Portland State Magazine Spring 2015

18 PORTLAND STATE MAGAZINE SPRING 2015 IT HAD BEEN nearly two decades since Matt Miller dropped out of Portland State in 1994 for a well-paying job as a police officer, but his mom still hadn’t forgotten. Miller always intended to go back, but he put it off because of his irregular work schedule. The longer he waited, the harder it was. “Are you ever going to finish that degree?” his mom asked. “Someday,” he said. She teased him, saying maybe he was too dumb to finish. That’s it, he thought, I’m going to do it and surprise her. He called an adviser and learned about PSU’s Last Mile program. Four classes and two terms later, Miller presented his mom with an invitation to his commencement ceremony. “She started crying,” he says. “She couldn’t have been prouder. It was a really nice moment.” In the past five years, advisers have helped more than 600 dropouts like Miller earn their degrees—sometimes decades after they left PSU. The Last Mile started with a few advisers looking for ways to clear the path to graduation and has grown into a model for other universities. It is addictive to help former students who have given up on college finish their degrees, says Robert Mercer, assistant dean in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. The hardest part is finding them, he says. Advisers turned into private investigators, using everything from social media to handwritten letters to contact former students. “Every student’s narrative was different,” Mercer says. “We looked at each situation and tried to figure out why they didn’t finish.” REMOVING the obstacles took help from people in academic and business offices across campus. Some students needed help paying their outstanding fees or tuition for their last classes. But money often wasn’t the main issue. The initial $50,000 budget for the program was mostly untouched. Instead, for many students, new graduation requirements had increased the credits and time they needed to finish their degrees. To solve that problem, Last Mile students are allowed to graduate under the requirements from the course catalogue when they were students. Usually students have seven years to complete their degrees before the requirements expire. Miller, for instance, was 16 credits short of graduation when he dropped out. By the time he looked into returning to PSU, he needed 27 more credits to meet the new degree standards. With the Last Mile, he could earn his degree by taking only the original missing credits. For other students, the advising team looked closely at their existing credits from PSU and other schools to meet or waive the requirements. Lessons learned in the Last Mile have shaped PSU’s push to prevent more students from dropping out in the first place. Using a new student tracking system, advisers can now easily identify individual students and groups who are at risk of not graduating and give them the support they need as soon as WR I T T E N B Y SUZANNE PARD I NGTON Advisers from PSU’s Last Mile program helped Portland Police Officer Matt Miller easily finish his degree 20 years after he left the University. Photo by Peter Simon. IT’S NEVER TOO LATE Helping students go the last mile to get their degrees.