Ana Escalations
Overview
Ana is a text messaging service designed to provide students with holistic support by sending reminders, resources, and encouragement. However, Ana’s role extends beyond just sending messages -- Ana can engage in two-way communication with students, allowing our Student Success Team to gain a deeper understanding of students' issues. When students report issues that could hinder their academic success or well-being, Ana flags these concerns and alerts key contacts at institutions. These alerts are known as Ana Escalations, and they ensure that students in need receive support.
This article will describe in-detail the following topics:
Purpose and Goals of Ana Escalations
By communicating with students, our team can recognize when intervention is needed, whether for urgent or non-urgent concerns. Through Ana Escalations, we hope to accomplish the following:
Provide Immediate Support in Crisis Situations
For students facing urgent issues, such as threats of self-harm, mental health crises, or harm to others, our Student Success Team sends an immediate alert to administrators, allowing campus personnel to provide students with essential care in a timely manner.
Identify and Address Pressing Needs
Our Student Success Team often escalates concerns around non-academic challenges students face, such as food or housing insecurity, accessibility needs, or barriers to accessing resources. This ensures students receive the support they need in real-time.
Improve Student Retention and Success
If a student indicates interest in dropping out, an escalation from our Student Success Team allows administrators to intervene early and effectively, improving retention efforts.
Strengthen Institutional Support
Escalations provide institutions with data-driven insights on student needs, allowing administrators to identify areas for campus-wide improvements, determine outreach strategies, and better support students through to graduation.
Empower Student Voices
By serving as a direct communication channel, Ana helps to elevate student concerns, ensuring that all students, especially vulnerable populations, receive the attention and support they're seeking.
Escalation Types and the Escalation Matrix
Ana Escalations cover a range of issues that students may face, all with different levels of impact and urgency. In general, Ana Escalations fall into two categories: urgent and non-urgent. Explained below are the common escalation types we see, as well as a few recommendations of personnel or offices on campus that can assist.
Urgent Escalations
Urgent escalations are high priority alerts that require immediate attention by campus personnel. These escalations typically involve scenarios where student safety is at risk. Examples of urgent escalations include:
Indications of Self-Harm or Suicidal Ideation:
When a student expresses thoughts of self-harm or suicidal-ideation, our Student Success Team provides students with information about campus and nationwide resources. Because these conversations are very time-sensitive, we recommend escalating these concerns directly to Campus Safety or Counseling Services to ensure someone can connect with the student in a timely manner. While we wait for the escalation to be seen by campus personnel, our Student Success Team attempts to continue the conversation with the student over text by asking the student questions and providing support as best we can.
Experiences Involving Interpersonal Violence:
If a student shares with Ana an experience involving interpersonal violence, such as domestic or sexual violence, our team first asks the student if they are in a safe location before we provide the student with information about resources. Because the student may be in imminent danger, these concerns may need to be escalated directly to Campus Safety, Counseling Services, or your Title XI Coordinator.
Threat of Harm to Others:
In the event a student expresses they are considering causing harm to others, we immediately escalate these concerns to campus personnel. We recommend these concerns be escalated directly to Campus Safety to ensure the situation is attended to as quickly as possible.
Non-Urgent Escalations
Non-urgent escalations are lower in priority as they do not require immediate intervention by campus personnel. While there are many non-urgent escalation types, they generally involve an issue impacting student's well-being or success at your institution. Examples of urgent escalations include:
Drop-Out Risks:
If a student indicates they would like to withdraw from your institution, our Student Success Team will try to gather information about the student is considering withdrawing before escalating to campus personnel. Our goal is to connect the student with an individual or office on campus that could help to retain that student. We recommend these concerns be escalated to Student Success Teams, Retention Specialists, or Academic Advisors.
Registration / Administrative Issues:
Escalations of this type usually involve a student needing assistance with contacting a non-responsive office on campus, an issue with registration, or a hold on their account that's preventing them from being able to register. We recommend these concerns be shared with the Student Success Team or personnel in the Registrar's Office.
Financial Aid Office Issues:
Financial aid related issues typically involve a student having trouble resolving their financial aid issue on their own or with the support of the Financial Aid Office. We recommend these concerns be shared with a Financial Aid Advisor or Specialist so they can connect with the student directly.
Professor-Related Concerns:
Escalations of this type usually involve a professor not responding to a student's concern after the student has attempted to connect with the professor multiple times. We recommend these concerns be directed to a Retention Specialist or Student Success Team.
Emergency Financial Assistance:
When a student shares with Ana that they are in excess need of financial assistance for non-academic expenses, we try to first provide the student with resources the student may find helpful. In some cases though, the student's well-being may be at-risk and we decide an escalation is needed. We recommend these situations be directed to a member of your Support Services or Student Success Team.
