Jessup University uses MCode For Students in a motivation-driven coaching model

At Jessup University, a private Christian institution in Rocklin, California, MCode For Students has become a core tool in student development under the leadership of Stephanie Maus, Director, Academic Achievement Center and Pathways Programs. The assessment now runs through programs from academic support to life skills.

The Jessup University approach

Stephanie serves 900 undergraduates at the only private Christian higher education institution in Northern California, where she’s found that most students arrive with only a shallow understanding of what drives them. As she puts it, “If you ask them why they chose their major or why they’re going to college, they’ll give a surface answer. But using MCode For Students helps them dive deeper faster and discover those core motivations, what’s truly driving them.”

Stephanie also values the common vocabulary that comes with MCode’s 32 Motivations and 8 Dimensions. The report gives students and mentors the same terms to use in ongoing conversations. She explains, “Having that consistent language of MCode For Students is really helpful because students start to recognize that we are repeatedly talking about their motivations. The terms become familiar to them.”

The Success Coach model in action

Jessup’s campus experience runs on community and relationships, which fits well with the story-driven structure of MCode For Students. The school’s Success Coach program is central to that experience and to its tagline, Creating Transformational Leaders.

Every incoming student gets a Success Coach matched to their major. The coach stays with them through their college years, or until they change majors, and brings two areas of expertise to the relationship:

• A full understanding of the programs, course requirements, and faculty within the major.
• The ability to tap into each student’s MCode For Students report for individualized advising.

Incoming students complete both MCode For Students and CliftonStrengths before orientation. At the Success Coach intake meeting, coaches lean into each mentee’s personal traits to give tailored advice rather than falling back on generic encouragement.

One of the most powerful applications of MCode For Students has been helping students reframe the difficulty of required courses that don’t naturally align with their interests.

By connecting course content to a student’s core motivations, Stephanie helps them find meaning in challenging requirements. She pushes mentees to take a broader view, “Looking at this class in light of your big goal and your motivations, where does this class fit in? Yes, it’s a prerequisite, and it’s required for your program, but also, what are the elements of this course that will be helpful for you towards your big goal?”

Stephanie also points to how understanding core motivations equips students for challenges well beyond college: “You will forever encounter circumstances, situations, conflicts you don’t want to do … How can you use the understanding of what motivates you to complete those things?”

Pairing MCode For Students with CliftonStrengths

Jessup had used CliftonStrengths long before MCode For Students arrived, and the school now runs both assessments side by side. As Stephanie puts it, “I’m a big Strengths fan, but I noticed how helpful MCode For Students could be in addition to Strengths. We take MCode For Students to discover how you’re built, as far as what motivates you naturally, and then we take Strengths and talk about what you’re good at. And then we look at how Motivations and strengths work together so you can understand why you’re struggling with something and how you can navigate it.”

Once Stephanie saw those overlaps and connections, she began sharing the assessment with Success Coaches, who found it a shortcut to meaningful dialogue and high-impact advising. She frames the value of pairing the two by saying, “Understanding our students as individuals equips us to provide the proper personalized support for them. MCode For Students helps us do that.”

Rolling out MCode For Students

Stephanie took an incremental approach to bringing MCode For Students to Jessup University, both to confirm the tool’s value and to earn buy-in from key stakeholders. “When we first discovered MCode For Students through networking with Crown College and other institutions, we saw its potential immediately,” Stephanie explains. “But we knew that for any new tool to succeed on our campus, we needed broad buy-in from faculty and staff because of the small size of our campus.”

She started by testing the assessment in one-on-one settings. Once she had firsthand experience with its impact on students working through academic and personal challenges, she expanded it into group applications and then folded it into orientation and mentoring programs.

“Getting students to complete the assessment was our biggest hurdle,” Stephanie admits. Her team built completion into orientation and Success Coach meetings, and developed a creative workaround for orientation sessions. Students who haven’t yet completed the assessment get a list of Motivation definitions so they can identify their likely top motivators without taking the full assessment first.

“This approach actually helps drive completion,” Stephanie notes. “Students who engage with the content during orientation often become curious to discover their actual results and complete the assessment afterward.”

That measured rollout helped Stephanie secure stakeholder support along the way. Today, she uses MCode For Students across her department, including orientation, success coaching, mentorship meetings (for example, with students in the conduct process), and Pathways Programs for specialty populations such as former foster youth, Hispanic students, students from a particular church group, and others. She sees opportunities for MCode For Students in nearly every part of her department.