How Ball State’s CSH Success Hub Is Helping Students Stay On Track

The College of Sciences and Humanities Success Hub combines personalized student support, course redesign, and faculty collaboration to help more Ball State students persist in demanding majors.

When Caroline Erny, a senior psychological science major, first stepped into the College of Sciences and Humanities Success Hub in North Quad, she wasn’t looking for help in the traditional sense. She was between classes and curious about the space she kept passing every day.

“I wandered in one day because it felt like a comfortable place to sit and work,” Ms. Erny said. “I didn’t really know what Success Hub was or what they did.”

While spending time in the hub, Ms. Erny struck up a conversation with Dr. Melisa Ellis Stevens, ’91 MA ’98, assistant dean and director of student success for the College of Sciences and Humanities. What began as an informal chat soon evolved into a more in-depth conversation about life after graduation.

“At the time, I was set on pursuing a PhD and becoming a professor,” Ms. Erny said. “Dr. Stevens asked me about my goals, what I liked about my major, and what I wanted my life to look like after college. It didn’t feel like a formal appointment, but it ended up being exactly the guidance I needed.”

Later, when Ms. Erny began to question whether a doctoral program was the right path, she returned to the hub for another conversation. This time, Dr. Stevens helped her think through alternative options that aligned with her interests—particularly her growing enthusiasm for statistics, research, and data visualization.

“She helped me connect the dots,” Ms. Erny said. “I realized I love analyzing data and presenting research in ways that could help organizations make decisions. That sounds more like the career I want. I probably wouldn’t have put that together on my own.”

Now, Ms. Erny spends even more time in the hub working as a student success ambassador, where she sees students studying between classes, checking in for appointments, needing directions to an office, or stopping by between commitments.

“A lot of students come in casually, just like I did,” she said. “But once the staff gets to know you, they check in. It’s informal, which makes it less intimidating.”

“There’s this idea that college is supposed to be completely on your own,” she said. “But at Ball State, it doesn’t feel that way. I feel like a lot of times, students just don’t know where to go, and that’s okay. The success team can figure it out with you. There’s always someone you can reach out to, and that makes a huge difference.”

Ms. Erny’s experience reflects a broader focus on student success that Ball State University has advanced since 2022 through coordination by the Student Success Initiatives team in University College, providing personalized support, targeted outreach, and practical resources to students across every major and every college. Each college has its own student success staff, ensuring students can access consistent support, while also allowing colleges to develop initiatives that meet the unique needs of their students.

In the College of Sciences and Humanities (CSH), that focus has a central home: the CSH Success Hub in North Quad. The hub is a welcoming space that serves as a daily home base for students. It’s a place to regroup, connect to resources, receive support, and keep moving forward in demanding academic programs, including many of the University’s most rigorous science pathways.

How the CSH Hub Began

When Dr. Stevens arrived at Ball State in late 2022, she was shown an empty room in North Quad and given a bold charge: build something that could transform how CSH supports students.

“It had some old chairs and bare walls,” Dr. Stevens said. “But it was a space and an opportunity. I wanted to create a place where students could walk in, take a breath, and know they belong.”

Opening in August 2023, the CSH Success Hub has become a bustling gathering place, with more than 5,500 student visits during the last academic year. Appointments scheduled through the University’s Navigate system grew by 300 percent, and daily traffic doubled from the previous year.

Dr. Stevens leads the hub alongside Sarah Sager, assistant director; two graduate assistants; and three undergraduate student workers. With this small team, the hub runs what Ms. Sager calls “an academic emergency room.”

“Students come in with all kinds of needs,” Ms. Sager said. “We may not know everything, but we know everybody. We listen and figure out what kind of help they need, whether that’s academic support, counseling, or just someone to remind them they’re doing better than they think.”

Sometimes that help means connecting a student to tutoring or counseling. Other times, it means helping them untangle a schedule, figure out how to communicate with a professor, or talk through a problem.

Unlike traditional academic advising, which Ms. Erny described as goal-oriented and transactional, student success appointments are more personal and exploratory.

“With advising, there’s usually a specific outcome—registering for classes or changing a major, which is also very helpful,” she said. “Appointments with staff in the CSH Success Hub, though, it’s more like, ‘What are you struggling with?’ or ‘What are you unsure about?’ It goes deeper.”

The hub’s rapid growth reflects a University-wide commitment to student opportunity and success, a pillar of the Our Call to Beneficence campaign. Through Student Success Centers such as the CSH Success Hub—along with expanded scholarships, microgrants, advising, and coaching—the campaign reinforces a simple belief: access to higher education should be driven by students’ potential, and every student deserves steady, personalized support to thrive at Ball State.

“The CSH Success Hub shows exactly what we mean when we talk about student opportunity and student success,” said Tiffany S. Barnes, ’94, director of development for the College of Sciences and Humanities. “The campaign helps ensure that centers like this, and the people who run them, have the resources to assist students every step of the way.”

Results that Speak for Themselves

From the start, the hub’s mission has been practical and compassionate. Leadership within the College of Sciences and Humanities wanted success to be measurable, especially in high-impact gateway courses that can determine whether students persist in STEM pathways.

The college has targeted introductory courses where failure and withdrawal rates once hovered around 30 percent. Focused collaborations between faculty, department leaders, and the dean’s office are producing measurable gains in key gateway courses.

Drop/Fail/Withdraw (DFW) rates in MATH 125 fell from 30 to 21 percent, and in ANAT 201 from 28 to 22 percent. Biology courses also improved through a pilot outreach that identifies struggling students early. Together, these efforts represent a CSH-wide approach to student success, strengthening retention, redesigning high-impact courses, and rethinking teaching practices to better meet student needs.

The point, Dr. Stevens says, isn’t to “make things easier.” It’s to make success more attainable through earlier intervention, clearer course design, and teaching that recognizes the skill sets students have.

Rethinking Teaching

The progress in assisting students is also tied to a shift in perspective.

“We’ve moved away from that old mindset of ‘look to your left, look to your right—one of you won’t be here next semester,’” Dr. Stevens said. “That was never kind or productive. We owe it to our students to meet them where they are and help them move forward.”

CSH has supported a change in philosophy through the Pedagogy Fellows Program, which empowers outstanding faculty to lead teaching innovation across 14 departments. The Fellows host workshops, maintain a faculty learning network on Canvas, and encourage instructors to share strategies. Their work helps ensure that teaching excellence remains a central component of student success.

The work also reflects who CSH students are today. Many arrive academically capable, but they are still learning how to navigate college life, particularly in demanding majors.

“We’re seeing a generation that’s academically strong but sometimes underprepared for the social and logistical parts of college life,” Dr. Stevens said. “They’ve learned in very different ways. Our job is to help them build confidence, community, and balance.”

Approximately 40 percent of CSH students are Pell-eligible, and nearly 38 percent are first-generation college students. Those realities can change the kinds of support students need and when they need it.

“Not every student has someone at home who knows what FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) is or how to talk to a professor,” Ms. Sager said. “So, we help fill in those gaps.”

Sometimes outreach begins with an attendance alert through Navigate from an instructor. Sometimes it’s a student who wanders in after getting a nudge email.

“Sometimes students will walk by the hub and say, ‘Oh, you emailed me. Can we talk?’” Ms. Sager said. “That’s where we can intervene and try to set them on the right path again.”