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At the Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico, placing the student at the heart of everything we do is a cornerstone of our Institutional Strategic Plan. Students are the foundation and driving force behind our commitment to innovate. We create, evaluate, and design policies and procedures that support their persistence through to graduation; a milestone we celebrate together.
Grounded in 60 years of excellence, we are proud of a university community that walks alongside students at every stage of their academic journey. We chart their path to success through our institutional retention and persistence model. This model rests on four core pillars: academic, student centered, social, and technological. These pillars foster a campus wide culture of continuous student support.
The Center for Academic Support and Advising serves as the CASA of our students, guided by academic advisors, mentors, peer advisors, faculty advisors, counselors, and social workers who strengthen academic retention and persistence. The social dimension is also woven in by engaging students’ families through workshops and meetings, recognizing that family support is foundational to academic and personal success.
The SABER Program, part of our Learning and Collaborative Hub, is one of the signature innovations of our model. It offers academic reinforcement through Learning Coaches and Learning Partners, helping students sharpen their academic skills while building a sense of belonging, self-esteem, resilience, and self-management; grounded in a constructivist approach that is essential to their holistic development and long-term persistence.
Our Academic Advising and Enrollment Management team continuously analyzes institutional data, demographic trends, and information from the Department of Education, College Board, and other sources. This ongoing analysis and assessment allows us to keep innovating and developing strategies that strengthen both retention and enrollment, always with the student at the center. These efforts have translated into sustained gains in retention rates and consistently exceeded our enrollment goals.
Student success begins with a student’s intention and belief in their own potential, aligned with their academic goals. It grows through academic, social, and professional formation, in the classroom and through the interconnected support systems of student services, administrative teams, and technology.
Faculty and academic leaders are instrumental to student success. They inspire and mentor the next generation of professionals through a holistic formation process. The administrative and student support teams meet student needs with agility, sensitivity, and empathy. Every unit across our university understands its specific role in building an organizational culture centered on student success.
Behind every chart and data point we present to accrediting agencies to meet federal compliance requirements, there are stories, dreams and realities that belong to each one of our students. At the Polytechnic University, we are committed to inspiring students to persist until they earn their degree. We strive to know them in their full dimension; their strengths, their challenges and to educate them in a way that builds critical thinking and fuels creativity.
We meet each student where they are. Some face financial hardship; others must balance family and work responsibilities; many arrive with self-doubt or uncertainty about whether they belong in college. For each of these populations, we develop targeted strategies. We cultivate a culture of success, transdisciplinary, ethically grounded, and built on empathy; one that lifts students’ aspirations higher.
We are building a university community that nurtures resilience, grows confidence, and celebrates every milestone. Persistence, at its core, means helping our students believe in a hopeful future and working every single day to help them reach it, walking alongside them until the moment they cross that stage.
The student at the center is the bridge that inspires us to keep innovating, keep creating, keep embracing challenges, so that our model continues to evolve in response to the students of this generation and those yet to come.
by: Dr. María G. Vélez Morales
Vice President for Innovation in Retention, Persistence, and Student Success
