Note: This interview in the Scholarship to Practice Series originally aired on January 20, 2025 as part of the University Innovation Alliance’s Innovating Together Podcast, appearing live on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. The transcript of this podcast episode is intended to serve as a guide to the entire conversation, and we encourage you to listen to this podcast episode. You can also access our summary, along with helpful links and audio from this episode.
Bridget Burns:
Welcome to Innovating Together, a podcast produced by the University Innovation Alliance. This is a podcast for busy people in higher education who are looking for the best ideas, inspiration, and leaders that will help you improve student success. I'm your host, Bridget Burns.
Welcome to another episode of Scholarship to Practice. My name's Bridget Burns with the University Innovation Alliance. I'm excited today to bring you a conversation with a scholar in the field who is doing work that is really not just relevant in field of their scholarship, but is particularly relevant when it comes to the day-to-day administration of higher ed and how we improve outcomes for student success. So, I'm super excited to have this opportunity to share that with you.
First, these episodes are sponsored by Mainstay, which is the student retention and engagement platform that is actually proven that their product works through randomized control trials and efficacy studies that are done by external evaluators and has seen significant success at Georgia State and a variety of other institutions. So, thanks for their support, and for the support of Carnegie Corporation of New York, who is a longtime supporter of the UIA.
But now we get a chance to actually talk about the substance of today and who we're going to have, who is, let me just say is kind of a big deal. Dr. Angela Duckworth, thanks so much for being here. This is an honor to get a chance to meet you and to be able to share about the work that you're leading today.
Angela Duckworth:
Hi, Bridget. I'm excited to be here. Thank you for having me.
Bridget Burns:
So, folks may know – you should probably know who Angela Duckworth is. You are a faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania. You are a psychologist. Many people knew you from a viral TED talk on grit, but also you wrote books, and you've done all kinds of other things. Now, you are not just a professor of psychology. You are also the co-director of the Penn Wharton Behavior Change for Good Initiative. And so that's just a sampling of who you are, but I would offer that as my intro, but can you help draw the dot connection between a lot of people first met you with grit and now you're doing really interesting different stuff?
Angela Duckworth:
Well, I would draw the connection by just saying that before I became a psychologist and a professor, I was a high school teacher, and like many educators, wondered how do I get these brilliant young people to fulfill their potential? Because I just saw it every day that young people were falling short of what was quite obviously within the range of what they could learn, what they could achieve, and the lives they could lead. So that inspiration, if you will, that frustration, honestly, led me to become a professor in the first place. And one of the things that I studied to begin with was grit. I just had the intuition that kids were really smart, and intellectual capacity was not the limiting factor, but that their ability to sustain effort toward their goals was. But then very quickly, I will say, you go from trying to understand who's grittier, who's less gritty, how does that play out?
And then you ask the real question, which is what are the conditions under which a young person will demonstrate passion and perseverance for long-term goals, which is how I define grit. Which schools, what affordances, what supports, and not only what is it that enables that, but what are the risk factors, or what are the impediments or the obstacles? And so very – I won't say very recently – some years ago, I teamed up with another faculty member at my university. Her name is Katy Milkman. She's also a scientist who studies human behavior. She and I have this common interest in human motivation and how people can make good choices. And so, we have very recently decided that student success in the first year of college, that transition from high school to the first year of college, that is a high leverage opportunity for us to support students motivationally. And so that's what I'd love to talk to you about today.
Bridget Burns:
That's great. And I think it's obvious then why we're talking, because we've been working on the implementation of student success interventions to try and shift the ways that institutions embrace support and frankly can be an obstacle to students being able to achieve their full potential. So, I love that you're coming at from that lens. The place that we have this kind of intersection is, in order to move the research forward, you are looking to start studying how large numbers of institutions are engaging with students. And in that opportunity, of course, is a cross-section with the UIA. And that's what I wanted to try and tee up today, is help people understand this next frontier of work and research that you're trying to do and how they might be able to connect with it.
