No Images? Click here Dear PSA2 supporter, The mission of GFE’s Postsecondary Access and Attainment Impact Group (PSA2) is to deepen Grantmakers for Education member learning and facilitate collaboration; to inspire and take collective action at scale; and to achieve an impact that improves postsecondary access and attainment for students. We have lots of exciting news to share, including networking opportunities, call for Grantmakers for Education conference submissions, Strong Start to Finish update, and new PSA2 steering committee members! Funder Networking at Conferences in 2018 It was great to see so many colleagues at our funder-only reception at Achieving the Dream’s annual conference DREAM in Nashville. We hope to see many of you at the University Innovation Alliance National Summit for Student Success Innovation and Campus Transformation, April 3-5, 2018. There will be special funder sessions throughout the Summit and PSA2 will host an informal reception. There are still spots for institutions to send teams, so please encourage your campus partners to check it out! A video about the summit is available here. We also look forward to National College Access Network’s annual conference in Pittsburgh in September. Is there another conference where you think we should have an event? If so, please let us know. Conference Submissions Grantmakers for Education's annual conference will be October 16-18, 2018 in San Diego! The call for conference sessions is now open. The PSA2 team hopes to see lots of postsecondary-related submissions! The deadline for online submissions is 5:00 pm PT on March 20, 2018. The PSA2 Impact Group would like to invite all interested funders to participate in an informal call to discuss conference proposal ideas with a focus on postsecondary access and attainment. This is an opportunity to receive feedback and find support among the PSA2 network. Please register for one or both of the one-hour calls by following the embedded links: Strong Start to Finish Update Strong Start to Finish (SSTF) awarded grants totaling $8,525,000 to higher education systems committed to get students onto successful pathways to college completion while addressing attainment gaps for historically-underserved populations. Each of the following will receive $2.1 million over three years and each presents a unique context for learning how systems can effectively support student success in the first year of college. In the aggregate, hundreds of thousands of students will be served during the term of the grants. City University of New York (CUNY). CUNY will use SSTF funds to steadily replace traditional, stand-alone remedial courses with expanded versions of existing high-impact co-requisite courses. Faculty at all ten associate-granting colleges will be engaged in designing and implementing new courses aligned with degree maps. CUNY's Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP) will benefit more than 25,000 students every year, at least 70 percent of whom will be African-American or Hispanic and 65 percent of whom will be Pell grant recipients. CUNY aims to double the numbers of new students completing both math and English gateway courses each year, from 8,200 to 16,000, and drastically shrink achievement gaps between African-American or Hispanic students and Asian or white students. Ohio Department of Higher Education. Ohio has a robust performance funding system to stimulate improvement, but widespread change is challenging to achieve across the state's decentralized system. Postsecondary leaders are committed to deepening engagement and ownership of change among individual institutions and faculties. Eighteen community colleges and twelve universities will participate in the grant. Currently, only 33% of first time students at participating institutions complete college-level math and English in their first year. Leaders in Ohio have committed to increase that number to 50% by 2021, including reducing equity gaps for economically disadvantaged students, students of color, rural students and students over age 25. State University of New York (SUNY). SUNY is the largest postsecondary system in the nation. All 30 of its community colleges and nine four-year colleges will be directly engaged in the SSTF grant. Developmental education will transform to become an "on-ramp" to guided pathways with multiple measures for placement, advising reforms and integrated student supports to ensure access and equity and help more students of color, low income students and returning adults to succeed. SSTF funds will be used to expand use of Quantway/Statway Math Pathways to ensure that students enroll and succeed in math classes appropriate to their chosen academic area; supports needed for success in English will also be expanded systemwide. University System of Georgia (USG). USG is the nation's fifth largest system by total student enrollment and will engage all 28 of its institutions in the grant. SSTF funds will support systematic expansion of the state's Momentum Year program to ensure each incoming student successfully completes appropriate gateway math and English courses and enters a chosen academic focus area. Students will be encouraged to develop an academic mindset and attempt 30 degree-hours, including a minimum of three courses in their chosen academic focus area. Extra support will be provided where needed alongside or embedded in their coursework as a co-requisite rather than a prerequisite to credit-bearing work. New Steering Committee Members We are thrilled to announce that Alex Harris from the Harold K.L. Castle Foundation, Loni Bordoloi Pavich from The Teagle Foundation, Jennifer Glynn from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, and Kristin Boyer from the Trellis Foundation, have joined the PSA2 steering committee. Interested in joining the Postsecondary Access and Attainment Impact Group steering committee? The PSA2 steering committee is currently recruiting new members from across the country to join our group. Please feel free to reach out to us if you are interested in learning more. Warmly, Mara Botman Rebecca Villarreal
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