How the Roadrunner Success Hub helps students through the rough spots

By using technology in innovative ways, these quiet heroes are able to walk with students toward solutions to tough times

By Valerie Bustamante Johnson

Staying on the path to graduation isn’t always easy — especially when you’re juggling coursework, working a part-time job to earn extra cash, and trying to find your sense of belonging on campus.

It’s all too easy for students to hit a tough part in their education journey, but one support center — made up of a small, yet mighty team of two UT San Antonio staff members and five graduate assistants — is hard at work to ensure that every student stays on the right path towards earning their degrees.

Behind the scenes, these UT San Antonio staff members serve as the quiet champions of student success. By personally reaching out to students who may need additional support—and through their work with the Roadrunner Success Hub, formerly the Graduation Help Desk—they help remove obstacles and keep students on the path to graduation.

The RSH has become one of the key elements in the overall ecosystem of what makes UT San Antonio a stand-out national model for student success. With its customized approach to helping each student with their unique needs, students get the individualized help they need when they hit a snag along their path. And over the last eight years since its opening in 2017, the success of the initiative has allowed the program to evolve and expand its services to reach more and more students.

The virtual support center — which is proactive and in real-time — identifies students who are struggling and steps in to help them before their situations begin to decline. With help from The Civitas Learning, a predictive analytics platform, the RSH can spot the warning signs of a student who may be having a difficult time.

“We look at first-year incoming students, including first-year transfer students, and whether they have visited Canvas for at least a week because it gives us a four- to seven-day period,” says Melyssa Ranton, associate director of graduation and retention initiatives. “Anyone who is past a week with zero activity on Canvas — those are the ones we are targeting. We’ll send them an email in real time to let them know we’re trying to reach them, and then my response team will call them to figure out what’s going on. We can see their class participation and grades through the system, so we can talk about specific classes.”

The RSH team puts technology to work to find students who might need extra support, but they rely on faculty as well. “We’re also working with faculty if they contact us about one of their students, as well as doing a more proactive approach with trying to find students before they’ve hit a larger obstacle.”

The response team works with each student to determine what obstacles they may be facing. Sometimes, that means connecting a student with Fiscal Services for scholarship assistance or directing them to mental health resources. The team checks in with the particular identified students again mid-semester and at the end of the term.

The Roadrunner Success Hub also monitors second-year and third-year retention data to help keep students on track.

“A lot of students are just glad that someone is there for them and looking out for them,” Ranton says. “Sometimes these students are struggling on their own, whether they are first-gen or not, and they don’t know where to turn.”

To date, the Roadrunner Success Hub has completed 32,857 cases through fall 2025 and has supported 3,565 graduates. Through the team’s efforts and the efforts of all of the UT San Antonio student success initiatives, the reduction in the time it takes students to graduate has saves students nearly $5 million.

“A lot of students are just glad that someone is there for them and looking out for them. “Sometimes these students are struggling on their own, whether they are first gen or not, and they don’t know where to turn.”

Melyssa Ranton

ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF RETENTION AND GRADUATION INITIATIVES

A New Digital Bestie

The Civitas Learning platform is just one technology tool that is helping the Roadrunner Success Hub connect with students.

While the hub can assist in the daytime, RITA can step in to answer questions outside of traditional work hours.

RITA, or Roadrunner Intelligent Technology Assistant, is a 24/7 AI chatbot, which kicked off this fall semester as a pilot program and was introduced to 5,000 undergraduates.

“This current generation is already using AI and are very familiar with it, so RITA gives us the opportunity to meet the students where they are,” Ranton says.

RITA contacts students every seven to 10 days on various topics. The AI’s knowledge base was developed by Student Success and UT San Antonio Online staff and assistants to cover a variety of topics, such as advising, financial matters, campus life and involvement, and student well-being,

RITA has a 58% engagement with the students. Over the semester, she’s received more than 12,665 text messages. Of the 5,000 students who received the initial “hello” from RITA in August, 97% have stayed opted in.

“With RITA, the team has been able to gather more student insight and the ability to connect with students on a faster level and connect them with the needed resources,” Ranton added.

“We also have the opportunity for follow-ups. Currently, we’re doing a persistence campaign where the students were asked whether or not they were going to attend for the spring,” Ranton says. “I can pull out those students who said maybe and the ones that said no and then see what kind of qualitative data they give us and reach out to these specific students with tailored messages. RITA is giving us data points that we didn’t have before, and that we weren’t catching anywhere else. RITA is helping us connect with students on their level.”