Write” program felt “a bit archaic, and a lot of the features don’t work.” The student was having to download textbooks chapter-by-chapter, but the files were so big that they couldn’t fit on their phones.

“Actually making the files is adding a minimum 20+ hours to my school work and I feel like that makes my disability accommodations unequitable.”

They are just one of Oregon Tech’s nearly 800 students studying fully online while also balancing jobs, family lives, and, sometimes, disabilities that make taking traditional classroom courses challenging.

Without the coaching program, their struggles might have remained invisible to university administrators until poor grades revealed the problem. Instead, the coach was able to alert staff and advocate for better accommodations.

For Ruth Claire Black, dean of online learning and global engagement at Oregon Tech, that exchange clearly demonstrated the value of the coaching program.

“The students are talking to our coaches about issues that clearly are not on our radar, but should have been,” Black said. “For us, that’s a huge win.”

Beyond Academic Advising

While located in the Portland exurbs, Oregon Tech serves a unique population, with many of its students first-generation college students, working adults, or transfer students.

Nearly one-third of the university’s 5,300 students take at least one class online, while 15% are full-time online students — and for those students in particular, coaching has served as a way to let them know what resources are available even when it isn’t so easy to find them.

“Online students don’t get the same type of orientation, they just don’t,” Black says. “They rarely will walk by, say, the office for disability services, and think, “oh, maybe I need an accommodation.’”

In the wake of the pandemic, college administrators across the country have thought deeply about how to better serve rural and online students more effectively.

Oregon Tech was no different. And as Black and others considered how to best serve the students who were struggling most, they realized that advisers weren’t the answer.

“We thought about hiring more academic advisors, but academic advisors are really much more likely to help determine what classes you need to take, and why. They're not really equipped to do this type of work,” Black said.

The data is “pretty grim” for students who see their college experience interrupted, Black said, noting that “your likelihood of persistence to graduation is pretty low, less than 20%.”

That’s especially true for the types of students that Black sees most in their online learning programs: Most are in their late thirties or even early forties, creating not just challenges with juggling work and school, but also family.

“Many had parents that needed attention and help. They are often caring for both an above and a below generation, while working full time.”

The coaching model differs significantly from traditional academic advising, according to Ruth Bauer from InsideTrack. While advisors focus on course registration and degree requirements, coaches take a broader view.

"Our coaching methodology is really all centered on building a relationship with a student and building trust with the student, and then really helping them to break down challenges and obstacles they face into an action plan," Bauer explained. "A coach is there to support them through that process and to be their accountability partner as well."

The approach resembles "a life coach or an executive coach, but applied to a student experience," she said.

‘At their limits’

Online students surveyed by the university consistently reported feeling disconnected from campus life—understandable for those who "never intend to come to campus even for one class" and miss out on the sports events, clubs, and study groups that build community for traditional students.

"A lot of people just felt like they were sort of at their limits," she said. "They were doing their best, but they weren't making the kind of progress that was making them happy or achieving the kind of academic excellence that they wanted."

Since the college began piloting InsideTrack in 2023, it has shown enough positive results for Oregon Tech to expand the coaching program.

In a pre-enrollment campaign targeting students who had stopped out, "well over 100 students returned," Black said, “way above our wildest dreams and expectations."

Earlier this month, the college announced it is now expanding InsideTrack’s coaching across Oregon Tech's four campuses, including working with freshmen through the Strong Start program and continued support for online students.

For Bauer, the success reflects something larger than just academic support.

Coaching helps students develop a clear understanding of "economic social mobility as the outcome of the educational journey," particularly important for rural and first-generation students who may lack guidance on how college can help improve outcomes for them and their families.

Looking Ahead

As Oregon Tech refines its approach, administrators are learning to better identify which students benefit most from coaching. The highest-performing students enthusiastically opted in during early pilots, while struggling students—who might benefit most—were harder to reach.

The goal is to transition from offering coaches to anyone who wants them to really connecting coaches with the students who both most need the support and show the most willingness to engage with it.

"Success in coaching is really a lot about matchmaking the right students with coaching at the right time," Black said.

02: Roadside Attractions

• Rural colleges ‘are in trouble.’ So writes Dana Stephenson, co-founder of the work-based learning firm Riipen, in a piece for University Business. Noting that colleges closed last year at a rate of nearly one per week, double the pace of 2023, he advocates for creating stronger workforce-education pipeline and leveraging town-gown relationships.

• Religious colleges are among the most at-risk. That was the takeaway from NPR, which highlighted the struggles of St. Ambros and Mount Mercy colleges, as they fight to remain open and serve the rural populations surrounding Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

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