The University of Vermont announced today that it is participating in a massive new effort, working collaboratively with 130 public universities and systems, to increase college access, close the achievement gap and award hundreds of thousands more degrees by 2025.
The participating institutions will work within clusters of four to 12 institutions to implement innovative and effective practices to advance student success on their campuses. Collectively, the institutions enroll 3 million students, including 1 million students who receive Pell Grants.
The Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) is organizing the collaborative effort, known as Powered by Publics: Scaling Student Success. The effort was launched at APLU’s 131st Annual Meeting in New Orleans last week.
Powered by Publics represents the largest ever collaborative effort to improve college access, advance equity, and increase college degrees awarded. In addition to committing to those goals, participating institutions have pledged to share aggregate data demonstrating their progress to help spur lasting change across the higher education sector. Participating schools will also share tactics that have helped them attract, retain and graduate students, including first generation students and students from diverse backgrounds.
“UVM is strongly committed to being accessible and to helping all students succeed and thrive once they’re here, so joining this national initiative was a natural for us,” said Tom Sullivan, University of Vermont president. “We look forward both to sharing some of our recruitment and retention strategies and to learning of new approaches that have helped others succeed, with the goal of broadening the reach and impact of higher education in the United States through this collective effort.”
Enrollment management vice president Stacey Kostell pointed to two initiatives she said UVM plans to share with the other schools in its cluster, the Catamount Commitment, which is helping bring more low income Vermonters to UVM, and a new advising software system designed to support students and help them persist and graduate.
By design, the participating institutions reflect a wide array of institutional characteristics such as enrollment, student demographics, regional workforce needs, and selectivity. The broad diversity of the institutions is intended to help create a playbook of adaptable student success reforms that can be adopted and scaled up across a variety of institution types, including those with limited resources.
Other schools in UVM’s cluster include Stony Brook, Temple, University at Buffalo, University of Connecticut, University of Delaware, University of Maryland/Baltimore County, University of Missouri/Columbia and the University of South Florida.
The clusters have identified anticipated focus areas for their work. UVM’s cluster plan to focus on first generation and male students.
“Over the past few years, we’ve witnessed a real and growing enthusiasm among public university leaders to advance college completion nationally,” said APLU President Peter McPherson. “We have to seize the moment and mobilize institutions to improve not just college access, but also equity in student outcomes and the number of students who earn degrees. That’s what Powered by Publics is all about and why we’re thrilled to work with our member institutions toward such an important national goal.”
The Powered by Publics effort will be overseen by APLU’s Center for Public University Transformation, which the association created this year to help drive transformational change across the public higher education sector. A core value of the Center and its participating institutions will be rooted in a commitment to sharing data and innovative, successful practices to help drive progress across the entire sector of public higher education. The Center will regularly disseminate lessons learned from the participating institutions to the broader public higher education community.
A national advisory council of respected higher education thought leaders will provide a strategic vision and guidance for the Center, which will work to build upon and complement existing initiatives around institutional change and student success.