Food / Housing Insecurity:
Similarly to a student in need of emergency financial assistance, we try to provide helpful resources to students experiencing food or housing insecurity before escalating the situation to campus personnel. These escalations may be best shared with Student Support, Student Success, or the Counseling Department at your institution.
Emotional Distress:
If a student indicates they're in emotional distress, but doesn't indicate they're a risk to their own safety or the safety of others, our Student Success Team may decide that an escalation is warranted to ensure the student connects with a mental health professional. We recommend escalating these concerns directly to a member of your Counseling Services Office to connect the student with needed support.
The Ana Escalation Matrix
Because Ana Escalations often warrant an intervention from various personnel or campus offices, we've developed a tool we call the Ana Escalation Matrix.This matrix enables administrators to provide our team with the contact information of designated individuals and offices equipped to address specific student concerns, facilitating a streamlined and effective response.
Information Included in the Escalation Matrix
The Ana Escalation Matrix is comprised of rows for the individuals or offices on campus that should receive Ana escalations, as well as a column for each escalation type listed above. The only exception is urgent escalations, which require immediate intervention. For these, we ask administrators to provide both primary and secondary urgent escalation contacts. When an urgent escalation occurs, it is first sent to the primary contacts listed in the matrix. If our Student Success Team does not receive a response within 20 minutes, the escalation is then forwarded to the secondary contacts on file to ensure the student’s needs are addressed as quickly as possible. Secondary contact(s) should differ from the contacts you've designated as primary contacts.
The Ana Escalation Matrix enables administrators to specify if they would like to receive phone call notifications for urgent escalations. By opting-in, the designated urgent escalation contacts in the matrix will receive a phone call in the event of an urgent escalation, in addition to the standard email notification sent by our Student Success Team.
How to Fill Out the Ana Escalation Matrix
To fill out the matrix, start by providing the name, role, and contact information of an individual or office on campus that should receive Ana escalations. Once you've provided their information, check the box below the escalation type(s) that should be shared with them. Please take a look at this example Ana Escalation Matrix we've created to see how the matrix can be used to foster an organized escalation process: Escalation Matrix - Smarter College Example.
Ana Escalation Process: Urgent & Non-Urgent Escalations
In the event of any Ana escalation, a member of our Student Success Team sends an email to the contacts provided on the Ana Escalation Matrix from the email address ana@upswing.io. These emails include information about the student, additional context about the student's issue, screenshots of the conversation, as well as the time zone shown in the conversation. Our Student Success Team follows a standard process for Ana escalations, described below.
Urgent Escalation Process
When our Student Success Team determines a conversation with a student warrants an urgent escalation, we begin the process by alerting the primary urgent escalation contacts listed on your escalation matrix. This process is slightly different depending on whether you opted into phone calls for urgent escalations, explained below.
Option 1: Phone Call Not Requested
Step 1: Escalation Email to Primary Urgent Escalation Contacts
Our Student Success Team will send the escalation email to the primary contacts listed in the Escalation Matrix. The email template we use is provided below:
Email Subject:
URGENT: Upswing Ana Escalation Alert: Urgent Escalation Reason
Hello there,
Our Student Success Team has just received text messages from a student at your school that requires your attention. Due to the nature of this conversation, we ask that you please reply to this email within 20 minutes to confirm that you've received this email.
Student Name: name
Email: email address
Phone Number: phone number
External ID: student ID
Additional context: brief description of the conversation
Time zone: time zone of time stamps shown in conversation screenshots
As mentioned above, please reply to this email as soon as possible. Per our escalation protocols, if we do not receive a response within 20 minutes, we will escalate this issue to additional staff members at your institution to ensure this student receives the support they need as soon as possible.
We appreciate you working with us on this! Please let us know if there's anything we can do to assist.
Best,
Student Success Advocate email signature
Step 2: Escalation Email to Secondary Urgent Escalation Contacts
If we do not receive a response within 20 minutes, our Student Success Team will add the secondary contacts listed in the Escalation Matrix to the same email thread and send the following email:
Hello there,
Our Student Success Team has received text messages from a student at your school that requires your attention. This conversation was escalated to the primary contacts we have on file about 20 minutes ago, but we have not received a response. Due to the nature of this conversation, we ask that you please reply to this email as soon as possible to confirm that you've received this email.
Student Name: name
Email: email address
Phone Number: phone number
External ID: student ID
Additional context: brief description of the conversation
Time zone: time zone of time stamps shown in conversation screenshots
Please read through the conversation in the attached screenshots for the full context.
As mentioned above, please reply to this email as soon as possible. Per our escalation protocols, if we do not receive a response within 20 minutes, your HERO will be assisting us with the next steps in the escalation process.
