The Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) and the Coalition of Urban Serving Universities (USU) launched Collaborating for Change: Analyzing New Approaches for Student Success, Thursday, March 31 from 2:00-4:00 p (EST) at the National Press Club.
Goldie Blumenstyk, senior writer at the Chronicle of Higher Education, moderated presentations from three public urban universities. Mark Becker, President of Georgia State University opened the event. Featured institutions and university representatives include:
Mark Rosenberg, president of Florida International University (FIU), and his team will discuss far-reaching efforts that include a focus on gateway courses and deep roots into the Miami-Dade public schools that works to improve college readiness and student progression into and through the university.
Sukhwant Jhaj, vice provost for academic innovation and student success, and two faculty members from Portland State University (PSU), will talk about reTHINK PSU, a campus-wide initiative that engages campus stakeholders through transparency, crowdsourcing and inclusive design thinking to improve educational delivery to serve more students with better outcomes while containing costs through curricular innovation, community engagement, and the use of technology.
Emanuel Pollack, Interim vice provost of the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), a representative from Bottom Line—a community-based NGO that helps low-income, first generation students get to and through college‒and a UIC student will discuss their formalization of a partnership and enhanced community engagement in college transition coaching opportunities to increase access and success for low-income students.
Why this Initiative?
Successful change must be collaborative.
Collaborating for Change is a six-year student success initiative implemented by APLU and the Coalition of Urban Serving Universities with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Thus, our Collaborating for Change initiative works with public urban research universities planning and implementing transformational – often disruptive – campus practices to advance student success. These transformations are particularly focused on admitting, retaining, educating, and graduating high need, traditionally at-risk students while reducing costs, reexamining campus business models, and fostering mutually beneficial campus-community engagements.
A cohort of seven public urban research universities were engaged in the first phase of this initiative: California State University, Fresno, Florida International University, Georgia State University, Portland State University, Temple University, University of Akron, and University of Illinois at Chicago.
Collaborating for Change engages stakeholders in a journey of deeply embedded, institutional collaboration. Drawing on the work of initiative campuses, it offers design frameworks and reports, blogs, publications, and APLU/USU engagements including webinars, interactions with project learning communities, the annual meeting, grants, and innovation competitions that inspire transparency and progressive action.
Collaborating for Change engagements bring stakeholders together to explore common challenges and aspirations; get feedback about campus learnings and possible solutions; share successes and failures; and present promising, replicable and scalable practices for student success.