Provost Pins Hopes on a One-Stop Academic-Support Strategy

Success in an Edifice

When Thomas A. Sudkamp learned that Wright State University planned to build a new classroom building, he suggested going one step further. Instead of simply expanding lecture space, said Mr. Sudkamp — who was then associate provost for undergraduate education and is now university provost — why not create a center to house all the key academic services offered to students?

The project became the new Student Success Center, whose comprehensiveness, Mr. Sudkamp says, makes it one of the first of its kind. The $17-million building, which opened last June, includes lecture space for gateway freshman courses; high-tech “active learning” classrooms, with circular desks for collaboration; student tutoring space; academic advising offices; and study areas.

Already, administrators are expanding certain practices beyond the building. Students who come to classrooms and some service centers in the building log their attendance by swiping their student-identification card in a magnetic-strip reader. If their attendance at class falls below a certain level, their advisers and professors are alerted. Wright State is adopting the card-swipe system in 40 more classrooms on campus.

Only two-thirds of full-time, degree-seeking freshmen at Wright State return the next year, and the six-year graduation rates is 40 percent. The goal of the center is to decrease the number of dropouts by 20 percent over a five-year period, says Mr. Sudkamp. “We want to make students more aware of academic-support services by having students right where the services are, in the hopes that this awareness will then get them using the services more often.”

The strategy seems to be working. The number of students going to supplemental-instruction sessions designed for their specific courses is up 10 percent from the previous fall semester, and the number of those receiving tutoring in math is up 119 percent from the previous year, he says.

Chloe Schwartz, a sophomore, started going to the drop-in writing center as a freshman. She says her tutor, a fellow student, “basically taught me how to write an academic paper in an hour.” After she received an A in her English class, she was invited to become a tutor herself, and now she works about nine hours a week. “For me, that original tutor being another student was the best part because it made me feel comfortable,” she says. “And so having the experience of using the writing center as a freshman really helped me to become a good tutor because once you’re on both sides, I can see the struggles that the student is going through.” — Angela Chen

Unveiling a Hidden Past

Regina D. Rush, a reference librarian at the University of Virginia, wanted to learn more about her ancestors but knew that records for African-Americans before the Civil War are scarce. As it turned out, the answers to some of her most pressing questions lay not far from her desk.

Ms. Rush has spent 15 years uncovering the history of her enslaved family members in the underground stacks of the university’s Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, where she works, as well as at the Albemarle and Nelson County Courthouses and the Scottsville Museum. When she began, the Virginia native knew almost nothing about her paternal great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents.

She didn’t have a clear route to follow. Enslaved individuals are absent from census records and are listed by age and gender, but seldom by name, in the federal slave schedules compiled in 1850 and 1860.

Seven years into Ms. Rush’s search, a cousin told her that their ancestors had been owned by the Rives family. Ms. Rush knew that the Rives family’s records were among the holdings of the Small special collections. She combed through those papers after work — among them, wills and letters — and found some documents that listed her great-great-grandmother Nicey. Later, in a ledger at the Scottsville Museum, she discovered that Nicey had tried to escape in 1851. Robert Rives Jr. paid $7.25, including mileage, for her apprehension and return, he noted in the ledger.

There’s a connection “with the person when you find some footprint left by them,” Ms. Rush says. “It’s also very painful that the document where you may have found them was an evaluation of what someone determined your ancestor was worth. But she had character and fortitude to try to escape.”

Since she wrote about her findings in the Scottsville Museum newsletter, Ms. Rush has heard from people who were inspired by her story. Nearly 30 percent of the people who come to the Small special collections are doing genealogical research, she estimates. As she proceeds to seek clues about her great-great-grandfather, she hopes that she “planted that seed of interest” in other people who might have believed the way to the past was blocked.

“I feel compelled to be a voice for my family and tell their stories,” says Ms. Rush. “This is helping me find my voice as well.” — Kate Stoltzfus

Fostering ‘Helper’s High’

For Allan B. Luks, training the next batch of leaders to run nonprofit organizations is about instilling one key way of thinking: “I am not here to be your manager. I’m here to change the world.”

Mr. Luks, director of Fordham University’s Center for Nonprofit Leadership, has worked in the nonprofit sector for more than 30 years. He has learned that the most important lesson he can teach aspiring leaders is to have a public conscience

Nonprofit groups look more and more like businesses today, but they should be about solving everyday problems, he says. Universities “are at the heart of turning this around.” In the 1980s, he remembers, he set out to solve everyday problems related to the risks of alcohol consumption. While working for the Alcoholism Council of New York, for example, he spent years organizing and lobbying for mandatory signs to warn pregnant women of the health risks of drinking.

His motivation for much of his work? The “Helper’s High” — a term he coined while doing research on the emotional and physical benefits reported by those who directly help others.

About two years ago, Mr. Luks established Fordham’s master’s-degree program in nonprofit leadership. It is an unusual joint effort between the graduate schools of social service and business. Each course links the business skills needed to run a nonprofit organization with ideas about how to advance the group’s mission. Among other skills, students learn how to create a strategic five-year plan for a project and how to budget program funds to build support for an effort.

By August, he anticipates, about 100 students will have graduated from the program. It is geared toward people with experience in social services, so students’ average age is around 38.

Each student gets a mentor who holds a leadership role in a nonprofit group in the greater New York area. Mr. Luks knows a lot about mentoring, having been executive director of Big Brothers Big Sisters of New York City from 1990 to 2008.

More programs in nonprofit leadership are popping up across the country. Fordham’s program tries to distinguish itself by emphasizing social justice throughout the curriculum. “We want students to look in the mirror,” Mr. Luks says. “And say, ‘How do you want to be remembered? Will you remember yourself by your budget?’” — Corinne Ruff

Carnegie Fellows

Thirty-three academics were named winners of the 2016 Andrew Carnegie Fellows Program this month. Each will receive an award of up to $200,000 to support one or two years of research and writing on issues affecting U.S. democracy and international relations.

Here is a list of the winners:

Séverine Autesserre, Barnard College; Deborah L. Balk, City University of New York’s Bernard M. Baruch College; Gabriella Blum, Harvard University; John R. Bowen, Washington University in St. Louis; Curtis A. Bradley, Duke University; Kate Brown, University of Maryland-Baltimore County; Margaret Burnham, Northeastern University;

Mark Danner, University of California at Berkeley; Lawrence Douglas, Amherst College; Joshua A. Dubler, University of Rochester; M. Taylor Fravel, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Matthew Fuhrmann, Texas A&M University at College Station;

María Cristina García, Cornell University; Daniel K. Gardner, Smith College; Charles G. Geyh, Indiana University at Bloomington; Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor;

Jens Hainmueller, Stanford University; C. Kirabo Jackson, Northwestern University; Kenneth M. Johnson, University of New Hampshire; Marwan M. Kraidy, University of Pennsylvania; Marc Lynch, George Washington University; Mark Fathi Massoud, University of California at Santa Cruz; Maribel Morey, Clemson University;

Christopher M. Nichols, Oregon State University; William Nordhaus, Yale University; Nathaniel Persily, Stanford University; Beryl Satter, Rutgers University at Newark; Harel Shapira, University of Texas at Austin;

Landry Signé, University of Alaska at Anchorage; Katharine R.E. Sims, Amherst College; Jenny Leigh Smith, Georgia Institute of Technology; Vesla M. Weaver, Yale University; and Thomas G. Weiss, City University of New York’s Graduate Center.

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