Spring 2025 GradAppAlooza

Submitted by Miyah Gaston on
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What is the Purpose of the Assessment?

The purpose of this assessment is to establish a baseline of data to help inform future planning and success of our annual GradAppalooza event. We also seek to measure how effectively GradAppAlooza connected EMCC students with transfer and career/workforce resources, increased their understanding of graduation processes, and drove on‑time graduation applications. By capturing attendee feedback at the Spring 2025 GradAppAlooza event and tracking degree‐progress check requests, we can quantify event impact and guide continuous improvement.

Describe the necessity for this assessment

This assessment is necessary to provide evidence of program impact that demonstrates increased awareness of transfer pathways, career opportunities, graduation requirements, and campus support services. It also creates a data‑driven foundation for future event planning. Historically, the Student Success Fair has occurred in tandem with GradAppAlooza to push and encourage students to submit on-time graduation applications. Now that the Student Success Fair is no longer occurring, it is integral to create a baseline to assess the effectiveness of GradAppalooza as a standalone event.

Describe how the practice will be implemented

In anticipation of Spring 2025 GradAppAlooza, we intentionally made a few decisions to position us for the greatest programmatic impact. These included: 

  • Cross-Departmental Collaboration: A strategy meeting occurred with A&R, Advisement, and the CTC to plan the graduation application progress checks. The degree progress check request form and spreadsheet was modified to capture more student information up front for the advisors and to clarify the graduation steps. Workforce and the CTC worked to provide a wide variety of transfer reps and employers. Marketing and the CTC identified an outreach strategy and HubSpot forms.
  • Targeted Outreach: In the absence of the Student Success Fair, intentional marketing was identified as a focus area to inform students of the event. We pulled an OPIE list of students with 50+ credits and launched an email campaign in HubSpot with the assistance of Marketing.
  • Pre-Event Engagement: Prior to GradAppAlooza, degree progress checks were encouraged through QR codes and flyers at the Welcome Desk, A&R, Advisement and CTC.
  • On-Site Event Engagement: Check in forms were accessible to students via QR codes and iPads upon entry to capture attendance numbers and accessible before serving pizza to capture feedback survey responses. Survey responses were incentivized with EMCC swag and Cane's coupons.
  • Post-Event Follow Up: A HubSpot reminder was sent out the morning after the event to all check-ins to reinforce next steps and additional feedback.

In addition to the employers and transfer reps present to table, EMCC resources (Advisement, A&R, Alumni, and Honors/PTK) were present to promote the graduation process. 

Interpret, compare, and describe the results

The following is a summary of the results captured from the check-in response, feedback survey, and progress check requests:

  • Survey Engagement: 207 responses (79% of 262 attendees) and 232 degree‑progress check requests by the conclusion of GradAppAlooza (Feb 6-March 7th) - a strong baseline for future comparison. At the time of the graduation deadline (April 10, 2025), there are a total of 317 total degree progress check requests for the advisors- which means, 73% of these requests occurred as a result of GradAppAlooza programming.
  • Student Outcomes and Satisfaction: 90.7% of students learned new information about relevant companies/universities; 95.6% would recommend the fair; 84.6% better understood the graduation application process; 83.9% learned ways to stay connected post‑graduation
  • Student Retention and Campus Involvement: Nearly half (49%) requested Career & Transfer Center follow‑up; 38.1% sought Workforce & Experiential Learning follow up; 23% wanted Graduation team support; smaller but significant interest in Honors/PTK and Alumni.

There were a total of 262 total attendees at Grad-App-Alooza this year. There is not a record of attendance from prior events but we will be able to establish a baseline for the future due to our usage of an online check-in form through HubSpot this year.

After analyzing, and reflecting on the outcome, what are the next steps?

