PRESQUE ISLE – When it comes to student retention, Dr. Betsy Barefoot says engagement is key.

The co-director of the Policy Center on the First Year of College, located at Brevard College in North Carolina, visited Northern Maine Community College in Presque Isle Thursday to give a presentation on how to help colleges and universities retain a higher percentage of students.

Officials from the community college, and from the Universities of Maine at Presque Isle and Fort Kent, attended the presentation for the chance to receive advice from the national expert on students’ first-year experiences in college, NMCC officials said Thursday.

Along with her work at the grant-funded research center, where she is involved in the development of instruments and strategies to assess the first college year, Barefoot conducts seminars on the first year experience across the United States and in other countries. She also assists other colleges and universities in implementing and evaluating first-year programs.

She serves as an associate professor of educational leadership at Brevard College and has worked on first-year student issues for almost 20 years.

Barefoot’s visit was funded by the $150,000 MELMAC student retention grant the college received earlier this year to implement strategies to increase student retention and a new first-year experience program.

MELMAC, or the Maine Educational Loan Marketing Corp., is a nonprofit organization valued at approximately $28 million, making it the largest noncollege-affiliated education foundation in Maine, according to its Web site.

The MELMAC Foundation has a goal of raising Maine’s college graduation rate by 17 percent between now and 2012. College officials said they would incorporate Barefoot’s strategies within their own student retention programs.

Barefoot said in an interview before her presentation that she was in the area to talk specifically about engagement.

“Engagement is a measure of the amount of time students spend in any educationally productive activity on a college campus,” Barefoot said.

“If you’re lectured at for hours on end, you’re less likely to be engaged than if you’re invited to interact, take part in experiential activities or get out into the community,” she said.

Barefoot said that an increase in the amount of time students are engaged at college will increase student retention and learning there.

“Engagement is important because it helps students learn more and makes them more likely to be productive learners who are contributing to the local community and economy,” she said.

Her plan was to talk with local officials about strategies to get students engaged and things to avoid, as well as increasing faculty awareness of retention issues and identifying potential problems that first-year students may encounter.

“My hope is that it [the presentation] will make everyone in the audience realize that they have a role to play in engaging the student, whether they are a cafeteria worker or maintenance worker or faculty member,” Barefoot said. “Every single person in the room has a role to play in getting students connected with this institution.”