U. of Wisconsin at Eau Claire

Tackling the Equity Challenge From All Sides

The Blugold Beginnings Learning Community at the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire works to support students who are first generation, economically disadvantaged, or students of color — and often all three.

They go through a special orientation program, take a course that familiarizes them with university life, and are assigned a faculty or staff member as a college coach. They also get part-time jobs, both to help cover their costs and because campus employment is connected with student success.

For many, that work takes them back to the public schools they attended, to students who look much like them. Jodi Thesing-Ritter, Eau Claire’s executive director for diversity and inclusion, met some current learning-community members when they were in elementary school. Now they are returning to serve as mentors, role models, and guides. “We look to lift as we climb,” Thesing-Ritter says.

For more than a decade, Eau Claire has been attacking the equality gap from all sides. Through its work with local public schools, it has been trying to improve college readiness and to encourage all students to see a college degree as something attainable. The university provides tutors, runs after-school programs, and hosts special camps in robotics and coding.

On its own campus, Eau Claire is trying to make sure students succeed despite the fierce headwinds of disadvantage. Blugold Beginnings learning community is one approach, serving about 75 students per class. But officials are looking systematically across the university to spot stumbling blocks for students and try to remove them.

For example, Eau Claire asks all incoming freshmen to download an app and answer a checklist about things that concern them. Their responses then trigger specialized support services. Students who indicate they are worried about paying for college might get an email alerting them to an on-campus job fair. Academic advisers are handed a list of those who are anxious about their study skills or academic performance. As a result, advisers pay close attention to the students’ midsemester grades.

The idea is to combine data with high touch. Under Billy Felz, special assistant to the vice chancellor for enrollment management, Eau Claire has moved to a centralized, “frankly intrusive” advising system. Students’ grades and courses of study are reviewed at least three times a year to make sure they’re on track, and at the first sign of trouble, they are called in for extra advising.

The Class of 2020 is the first to have the new advising system for the entirety of its studies, but already four-year graduation rates have begun to rise, climbing three points, to 44 percent, over the past three years.

Completion rates for Blugold Beginnings students are somewhat lower, but they have made substantial progress, Thesing-Ritter says. They graduate at rates double those of other Eau Claire students with similar backgrounds. And their grade-point averages at the time of graduation are nearly identical to those of the university as a whole.

When it comes to second-year retention rates, students in the learning community outperform the rest of their classmates. They are also much more likely than the average Eau Claire student to take part in at least one “high impact” practice, such as internships, study abroad, or undergraduate research. It’s a universitywide goal to have all students complete one of these activities that promote deep learning by the time they graduate. Almost every Blugold Beginnings student already does.

Still, taking a comprehensive approach means that some strategies don’t work. Public-school students in Eau Claire’s mentoring program had said they weren’t taking part in after-school activities because of lack of transportation, but when the university got a grant to run a special bus, participation rates didn’t improve. It turns out that there were other barriers, Thesing-Ritter says.

Progress may be high in some areas, but others have a long way to go. While second-year retention rates are high, a larger number of learning-community students drop out before their junior year. Thesing-Ritter is testing out interventions, like an additional one-credit course to help Blugold Beginnings students combat the sophomore slump.

And holistic work costs money, a big challenge for a public institution like Eau Claire, without a large endowment. Thesing-Ritter would like all disadvantaged students to be able to take part in the learning community — about 2,300 students at the 11,000-student college receive Pell Grants — but to do that would be unaffordable. Over the years, the university has gotten more than $3 million in grants and donations, but it’s harder to compete now that the program is not the shiny, new thing, Thesing-Ritter says.

Thesing-Ritter grew up in a low-income household and was the first in her family to go to college. She knows the difference educational opportunity makes. “We have to keep working to make progress,” she says.

Maine Maritime Academy

Focusing on Goals From Day 1

Ask Susan Loomis, the dean of faculty at Maine Maritime Academy, about why this small college on the New England coast outpaces Ivy League and other elite private colleges in the long-term economic gains of graduates, and she doesn’t mention career advising or alumni networks.

Instead, Loomis immediately points to students’ very first semester on campus. That’s when they all take a mandatory course to help them make the transition to college and put them on a path toward a career. (Technically, there are two courses, with one tailored for the two-thirds of Maine Maritime students who will earn U.S. Coast Guard certifications in addition to their bachelor’s degrees.) During the course, students learn about time management, practice public speaking, and are introduced to campus services. Some class sessions have an explicit jobs focus, such as how to apply for an internship or what’s the proper etiquette at a business lunch.

Giving students support from Day 1 is seen as critical at Maine Maritime, where nearly half the students are the first in their families to go to college and a quarter receive Pell Grants. College is unfamiliar to them, Loomis says, and if they stumble out of the gate, they might never make it to graduation, let alone a career. The first-year program is designed to give students the tools to navigate college. “We want to talk with them early about their goals and help them see how they can get there,” she says.

And where students go is on to fruitful careers. A study by Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce ranks Maine Maritime among the best colleges in the country for its graduates’ long-term economic gain. The center drew on federal data about college costs and graduates’ earnings to calculate the return on investment for 4,500 public and private institutions. Forty years after graduation, Maine Maritime graduates could expect to see a net economic benefit of $2 million, more than that for graduates of Harvard or Georgetown Universities — and all but five other colleges in the country.