Angela Duckworth:
Yeah, several UIA members are already part of this collaboration. Let me describe what this collaboration is, should any eager listeners be excited enough to join. Well, we should say – I should say at the start that the goal of the project I'm going to describe, this student success project, is to increase first-year persistence and also transcript grades at institutions that are large, meaning institutions are serving a collective 15,000 undergraduates or more. And then also have a persistence rate, six-year persistence rates or graduation rates that are under 85%. So that gives you a sense of the kind of large institutions serving students who are not always succeeding. That's who our collaborating partners are. And what we're doing is we're matching these wonderful undergraduate institutions with behavioral scientists who are concocting programs that are helping students make that transition from high school to the first year. And so, Bridget, we like to call these mega studies that we run, because they're mega, they're really big.
And what we've done is we've recruited behavioral scientists who are really at the bleeding edge of how to support students in that transition. So, the leading scientists who study belonging, for example, who study identity and affirming your values as one of the psychological supports, or who study self-control and time management, we have a variety of different ideas that these leading scientists have developed. And in this mega study, if you partner with us, essentially your students will have an opportunity to experience one of these ideas. They get an equal chance of experiencing them. That enables us to evaluate which of these approaches help which students the most when we do that by having these students engage in these activities in the transition to college and in the first semester.
Everything's digital. It's very light touch. It's actually one website link that the school sends out to the undergraduates. And from there, we take it, and they get a digital activity as an introduction, and they get some supportive text messaging throughout the fall. And we are hoping that those psychologically wise interventions, as they're sometimes called, that we will see the needle move on both persistence and grades through the first year.
Bridget Burns:
So, I find that really interesting the design of the study, this is a great opportunity, and there are multiple UIA campuses who've already decided to participate, and we're hearing interest from several others. I'm curious about the selection of first year that clearly you are putting forward a theory here or you are testing a question that, yeah, I definitely hear you, that is a very important point in time. Do you see that you could see this moving beyond the first year? Or do you think that it's kind of like if we mess it up, then...
Angela Duckworth:
I think anybody in higher education would agree that it's not just the first year that matters, but I think we would also agree that it's a difficult transition. I mean, in high school there's so much structure. For many young people that are living away from home, there's a threat sort of like, "Do I fit in here? Am I going to make it?" These are flashpoint questions that emerge in that transition. And so, we were very strategic about targeting the first year, but we are also hoping that the kinds of insights that emerge out of this program that they would extend – I mean, kids need to feel like they belong all of the years that they are in college, for example. So, we do think there's relevance to the rest of the college journey as well.
Bridget Burns:
Do you think that there might be any possibility that you would move to include transfer? Like say, let's fast-forward in time. Let's assume this turns out awesome, that you could be able to help with that piece. Because universities, we spend a lot of energy on freshmen and helping to land them. We focus on learning communities, communities of practice, things like that. Transfer is the place that we are definitely not as good and definitely benefit from in the future hopefully.
Angela Duckworth:
No, I agree. And actually, if there's an educational institution who asks us, "Well, what about our transfer students?", we would say, "The more, the merrier." In some ways you could just conceive all those students as being first year students, their first year for that campus, for example. So, first of all, I want to agree with you that transfer is something that we don't do especially well. And that the way that this program is designed is that when a partner says, "Yes, we would like to collaborate with you," it's all of the students, actually, and we have no problem including anyone that the school says, "We're considering this person transitioning to this school."
Bridget Burns:
Great. So, one of the things that you've talked about is apples-to-apples comparison and trying to make sure that you're really getting this data from, we're talking about the same things. It's very difficult to have apples-to-apples when you have different governance structures, different organizational structures. You have different phases of turnover and transition that are affecting interventions and supports. I don't think it's – higher ed's a very imperfect space in terms of trying to do this. So, how are you going to navigate the balance of how to get those standardized interventions, but also knowing the unique context that you're going to face?
Angela Duckworth:
So, I think everybody who has worked a day in higher education understands that the particulars of that culture and that institution – I mean it's different from school to school. If we decided that, “Oh, this school's going to get this approach, and this school's going to get that approach,” then I think we would not have any valid results from the study. So, the way we do this is that any partner, any university who partners with us, they get all of the interventions that are being developed. So, they don't get just one. They get everything. They get the whole rainbow. And then we are able to tell them at the end of the study, here are your data. Here's what worked best for you. Also, as part of this consortium, here's what worked best on average. And so, we're not publicly making any comparisons, but privately we are giving the university partner all the data on their own school so they can see how each of these interventions played out. And then they can compare it to the broader consortium. So, that's one way we can stay apples-to-apples, is that every university gets all of the approaches.
