Partnerships for Adult Learner Success

Bridging relationships to (re)connect adult learners of color to the college classroom.

Partnerships for Adult Learner Success Initiative (PALS) provided funding to eight public urban institutions over two years as they sought to innovate and build more inclusive, agile, and comprehensive student success pathways and supports for adult learners of color. Public urban universities are often at the helm of innovative efforts to redesign traditional structures and curricula to improve access and success for students of color and adult learners. Completed in December 2024 with a generous investment from the Lumina Foundation, PALS made deep and lasting impacts in areas that support and affect adult learners at urban-serving universities nationwide, including outreach, advising, and faculty professional development. 

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PALS supported a subset of USU member institutions to focus specifically on Black, Latino, and Indigenous adult learners to achieve the following objectives:

• Contribute to the knowledge base about the Black, Latino, and Indigenous adult learners, articulating their assets and systemic barriers to success

• Engage urban universities, partner organizations, and employers in cross-institutional, multi-disciplinary learning opportunities to increase institutional capacity for change while centering on the success of Black, Latino, and Indigenous adult learners

• Build and disseminate an ecosystem/partnership framework for Black, Latino, and Indigenous adult learner success

• Critically examine deficit-based advising, (re)enrollment, and student support practices and frameworks

• Incubate and pilot new equity-based student success approaches

• Test existing models and promising practices that center on Black, Latino, and Indigenous adult learners