In the past decade, 1,500 college seniors with good academic standing dropped out of the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh.

Actually, according to UW-Oshkosh Chancellor Rick Wells, they "stopped out," and now the university is in the second year of its "Graduation Project" initiative to reclaim those students and assist them in finally earning a baccalaureate degree.

"One of the reasons we don't refer to them as drop-outs is because as we worked with these students, we found out it wasn't just the person who was lazy and disenchanted," Wells said. "That's not the real reason that this happens to most people."

In most of those 1,500 cases, Wells said students encountered financial difficulties, a family tragedy or other extenuating circumstances which put their educations on hold. Then, he said, "one thing leads to another and [the student] never gets back to finish."

According to Regent Charles Pruitt, the program was modeled after a similar scheme at the University of New Mexico and is part of the UW System's efforts to increase the number of baccalaureate-degree-holders in the state.

"We sent them a nice little letter and then we did follow-up phone calls and then we gave them highly individualized advising and counseling," Wells said of the procedure for contacting recent drop-outs. "A college degree is much more important than it ever has been, and it's increasingly getting more important, too."

Thirty-six students participated in last year's pilot run of the program, and the university expects two-thirds of that group to graduate within two years.

"It makes a lot of sense, and it looks like something you'd get at sooner than some of the other stuff we'd accomplish," UW System spokesperson Doug Bradley said. "This is creative and smart — the kind of stuff we need to be doing."

While the degree of work necessary to graduate varies among the "stop-outs," Wells said many do not have far to go at all.

"Roughly a third of the individuals that we are identifying needed no more than to finish some paperwork, if you can believe that," he commented. "They didn't do their graduation checkout form or, in some cases, they had some fines, things that in most cases weren't [even] major money."

UW-Oshkosh Director of Admissions Jill Endries, who made some of the follow-up calls, said many of the former students she contacted were pleased by the university's outreach.

"There certainly were a handful of students … who were very excited about the possibility of finishing up," Endries said. "It took a number of people by surprise."

Some were considerably more surprised than others, as Wells said some of the contacts were surprised to hear they did not graduate.

"When you think about [that], it stops being funny pretty quick," Wells said. "This is serious stuff at a certain level, and that in itself is a good reason to do this, to make sure that [when] students really believe they graduated and they haven't — let's get that straightened out."

Rebecca Sturlock, an academic advisor who has worked closely with some of the returning students, said the university has combined modern technology with a strong willpower to create a successful program.

"We're not pipe-dreaming here," Sturlock said. "We're not reaching out to people who are 40 credits short or left the university [on bad terms]."

Pruitt, who co-chaired last year's ad hoc committee for baccalaureate expansion, expressed his excitement over the program and complimented UW-Oshkosh for its "enormous amount of progress" in just over a year's time.

"It really struck us as one of the most logical and cost-effective means that we could imagine as far as increasing graduates in the state," Pruitt said.

Wells said a lot of interest in the program is brewing throughout the UW System and was optimistic about the number of additional baccalaureate-degree-holders if all the UW schools followed suit.

"It's been a lot of fun working on this. It keeps me sane as a chancellor [because] it's been so rewarding," he said. "If we can get something like this implemented statewide, within four or five years, we're estimating we can have as many as 5,000 more people complete their baccalaureate degrees."