Now, there is something, Bridget, that we're not doing that I think everyone would want us to do, which is tailoring the approaches very specifically by school. So, there is an outside label for the activities that the kids will get, that the students will get, that will be kind of like, oh, fill-in-the-blank university starter kit. So, it'll feel that it's customized, but we're not really changing the program. So that enables us to make an apples-to-apples comparison across schools. So anyway, that is a very long-winded way of saying that we are not making customizations based on each university other than the communication and branding in order to make an apples-to-apples comparison.
That is in some ways a design constraint of the study. But I think the thing that schools need to realize is that once you have an insight about what it is psychologically that needs to be supported on that campus, and you can see all the materials, which we will share with only our university partners, then you can say like, “Oh, this is what works. Now I figure out how I can build that into the DNA of our first-year experience program or our other supports for students.”
Bridget Burns:
That's great to be able to get the kind of clear data. So, for folks who are watching at home, who are listening at home, who are administrators, this might not be something that they have total ownership of the division, but they want to raise this up internally at their institution to see if they might be able to participate. Do you want to talk about exactly what it's going to take and what they're going to get? So, I have these –
Angela Duckworth:
So, thank you for sharing the slide, Bridget. I've never met a more effective human being than you. So, this is amazing that you are communicating all of this. The asks are threefold, and we think they're very simple. The first ask is that first-year students in the transition – in the orientation process, I should say – would get a website link that we would provide. That's basically the portal to the rest of the intervention, the digital activity, and then we'll handle all the text messaging from there. The second ask is that obviously every school has an IRB, and you would just ask that you would help us navigate that with you so that we can get approval. That's usually very straightforward. And the third ask is just to provide the outcome data at the end of the school year to say what are the enrollment status and what are the grades for the students who are in the intervention?
So those are the three asks. And you mentioned that there are UIA schools already involved. We also have in total over two dozen universities who have signed on. You might want to advance to the next slide so I can say, “Well, what do you get out of it?” And as I mentioned, you will get the actual programming, and the scientists who are working on these supports are all contributing their effort and their intellectual capital pro bono, and they're very happy to be sharing these materials. Also, insights about the programming that worked best on that campus and then in total for the entire consortium. And then I just want to say that many schools are interested in subgroups, like different subgroups, whether they are PAL recipients, or students from first-year backgrounds. And we will analyze the data, we'll slice it and dice it in ways that really ask the question like, “What works best for whom?”
And so, we hope that the ask is quite light, and we hope that the benefits are substantive. And I will just end by saying that if anybody is interested and they say, "Yeah, my school is large enough, we have over 15,000 students. Our six-year graduation rates are 85% or below," you can email us at bcfg@wharton.upenn.edu. That's behavior change for good, bcfg@wharton.upenn.edu. And we will immediately reply, and if it's a fit, we will have a call with you and take it from there.
Bridget Burns:
Awesome. So, I think this is great, and I especially love that you're doing useful research that is helping focus on a priority that is urgent. Currently, we just simply can't wait for the field to figure out exactly how to support students better, but it's so practical. And also, I appreciate that the way that you designed this study is not going to be so difficult for the institutions, because oftentimes, I often see a lack of empathy for the day-to-day slog of administrators just getting through their day, just getting through their calendar and their inbox, and it's like, "And on top of that, we will also have you –"
Angela Duckworth:
I spoke to an administrator once, and she said, "Here's my request. Don't give me one more thing." She was like, "Just, I don't want one more thing. It's always one more thing." Shoehorn this in and add this, and so forth. And so, we hope that this is about as aerodynamic – We really have worked, we've piloted and iterated on this program for three years to make it as light a kind of lift as possible with the greatest bang for the buck. So yeah, we're hoping that partners will agree, and honestly, I would love to work with universities who share our passion for the next frontier. What can we do that augments some of the things that we already have in place for our first-year students?