Regarding the GradAppAlooza Fair: 

  • Timing: It is clear this fair provides an important role in reaching students and raising awareness about the graduation process. However, there was a clear imbalanced attendance rate between the two days: 51 students attended Monday while 211 attended Tuesday. To better utilize campus resources and increase the return of investment for employers and reps in attendance, we recommend condensing the fair to one day and extending the fair time by a few hours for those with afternoon classes. Additionally, Academic Advisors were overwhelmed with priority registration and GradAppAlooza occurring at the same time. It was suggested to move this event to the last weekend in February, which was the original timing of the Student Success Fair.
  • Student Experience: Students ask for a variety of vendors to be present, including more out of state school representation and greater variety of industry employers. The CTC and Workforce teams will continue to be intentional in our representative selection. A follow up survey will go out to students asking them who they wish to see at the next fair, to help inform future planning. We also suggested enhancing the student experience with custom marketing items, activation experiences during the fair and food. 

Regarding Graduation Application Impact: 

One important takeaway from this year’s GradAppaLooza event is the need to improve how we track the impact of student engagement on timely graduation application submissions. While we successfully encouraged students to request degree progress checks and learn about graduation requirements, we currently face challenges in fully capturing whether those students ultimately submitted their applications.

As of the 2025 graduation deadline (April 14th), A&R reports 564 graduation applications for Spring 2025 and 118 for Summer 2025. These numbers cannot be compared with the degree progress check figures because students can initiate degree progress checks and apply for graduation through various methods, such as email, paper forms, or in-person communication with Advisement and A&R.

While each department has processes in place to support students effectively, the decentralized nature of these systems makes it difficult to collectively track application outcomes in a consistent and efficient way. Advisors are also managing Field of Interest (FOI) service emails and their own work-assigned emails to receive graduation applications that require review and processing. Additionally, there are numerous one-off spreadsheets used by FOI advisors that do not correlate with each other but serve as individual methods for monitoring and tracking graduation applications.

Determining the impact of GradAppaLooza's efforts on timely graduation applications and cross-referencing the impact of our marketing campaign would require a tedious manual process to cross-reference multiple spreadsheets.

This presents a valuable opportunity for cross-departmental collaboration to explore more integrated, consistent, and automated tracking solutions. Leveraging platforms like HubSpot to integrate additional forms and processes, in addition to the current check-in form, could help streamline communication, improve real-time data sharing, and support more consistent follow-up with students. A centralized approach would not only strengthen our ability to measure the effectiveness of events like GradAppaLooza but also enhance the overall student experience and institutional efficiency.

Abstract

GradAppaLooza (Transfer and Job Fair) is an annual event organized by Estrella Mountain County Community College's (EMCC) Career and Education Planning team, in coordination with Workforce Development, Admissions and Records, and Advisement! This event is aimed at providing opportunities for students transitioning to the next phase of their academic or professional journey. The event facilitates interactions between EMCC students and representatives from over 50 universities and employers and serves as a platform for students to explore various pathways, including transferring to universities or entering the workforce. GradAppaLooza is strategically scheduled to coincide with the graduation deadline and priority registration week, ensuring students have access to resources needed for further academic advancement or completing their graduation application for the Spring or Summer terms. 

The Spring 2025 GradAppAlooza event established a baseline of data to help inform future planning and success of our annual GradAppalooza event, including 262 total attendees for the two-day fair. GradAppAlooza also contributed to 73% of degree progress checks received via the degree progress check QR code, and 84.6% of students reported a better understanding of the graduation application process as a result of attending this event. 

Division/Department
Student Affairs
Completed Full Cycle
Yes

Comments

Isaac Torres Wed, 04/23/2025 - 6:13pm

Excellent work. The thoughtful approach and commitment to continuous improvement are commendable and provide needed evidence of the learning that is occurring within student affairs and cross-divisionally. I encourage and support ongoing review and strategic refinement, as these efforts are essential to driving meaningful outcomes and sustained student success.

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Catrina Kranich Thu, 04/24/2025 - 2:14pm

Miyah and SA Colleagues -

Thank you for creating a methodical event that strived to capture how the student experience was impacted through participation. Guiding students to the culmination of their time here at EMCC (i.e. graduation) is an important process that requires cross-collaboration from many departments in Student Affairs. I appreciate all of the work Student Affairs is doing to create the best student experience for our community.

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