Fresh From The UIA

We were thrilled to hear that Paul Quinn College's Michael Sorrell was recently named Higher Ed Dive's President of the Year for such student-centric initiatives such as lowering annual tuition, helping the college become a federally designated work college, and allowing students to work part-time as part of the curriculum. Earlier in 2018, President Sorrell was awarded the inaugural UIA National Award at our first ever National Summit. The speech he gave upon accepting it was was incredibly worthwhile.

An op-ed by UIA Executive Director Bridget Burns was recently featured in the Washington Post. Entitled "College rankings need more focus on graduation rates of low-income students," it highlights the particular challenges college rankings create for college and university leaders and poses a timely solution. Read it here.

Great news! We've extended the deadline for the UIA fellow position at Arizona State University by one week. The new deadline is Friday, July 13th 2018 at 5pm Mountain Time. For more information about this position and how to apply, visit the UIA fellowship program page.

Note: if you'd just like to know about future job listings with the UIA, you can simply send an email to talent@theuia.org with the subject line "future opportunities."

LOS ANGELES, Calif., June 26, 2018—While college campuses rarely reach outside their walls to collaborate with other campuses, ten postsecondary institutions have pledged to work together to share best practices, help pilot innovations and openly discuss risks and failures.

The new collaborations are the result of a challenge grant supported by ECMC Foundation and in partnership with the University Innovation Alliance (UIA), a group of 11 public research institutions committed to increasing the number and socioeconomic diversity of college graduates.

Great news: we just kicked off our annual round of national recruiting for UIA fellows. The UIA Fellowship is a full-time, paid 12-24 month leadership development program that places top-tier early career professionals with institutions across our eleven member alliance. This year, we're recruiting for UIA fellows at Arizona State University, Ohio State University, University of California Riverside, and University of Central Florida. Get all the details here and spread the word! Note: we're currently recruiting for project fellows as well.

Earlier this year, several students at University of California, Riverside (UCR) found themselves stuck in a difficult situation. They had failed to register for a full-time course load, so they hadn't received their financial aid, but a hold on their accounts prevented them from enrolling in a full-time course load. It was what you might call “a financial aid loop”.

While just a few semesters ago, these students would have likely fallen through the cracks, UCR now tracks students proactively through a project called Monitoring Advising Analytics to Promote Success (MAAPS).

Our advisors had a problem. They had millions of data points—grades, test scores, and more—at their fingertips but no time to figure out how to use them to help their students. Applied at just the right time, this data could be used to proactively reach out to students to avoid common issues and resolve minor mixups before they became major barriers. However, advisors were too busy addressing current problems to try to prevent new ones. It was a messy, complex situation but one particularly suited to process mapping.

Portland, Ore. – The University Innovation Alliance (UIA) today released the formal agenda for its first ever National Summit for Student Success Innovation and Campus Transformation, which will take place April 3 through April 5, 2018 in Atlanta, Georgia. The Summit builds on the Alliance’s commitment to identifying, scaling, and sharing innovations that improve college graduation rates for first-generation college students and those from low-income backgrounds.

The UIA has always been deeply committed to the role of public universities as engines of social mobility, so we were proud last year when UIA institutions did exceptionally well in an important 2017 ranking by the Brookings Institution of which public universitites contribute most to social mobility.