We appreciate you working with us on this! Please let us know if there's anything we can do to assist.
Best,
Student Success Advocate email signature
Step 3: Involve the HERO & Additional Campus Personnel
If we do not receive a response from any of the primary or secondary contacts within 20 minutes, the HERO for your institution will assist us with our outreach. However, this is not ideal, as this means the student may have been in need of immediate support for over 40 minutes already.
Option 2: Phone Call Requested
Step 1: Escalation Email and Phone Call to Primary Urgent Escalation Contacts
While our Student Success Team sends the escalation email to the primary contacts listed in the Escalation Matrix, your HERO will be calling the primary contacts listed in the Escalation Matrix. The email template we use is provided below:
Email Subject:
URGENT: Upswing Ana Escalation Alert: Urgent Escalation Reason
Hello there,
Our Student Success Team has just received text messages from a student at your school that requires your attention. Due to the nature of this conversation, we ask that you please reply to this email within 20 minutes to confirm that you've received this email. We will also be calling the [primary contacts] to inform them of the situation.
Student Name: name
Email: email address
Phone Number: phone number
External ID: student ID
Additional context: brief description of the conversation
Time zone: time zone of time stamps shown in conversation screenshots
As mentioned above, please reply to this email as soon as possible. Per our escalation protocols, if we do not receive a response within 20 minutes, we will escalate this issue to additional staff members at your institution to ensure this student receives the support they need as soon as possible.
We appreciate you working with us on this! Please let us know if there's anything we can do to assist.
Best,
Student Success Advocate email signature
Step 2: Escalation Email and Phone Call to Secondary Urgent Escalation Contacts
If your HERO is not able to connect with the primary contacts with a phone call and our Student Success Team does not receive a response within 20 minutes, our Student Success Team will add the secondary contacts listed in the Escalation Matrix to the same email thread and send the following email:
Hello there,
Our Student Success Team has received text messages from a student at your school that requires your attention. This conversation was escalated to the primary contacts we have on file about 20 minutes ago, but we have not received a response. Due to the nature of this conversation, we ask that you please reply to this email as soon as possible to confirm that you've received this email.
Student Name: name
Email: email address
Phone Number: phone number
External ID: student ID
Additional context: brief description of the conversation
Time zone: time zone of time stamps shown in conversation screenshots
Please read through the conversation in the attached screenshots for the full context.
As mentioned above, please reply to this email as soon as possible. Per our escalation protocols, if we do not receive a response within 20 minutes, your HERO will be assisting us with the next steps in the escalation process.
We appreciate you working with us on this! Please let us know if there's anything we can do to assist.
Best,
Student Success Advocate email signature
Step 3: Involve Additional Campus Personnel
If we do not receive a response from any of the primary or secondary contacts within 20 minutes, the HERO for your institution will assist us with our outreach. However, this is not ideal, as this means the student may have been in need of immediate support for over 40 minutes already.
Non-Urgent Escalation Process
As opposed to urgent escalations, our Student Success Team does not require a response to non-urgent escalation emails, however they are preferred so our Student Success Team can provide the student with an update.
Step 1: Send the Escalation Email
Our Student Success Team will send the escalation email to the contacts listed in the Escalation Matrix for that escalation type. The email template we use is provided below:
Email Subject:
Upswing Ana Escalation Alert: Non-Urgent Escalation Reason
Hello there,
Our Support Team has just received the following message from a student at your school that requires your attention.
Student Name: name
Email: email address
Phone Number: phone number
External ID: student ID
Additional context: brief description of the conversation
Time zone: time zone of time stamps shown in conversation screenshots
Please read through the conversation in the attached screenshots for the full context.
Could you please respond to this email letting us know that you've seen this escalation? Additionally, please let us know if there’s any information we need to pass to the student, or any updates we can give them.
Best,
Student Success Advocate email signature
Step 2: Pass Along Any Information to the Student
If our Student Success Team receives an email response providing instructions or advice to share with the student, we will send a text message to the student to let them know.
Step 3: Send Follow-Up Escalation Email if Needed
If our Student Success Team doesn't receive a response to the escalation email or if the student reaches out to Ana for an update, we may determine that a follow-up email is needed to ensure the student's issue is being addressed.
Conclusion
Ana Escalations are a vital part of ensuring students receive the support they need, when they need it most. By leveraging Ana’s two-way communication and the Ana Escalation Matrix, institutions can effectively address a wide range of student concerns, from urgent crises to ongoing challenges. These escalations not only help students overcome immediate obstacles but also provide valuable insights into systemic issues, empowering campuses to improve their services and foster a more supportive environment. Together, Ana and our partner institutions work to create a network of care that helps students stay engaged, persist through their challenges, and ultimately achieve their academic goals.