Fifty of the 57 international students who came to Kansas University last fall through the International Academic Accelerator Program are back on campus this fall.

That number meets the year-old program’s “aggressive” goal for its first fall-to-fall retention rate of 88 percent, said program managing director Amy Neufeld.

“We’ll always keep working to do everything we can for students,” she said. “But we feel very good about that, especially for the first cohort.”

Of the seven students who did not return this fall, Neufeld said reasons varied but that about half did not perform academically and the other half had personal reasons.

Going forward, she said the International Academic Accelerator Program will continue to further develop its “early alert program” to identify and help struggling students. The program’s student services advisers are looking for things like attendance problems, students not turning in assignments or problems with interactions in class, she said.

Amy Neufeld

“We’re monitoring that on a very regular basis, weekly at minimum and in some cases more regularly,” Neufeld said. The idea is to “get out in front of it rather than waiting for it to snowball. Stopping it when it’s halfway down the hill is a lot harder.”

As far as new enrollees, the program fell short of its goal for this fall.

Neufeld said the program appeared on track to hit its goal of adding 200 more international students this semester but that just 175 new students enrolled, following the university’s official enrollment tally taken on the 20th day of classes.

Program leaders attribute that largely to problems processing visas, Neufeld said. Offices across the world that normally took one to three days started taking three to four weeks.

The International Academic Accelerator Program does accept new students each semester, however, and Neufeld said she hoped students who were stymied by visa waits will come to KU yet.

“We continue to work with them as prospective students with the hopes that they will enroll for the spring semester,” she said.

In total, there are currently 247 students in the program, Neufeld said. Half are in the full AAP curriculum, and half in the “pre-AAP” curriculum for students who need to improve English proficiency before beginning the AAP curriculum.

The International Academic Accelerator Program, a model new to KU and involving a private business partnership, has been a topic of discussion in University Governance bodies. On Thursday, the University Senate is scheduled to get an update on the program from Sara Rosen, senior vice provost for academic affairs, and other KU administrators.

KU’s International Academic Accelerator Program was formally announced in February 2014 with a goal of nearly doubling KU’s international enrollment in about four years, and the first participants started classes in fall 2014. KU is partnering with Shorelight Education, a private company, on the initiative.

Shorelight recruits students from around the world to the program. At KU, for a flat fee of about $45,000, the all-in-one-style program provides 12 months of room, board, tuition and activities for participating international students.

Coursework focuses on intensive English and cultural instruction. Students emerge with about 30 credit hours and, hopefully, go on to enroll at KU as sophomores and continue through graduation.