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“As you may or may not be aware, we are low on the totem pole for all the AAU (Association of American Universities) metrics for retention and graduation rates. We’re like the lowest or in the last quartile, which is not acceptable, because this is an awesome institution,� Prelock said Monday at her first Faculty Senate meeting since joining the UA May 19. “We have amazing faculty and students, we have incredible research going on, we need to step it up.�

Prelock said her goal is to increase student retention by 2% each year over the next three years so that the UA gets to 90%, and to increase graduation rates by 2% over the next five years so they reach 65% for four-year graduation and 85% for six-year graduation.

The retention rate is the percentage of first-year students who return for their second year, which currently stands at 84%. The four-year graduation rate is 55%.

“Now, this means there’s going to be things that we’re going to have to do differently, and not do everything, but maybe identify two or three best practices that we can support all the colleges and faculty to implement,� Prelock said.

“The question is, how are we going to know that we have achieved successful students, how do we know that we’re developing research for the future, how do we know that we are really engaging with our communities?� she said.

Prelock’s report to the Faculty Senate included details of her approach of advancing student success through conversations with varying but very small, focused groups comprising community partners, staff, faculty, undergraduate students, graduate students, Native American students and student leaders.

So far, she has completed 14 out of 21 such scheduled meetings and has met with more than 300 individuals, she said. Recurring themes have come out of these conversations, she said — including needs for student advising, coordination of services, and increased communication.

When it comes to career outcomes, 89-90% of UA graduates have a job or are in graduate school within six months of graduation, Prelock said, praising the university’s career outcomes and career services teams. The goal there is to get to 95% to be in the top quartile of the AAU institutions.

As for enrollment, Prelock mentioned the UA is intentionally looking to “right-size� the university.

Early this summer, a UA administrator sent an email to UA’s off-campus student housing partners telling them to expect a 20% decline in the fall 2025 new student class, saying most of the decline would come from out-of-state and international students.

At the Faculty Senate meeting, Prelock said the UA is streamlining its approach to enhance its strategies, and re-examining financial aid and merit allocations to see what students’ needs are.

She emphasized the importance of finances and debt in measuring student success, saying it isn’t just about retaining students or making sure they graduate on time and have good career outcomes.

“One of the initiatives that we have engaged in is our community colleges,� Prelock said. “I’ve had three conversations with Pima Community College and we’ll be meeting with them again next week. They really want U of A at Pima, and they realize there’s been a significant decrease in transfers from Pima, so we need to do better.�

The goal of creating better pathways for community college students is to give them the opportunity to come to the main UA campus if they are prepared, and to prepare them for it if they are not, Prelock explained. She said it’s important to work with community colleges and with Arizona Online, UA’s online institution, to help students succeed.

“You know, for me, it’s not fair to bring a student in, have them spend money and not have a degree,� she said. “That’s unconscionable to me. So, we really need to do better.�

A question raised was UA’s acceptance rate and if it will change under the university’s new approach. In response, Prelock said the UA will probably see a decrease in the acceptance rate.

“That’s intentional and purposeful, because remember, we are going to be recruiting students who can graduate. But, in the meantime, to fulfill our land-grant mission, that’s why we have Arizona Online, that’s why we’re building these relationships with community colleges,� Prelock said.

“It also decreases debt, because it’s cheaper to go your first two years to a community college and then to transfer in where many students are working,� she continued. “So yeah, I anticipate that our acceptance rate will probably be different, but every student will have a pathway to get here.�

Prelock also discussed strategic advising as an important part of UA’s student success initiative, saying many of the university’s professional advisors are not cross-trained to advise students who think about moving from one college to another, and that the advisors require more support with their heavy workloads.

UA students “have given us some really good feedback about what they want in a professional advisor and how they see faculty as mentors,� said Prelock. It’s “less about telling them what courses they need, but why did you get into the field, what is your passion for what you do? Those kinds of things are really important. So, we’re going to try and elevate the quality and consistency of advising, strengthen their training, enhance the experience and have some structured approaches.�

Prelock also mentioned the university’s integration of artificial intelligence into student advising, saying it has a software program that allows a student’s curriculum to be mapped to whatever major they choose.

After her report, Prelock was asked about her approach towards students from minority and underrepresented communities, to which she said the provost’s office has been collecting data on such students, and some areas need improvement. She said the UA is taking a “special approach� through the newly established Student Culture and Engagement Hub.

The hub was created at the UA before summer break by centralizing six of the university’s seven cultural centers — Asian Pacific American Student Affairs, African American Student Affairs, the Guerrero Student Center, LGBTQ Student Affairs, the Women & Gender Resource Center, and the Disability Cultural Center.

The seventh cultural center, Native American Student Affairs, was integrated into the Office of Native American Initiatives.

The centralization came amid the Trump administration’s and the Republican-controlled Arizona Legislature’s orders and notices against diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility activities at universities. While some members of the UA community said the hub was a compromise solution that gives the university time to plan how to move forward, others said the decision was made without student input and shared governance.