Bridget Burns:
Well, I think it's fantastic. And like I said, several UIA campuses are already doing it, and I think that it will be well-timed to – hopefully, you'll be able to find all the answers and we can just benefit.
Angela Duckworth:
We'll have another conversation to talk about that.
Bridget Burns:
And I mean, part of what we're looking for is what can we stop doing?
Angela Duckworth:
Yes, we are going to, by the way, share all that as hard-nosed scientists. I think so much of this space is like, "Oh, do this, do that." But we're going to look at what works and also what doesn't work. And we're going to try to do that with clear-eyed objectivism. So, objectivity. So, couldn't agree more, Bridget. The kind of one more thing, one of the elements of that is just like, well, maybe there are things we shouldn't be doing because there's not a lot of value add, and maybe “one fewer thing” is the prescription of the day. So, when the data come back, we'll be honest and complete.
Bridget Burns:
Well, I mean we need more evaluation, but we also often need more evaluation of programs and services and supports we’re offering that understands the context of how difficult it is to stand up a program. And that there's often in the first year or so, it's not pretty, don't do an RCT, right? Because there's a lot of our work that is like, we need more evaluation, but there's so much of the things that are happening on the day-to-day on the campus that are always hoping that they work and hoping that they actually solve the problem. And if we could just free up some of people's time when we are doing stuff that we can tell is just simply not having the effect, that would be incredibly valuable. Also, if you can solve it and tell us do this.
Angela Duckworth:
Well, hopefully we'll have things that work. But doing an RCT is really hard, Bridget. I don't know how a university administrator could, in addition to everything they're trying to do. I mean, I know this happens, but you know, it's really – actually, we hope that this student success program, because we are doing that random assignment, the allocation, the data analysis, the developing of these, we are hoping to provide some of that value in the realistic context of a very, very busy administrator's life who cares about student success, wants to make it a use of modern science, but honestly is not going to be themselves doing the kind of legwork that the scientific team is doing.
Bridget Burns:
Great. Well, I love light touch, easy, smart people cleaning up –
Angela Duckworth:
Urgent problem.
Bridget Burns:
Big problem.
Angela Duckworth:
Big problem.
Bridget Burns:
Couldn't be more urgent. So, for those of you at home, I just want to remind you that if you're interested, bcfg@wharton.upenn.edu and look forward to hearing about all of the campuses who are participating and that this actually got you in all the right ears. So, thank you very much for being here today, Dr. Angela Duckworth, and for those of you at home, we will see you next time.
Bios of Guest and Co-Hosts
Dr. Angela Duckworth is the Rosa Lee and Egbert Chang Professor at the University of Pennsylvania and faculty co-director of the Penn Wharton Behavior Change for Good Initiative. A 2013 MacArthur Fellow, she has advised the World Bank, NBA and NFL teams, and Fortune 500 CEOs. Prior to her career in research, Dr. Duckworth founded a summer school for underserved children that was profiled as a Harvard Kennedy School case study and, in 2018, celebrated its 25th anniversary. She has also been a McKinsey management consultant and a math and science teacher at public schools in New York City, San Francisco, and Philadelphia. She co-founded Character Lab, a nonprofit dedicated to advancing scientific insights that help children thrive. Angela completed her undergraduate degree in Advanced Studies Neurobiology at Harvard, her MSc with Distinction in Neuroscience from Oxford University, and her PhD in Psychology as a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. Her TED talk is among the most viewed of all time. Her book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance is a #1 New York Times best seller.
Co-Host: Bridget Burns, Executive Director, University Innovation Alliance
Dr. Bridget Burns is the founding Executive Director of the University Innovation Alliance (UIA). For the past decade, she has advised university presidents, system chancellors, and state and federal policy leaders on strategies to expand access to higher education, address costs, and promote completion for students of all backgrounds. The UIA was developed during Bridget’s tenure as an American Council on Education (ACE) Fellowship at Arizona State University. She held multiple roles within the Oregon University System, including serving as Chief of Staff and Senior Policy Advisor, where she won the national award for innovation in higher education government relations. She was a National Associate for the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, and has served on several statewide governing boards including ones governing higher education institutions, financial aid policy, and policy areas impacting children and families.
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