NC State has joined 129 other universities and state systems that are dedicated to increasing the number of degrees awarded, decreasing the achievement gap and making higher education more accessible.
The “Powered by Publics: Scaling Student Success” initiative is a national effort by the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities (APLU) to improve student success by 2025.
Julia Michaels, deputy executive director for the Center for Public University Transformation at the APLU, said that this initiative represents more than 3 million undergraduates in total.
“We know that the student journey is nonlinear,” Michaels said. “Students are coming in at multiple times, they’re transferring, they’re dropping out and then coming back… Students that are coming in today to our member universities, these are all public universities, are primarily low-income students, first-generation students.”
This initiative is based on the formation of 16 “clusters,” each of them working toward a specific goal within student success.
“Each of the institutions will be a part of a ‘cluster,’ or a small group of universities that are focused around specific topics related to student success,” Michaels said. “They’ll be meeting regularly, sharing what they’re doing, sharing what they know, engaging in projects together to really try and up the number of degrees conferred to undergraduates and also eliminate the achievement gap. We want them to be improving equity across the board.”
Duane Larick, senior vice provost for academic strategy and resource management and chief of staff of the Provost’s Office, said that NC State is a part of the South Eastern Cluster. In addition to most universities in the UNC System, the cluster partners with Clemson, Florida State, South Carolina State, Virginia Tech and Virginia State.
“We are asking each university to take a hard look at their data,” Michaels said. “Who are their students? What are they going through? What is causing them to drop out? What are those lost points, and how can we intervene to prevent students from dropping out and help them get to graduation in a timely manner with a degree that they are going to find useful to them?”
In addition to Larick, the group of NC State representatives working most directly with APLU on this initiative include Warwick Arden, executive vice chancellor and provost, Mike Mullen, vice chancellor and dean for the Division of Academic and Student Affairs, Louis Hunt, senior vice provost for enrollment management and services, Tom Miller, senior vice provost for Academic Outreach and Entrepreneurship and Mary Lelik, senior vice provost for institutional research and planning.
“Our cluster is working to improve the transfer student experience,” Larick said. “We want to try to improve retention and the experience for students who transfer to NC State, not necessarily the first-time, full-time freshman class.”
As a data-based, collaborative initiative, Larick said that most Powered by Publics meetings involve sharing successes and gap areas in student success. NC State and the South Eastern Cluster as a whole plan to address struggles for transfer students, especially those from community colleges.
“We’ve had multiple teleconferences, and we had an APLU meeting back in December where we had the opportunity to get the whole cluster together and start sharing ideas,” Larick said. “During that first meeting, we had a really good conversation about improving community college partnerships and community college transfer. We had good conversations about orientation for transfer students, advising for transfer students and unique needs that they might have.”
Michaels said that undergraduate students nationwide will feel the effects of this initiative through results ranging from lower costs to faster graduation.
“Student success was the number one goal of our strategic plan for the last ten years,” Larick said. “It was natural for us to say ‘Let’s see what APLU is doing and what they might do to give us new ideas and help us with that common goal.’”
