Information Sessions:
I. WHAT IS Transforming the Foundational Postsecondary Experience?
The Foundational Postsecondary Experience, it is the totality of what occurs during the first two years of the college experience; specifically, what a student experiences while attaining their first sixty credits towards a degree.
Institutional Transformation occurs when race/ethnicity; family income; and zip codes are no longer the best predictors of a student’s success and degree completion.
Transforming the Foundational Postsecondary Experience is five-year process to support partner institutions in creating and implementing a plan for system redesign that closes equity gaps while supporting teaching, learning, success, completion, and retention.
II. Institutions participating in Transforming the Foundational Postsecondary Experience :
Will be have the benefit of the Gardner Institute ‘s deep postsecondary education redesign experience and thought leadership garnered through work with over 520 institutions
Identify and address inefficient and ineffective design.
So that race/ethnicity and family income are no longer the best predictors of who gets to graduate
Focus on The First Two College Years
Work alongside 45-60 Institutions Involved by 2027-2028
Institutions will have 25% Pell and/or Students of Color
Be prepared to start in Mid-to-Late Spring 2023
Make a 5-Year Commitment
Invest a Modest-But-Real Institutional Financial Commitment
III. HOW DOES THE FOUNDATIONAL POSTSECONDARY EXPERIENCE WORK?
THE FOUNDATIONAL POSTSECONDARY EXPERIENCE is a five-year process that begins with Analyze and Plan (Year One), continues with Act and Monitor (Year Two), and culminates with Act and Refine (Year Three and beyond), this process provides faculty and staff both time and tools to fully plan, implement, and refine gateway courses based on evidence collected.
Phase One
Discovery Phase
An initial Discovery Phase (spanning approximately the first six months) where Gardner Institute staff work with institutions to identify redundancies, gaps, capacities, readiness, and abilities.
Phase Two
Capacity Development and Planning Phase
An initial Capacity Development and Planning Phase (launched during the first year of the project) to establish and strengthen directions and conditions for implementation success including:
●Institutional data capacity and evaluation development
●Institutional senior leadership (Boards and Cabinets) capacity development
●Institutional unit leadership (Deans and department heads) capacity development
●Faculty development
Phase Three
Initial Redesign Phase
Initial Redesign Phase-Deep support for redesigning various aspects of the foundational college experience (launched during the second year of the approach) informed by the results of the initial discovery phase. Areas for deeper work with the Gardner Institute and partners include:
●Redesign of the first college year (first-year experience)
●Redesign of the gateway course experience – both course structures and pedagogy
●Redesign of curricula – especially through the application of curricular analytics that expose inefficient and inequitable design and outcomes
●Ongoing leadership capacity development
Phase Four
Ongoing Redesign and Scaling
Ongoing Redesign and Scaling-Ongoing scaling, evaluation, capacity development, continuous improvement, and national dissemination support including:
●Scaling and refinement support
●Dashboards and other means to track leading, intermediate, and long-term performance measures to make sure that the strategies are operationalized and harmonized to yield the desired goal – so every student can graduate
●Ongoing capacity development for leadership
●National rating effort (optional)
IV. After completing sense making, institutions will participate in a variety of Gardner Institute academies and processes.
Gateway Course Redesign & Teaching and Learning Academy.
Gateways to Completion, a multi-year, evidence-based process to create an institutional plan for improving student learning and success in high-enrollment courses that have historically resulted in high rates of Ds, Fs, Withdrawals, and Incompletes especially for low-income, first-generation and historically underrepresented students. Participants will also have access to the Teaching and Learning Academy.
Redesign of the First Year.
Foundations of Excellence enables institutional transformation that improves first-year success and retention through comprehensive, evidence-based, guided self-study, planning, and implementation. Participants will engage in an institution wide focus on the entirety of the First Year of college.
Retention Performance Management.
Focus on shared decision-making. This is a task force-based assessment model. The broad involvement of faculty, staff, and students in your structured planning and implementation processes improves both institutional commitment to the plan and the student success outcomes of the plan.
Academy on the First Year of College.
The first college year shapes students' entire postsecondary experience and subsequent outcomes including retention and completion.
The Academy on the First College Year draws on a broad array of research, practice-based literature, data, and expertise from Gardner Institute scholars specializing in the first year of college. In this online, 4-week Academy, participants will gain insight into what makes the first-year experience successful and what they can do to improve.
Equity in Retention Academy.
The Equity and Retention Academy is a structured, 5-week academy that will prepare institutional teams to conduct an evidence-based, equity-focused student retention planning process for their institution with a goal of improving retention and using evidence to ensure that race, ethnicity, and family income are no longer the best predictors of retention and student success.
Curricular Analytics Community. (CAC)
The Curricular Analytics Community is designed to involve faculty and staff in a process that leverages improvement science and curricular analytics tools to identify opportunities for equitable curriculum redesign at their institutions. Drawing on the characteristics of a Networked Improvement Community (NIC), the CAC has a well-defined aim—curricular redesign that will increase equitable persistence and graduation rates—and is guided by a theory of improvement, allowing members to work in an accelerated way to Plan, Do, Study, and Act (PDSA).
What type of outcome do Institutions report as a result of The Foundational Postsecondary Experience?
Based on over 20 years and working with over 500 institutions participants can anticipate seeing a decrease in the DFWI rates as compared to sections of the same courses that have not been redesigned. Some institutions are have reported very good outcomes associated with closing gaps in attainment between students from historically marginalized backgrounds and other students in the gateway courses.
Some examples of these outcomes are discussed in this report.
Higher retention rates for students in G2C courses compared to students in sections of the courses not transformed by G2C
• Lower rates of academic probation for students in G2C courses compared to students in sections of the courses not transformed by G2C
• Higher levels of resiliency (defined as being on academic probation but still returning to the institution) for students in G2C courses compared to students in sections of the courses not transformed by G2C
• Higher course passing rates (rates of A, B, and C grades) and lower rates of D, F, W, and I grades (DFWI rates) for students in G2C transformed courses compared to students in sections of the courses not transformed by G2C
• Higher grade point averages for students in G2C courses compared to students in sections of the courses not transformed by G2C
• Better exam scores for students in G2C transformed courses compared to students in sections of the courses not transformed by G2C
Results highlighted from USG Gateways to Completion presentation from the 2019 Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACS CoC).
The link to download the entire presentation is above this graphic.
Results from Eastern Michigan University are highlighted below. The DFWI rate dropped across all sections. The full report can be downloaded here.
IV. FEES & APPLICATION
Now, accepting applications on a rolling basis. This work is supported in part by Ascendium Education Group, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the ECMC Foundation, and The Kresge Foundation.
Fees are based on an institution’s undergraduate enrollment:
Up to 2000- $27,500
2001 to 5000- $32,300
5001 to 10,000- $37,900
10001 to 15,000- $44,500
Over 15000- $52,300
Email Info@jngi.org for more information.
Applications are accepted on a rolling basis.