Maine Maritime has had a first-year course for students in its regimental-training program, those who will get a Coast Guard license, for decades. But administrators created a version for degree-seeking students a couple of years ago because they could see the difference it made in outcomes, Loomis says. They’re now tweaking the course to place greater emphasis on leadership training and ethics because they see those skills as highly correlated with success in the classroom and in the workplace.

But the college, which is publicly funded and was established in 1941 by the Maine State Legislature, doesn’t simply want to get students on the right path — it wants to be sure they stay on it. It emphasizes close advising and has a specially designated Student Early Assistance, or SEA, Team made up of faculty members, administrators, and counselors who intervene at the first signs a student is struggling academically or emotionally. Often, students’ challenges will be rooted in their family backgrounds, such as first-generation students who feel pressure to help out financially on top of their studies.

Still, Maine Maritime has some built-in advantages. With just under 1,000 students, it is easy to be high-touch. It’s the antithesis of a party school — under Coast Guard rules, regimental students are subject to drug testing and must rise early every morning for muster. “If you have to get up at 7 a.m. for muster,” says Elizabeth True, vice president for student affairs and enrollment management, “you will make your 8 a.m. class.”

The college also tends to attract career-oriented students, who come to it for its specialized majors in areas like marine-systems engineering, ocean studies, and international business and logistics. It concentrates on hands-on training through internships and co-ops, and students take part in summertime training cruises, where they apply what they’ve learned in the classroom on a working ship. Ninety percent of Maine Maritime graduates have jobs in their chosen fields within 90 days of graduation, and many have offers in hand before they even get their degrees.

But while vocationally oriented majors and practical skills help students land a well-paying first job, where Maine Maritime really outperforms is over a lifetime of earnings, according to the Georgetown study. Success over an entire career is grounded in soft skills like leadership and teamwork that students learn in their first-year course and that are carried on through the college’s liberal-arts core curriculum, True says. “Those skills won’t help you get a first job,” she says, “but they matter enormously long term.”

Spelman College

Believing in Success

Higher education has a lot of terms for low-income students: “Disadvantaged.” “At risk.” “Have-nots.” At Spelman College, there’s one word for them — students.

That’s not to say that Spelman, the historically black women’s college in Atlanta, doesn’t have students who are poor. In fact, about half of its students receive Pell Grants, the federal aid based on family income.

The college, which has a smaller endowment than many of its private peers, stretches its financial-aid budget to help the neediest students. It offers a summer bridge program to help students from underresourced high schools get academically up to speed. Advisers pay close attention to students’ performance, and writing advisers and tutors work with those who need extra support.

But in the classroom, students get a single message, whether they’re wealthy or just scraping by: We believe in your ability to succeed.

“We don’t begin with a deficit model,” says Cynthia Neal Spence, an associate professor of sociology and director of the UNCF/Mellon Programs, a national program that seeks to foster a diverse pipeline of undergraduates in doctoral programs. The college’s academic approach doesn’t change based on a student’s economic background, she says. “We operate from the position that everyone in this space belongs here.”

Academic standards are rigorous, and expectations are high. So, too, are outcomes. Spelman has a 92 percent retention rate for students between their freshman and sophomore years. Its 68 percent six-year graduation rate for Pell Grant recipients leads all HBCUs nationally. No other college sends as many black women to graduate school in the sciences, Spelman says.

Spelman’s approach is rooted in its history and mission. Founded 138 years ago to educate young black women who were rarely admitted to majority white, predominantly male colleges, it has a long track record of working with students who haven’t been well-served by much of higher education. Too often, low-income and minority students are sent the message that college isn’t for them, says Sharon L. Davies, the provost and vice president for academic affairs. That’s not the case at Spelman.

“Black women are underestimated,” she says. “It’s critically important at Spelman that once they arrive on campus we don’t participate in underestimating them.”

One way Spelman encourages success is by modeling it. Faculty members look like and are frequently from similar backgrounds as their students. Office hours are plentiful, and professors are available to advise and mentor students. The college also has an active sisterhood of alumnae. Graduates serve both as an example of where a Spelman degree can lead and as a powerful professional network.

The college also pushes students to participate in educational activities that are known to be especially effective in spurring student learning. Programs like study abroad help students engage with real-world problems and work through cultural differences and may be related to higher persistence and graduation rates. Yet nationally, the students who participate in such programs tend to be disproportionately from wealthier backgrounds and institutions.

When they come to Spelman, students may not have a passport or ever have left their home state, but the college urges them to go overseas. And they do, in large numbers. Seventy-seven percent of the most recent graduating class had some sort of international experience, and participation rates in study abroad have soared nearly 120 percent over the past eight years. Spelman ranks among the top 20 colleges in the country for the share of its undergraduates who take part in study abroad.

To get more students overseas, Spelman expanded the number and diversity of its programs. Students can enroll in traditional semester- or yearlong programs, or go on one of more than 40 short-term faculty-led programs. The college also worked to reduce the financial barriers to studying abroad, offering more than $200,000 in scholarships last year. Spelman is one of the top recipients of the competitive Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship, a federal program that provides study-abroad money to Pell Grant recipients, particularly minority students.

While such financial investments can make a difference for low-income students, administrators at Spelman believe there is real value in fostering students’ self-confidence that they can thrive in an academically competitive environment.

“Something’s going on here that’s not that complicated,” Spence says. “We believe in our students. We believe they have the capacity to succeed.”