# CASE STUDY

## Upswing Helps North Carolina A&T Retain Students and Save Money

### Key Points

**Challenge:** NC A&T needed additional tools to support students with diverse schedules and academic challenges.

**Solution:** Upswing’s products provided students with on-demand tutoring, Assignment Review, SMS engagement campaigns, and access to asynchronous writing resources.

### NORTH CAROLINA AGRICULTURAL AND TECHNICAL STATE UNIVERSITY

**4-Year University** | **Total Enrollment:** 13,322 (2021-2022 School Year)

Upswing is an integrated student services platform that offers partners customizable and affordable solutions for tutoring, advising, mental health, and engagement—all powered by actionable data.

## Introduction

North Carolina Agricultural and Technical (NC A&T) State University is the largest historically black university in the country and one of the top producers of African American graduates in Engineering and Agriculture.

With the growing demand for academic support services, NC A&T was struggling to provide students with the 1:1 support they needed during peak study times. They also wanted to provide the right combination of support for the various needs of their diverse student population.

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## Challenge

NC A&T experienced rapid growth in on-campus tutoring through its Center for Academic Excellence, but struggled to find ways to provide support for niche and upper-level courses. Additionally, through focus group data, they found most students were studying during the hours of 12 a.m. to 3 a.m. when the on-campus Tutorial Lab was closed. They needed a 24/7 academic support solution that would allow their diverse student body to choose the services which fit their own unique needs and access those services on their own time and personal devices.

## Upswing Solution

In addition to exploring other on-campus initiatives, NC A&T partnered with Upswing to give their students access to Upswing’s platform. Within the platform, students could schedule on-demand and future sessions with both Upswing tutors and on-campus tutors. They also received access to Assignment Review, which provided in-line and holistic feedback on writing assignments in less than 48 hours. Students could review asynchronous resources such as a citation guide within the Writing Lab. Additionally, students received reminders, announcements, and encouragement through Ana, Upswing’s virtual SMS assistant.

**Upswing saved NC A&T an estimated $74.6k over two academic years**

- 33.85% increase in student platform engagement over two years
- NC A&T retained an additional 21 students

## Impact

### Meeting Students Where They Are

In just two academic years, over 1,500 NC A&T students have used the Upswing platform. We’ve found that 48% of tutoring sessions and 50% of assignment reviews occur at night, while 20% of tutoring sessions and 21% of assignment reviews occur over the weekend. Providing these resources when students need them the most enables NC A&T to fulfill the goal of supporting a diverse student body, including first-year students, transfer students, student athletes, students in mentoring programs, and TRiO students, who have shown higher engagement with the platform compared to other students.

An estimated 21 students have been retained that would have otherwise dropped out. This additional retention saved NC A&T as much as $74,623 in tuition and fees. These savings are expected to only increase over time as more students use the platform and take advantage of Upswing’s services.

### University Savings

> "Working with Upswing to identify key times for sending reminders about advisor meetings and tutoring through Ana has been very impactful. Also, as our students engage with Ana and ask questions, I get alerted to any students thinking about dropping out or having mental health issues, and I’ve been able to intervene with the appropriate resources. So those check-ins and interactions really do make a difference." —Amy Anderson

*NC A&T worked on a number of initiatives during this time period that contributed to the projected retention and tuition savings.*