Good evening.  I hope everyone’s week is going well.  There has not really been too much going on for me this week.

Last Friday I met with Shannon Scott, who is the retention specialist for the College of Arts and Sciences.  We talked about the retention rate in the College of Arts and Sciences and the retention rate for the university as a whole.  In the meeting Shannon mentioned many programs the College of Arts and Sciences has to help keep students at the university, if they want to be here.  One of the programs that he stressed frequently was the freshmen forgiveness program.  This program is for students who are on the verge of being kicked out by the university because of low grades.  The program has the students do a number of things to give them one last chance spring quarter, some things include meeting with an advisor, getting a certain grade point average, and singing a contract expressing that you will try your hardest.  This program is a great tool to really help students stay at the university if they are dedicated to working hard.  The other thing Shannon stressed was how we were going to define high-performing students.  He suggested that we be careful where we do this because it may exclude some people who work really hard but just can’t make it to a certain g.p.a. for any number of reasons.  He suggested I look at other universities around the country to see how they define a high-performing student.

I am currently looking at universities around the country to get a better hold on how we should define high-performing students. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has one of the highest retention

 rates in the country, so I will be focusing there to see how they define high-performing.

It was brought to my attention by S.A.A.B (Student African-American Brotherhood) that they had been hearing information about a barber shop/beauty salon coming to Athens that would specialize in doing the hair of black people mainly the students.  They would like to see this happen and were wondering what is happening with the idea, and if it is even going to happen.  I therefore within the coming weeks will be trying to contact members of the administration especially in the office of the President to see what is going on with the idea of the Barber shop/Beauty Salon.

On Oct. 26^th there will be a Multicultural Visit Program (MVP) where potential students come to the university and get tours, talk to current students, and organizations around campus.  I along with Commissioner Walker will be attending the program to represent the Senate.  If anyone else would like to help out I will be passing around a sign-up sheet. 

Have a good week and end of report.