By Zenia Henderson, Director of Member & Partner Engagement
NCAN established the Success Replication Project, with the generous support of a Michael & Susan Dell Foundation grant, to help organizations ensure students they had served in high school complete postsecondary credentials. Over three years, 12 organizations
set out to expand their student success services in their respective communities.
What we learned was a pretty clear formula for scaling success services, which we’ve outlined in a new four-paper series.
Each paper offers a collection of case studies about several organizations that participated in the Success Replication Project. Ann Coles, senior fellow, uAspire, authored the papers.
This post is an excerpt from the third paper in the series, which outlines the steps four college access and success organizations
took to build partnerships with colleges and universities. The featured organizations are:
DC Prep, PrepNext (Washington, D.C.)
Operation Jump Start (Long Beach, California)
Project GRAD Houston, Aspiring Young Adults (Houston, Texas)
Ready to Rise Tacoma, Degrees of Change (Tacoma, Washington)
NCAN would like to thank all of the individuals who took the time
to share their experiences and expertise for these publications. NCAN
is grateful to the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation for their support
of the Success Replication Project.
Strategic partnerships between community-based college success programs and higher education institutions can play a critical role in students’ degree completion and workforce readiness. Developing such partnerships is not easy. However, when done with
knowledge of the elements that make partnerships effective – namely a foundation of trust, mutual benefit, and mutual responsibility – they can significantly benefit college success programs and the students they serve.
Operation Jump Start – Long Beach, CA
Operation Jump Start (OJS) began partnering with California State University Long Beach (CSULB) in 2009 when OJS decided to expand its services by continuing to support students beyond high school. In need of additional staff capacity, OJS approached
the CSULB School of Social Work about serving as a field internship site for students. Subsequently, OJS signed an affiliation agreement with CSULB outlining what they would provide interns, including the ways they would help interns develop social
work competencies in prescribed areas (Attachment A.) OJS also agreed to engage a licensed clinical social worker to serve as the students’ field instructor and supervisor.
Since then, OJS’s college success program has been staffed by 10-12 CSULB graduate and undergraduate social work interns. The graduate student interns provide students with social and emotional support, which OJS considers critical to their college success.
Interns work 16 hours a week and have an average caseload of 25 students, each of whom they support throughout the academic year. They check in with students every other week by phone, video chat, and/or text, offering support and help with problem-solving.
The interns document their interactions with students in the OJS data management system, allowing for a relatively seamless transition for students to a new intern the following year. Undergraduate interns work for eight to 10 weeks. They help with
data entry, manage phone calls, and support student events. Along with graduate interns, they also facilitate college success workshops for 11th and 12th graders. While the interns are not paid employees, they receive a stipend at the end of the year,
lunches, and gift cards during the holidays.
OJS and CSULB benefit from their partnership in significant ways. OJS benefits by having near-peer advisers supervised by an experienced social worker to support their students. CSULB benefits by having an agency where students can participate in internships
that give them experience with real-life clients and the opportunity to develop clinical and case-management skills. Most importantly, the social work interns provide students valuable assistance with meeting the challenges they face in college that
OJS would not have the capacity to offer otherwise.
Project GRAD Houston – Houston, TX
Project GRAD Houston’s (PGH) higher education partnerships originated in the late 1990s. At that time, PGH awarded scholarships of up to $4,000 over four years to college-ready Houston public school graduates. Since Project GRAD Scholars were bringing
thousands of dollars to local colleges, when PGH’s president asked these institutions to partner with them, their leaders readily agreed. While PGH ended the scholarship program in 2010 due to lack of funding, the partnerships continued.
Today, Project GRAD Houston partners with three metro area community colleges. PGH has an MOU called a “Partnership Agreement for Support Services” with each college spelling out what the partnership involves (Attachment B.) Houston Community College
provides PGH free office space within its main administrative offices in exchange for PGH leaders serving as “in-house” consultants on issues related to first-generation students. Lone Star College and Lee College provide space for PGH’s GRADcafés,
which offer free college and career information and advising to residents of the surrounding communities. In exchange, PGH conducts outreach to students referred to as stopouts from the partner institutions to encourage them to return to college.
The day-to-day work of PGH’s partnerships involves helping students enroll and persist in college. All students complete a Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) waiver before enrolling, permitting the colleges to share the names of students’
academic advisers and information about how they are doing with PGH. Houston Community College designates an academic adviser to serve as the liaison to PGH. This person provides PGH advisers with the information they need to stay on top of students’
academic progress and offer advice tailored to students’ needs. Colleges also provide space where PGH advisers can meet with students on campus.
The partnership with Houston Community College (HCC) extends beyond direct services for students. PGH leaders work with institutional leaders to address systemic issues that present challenges for students. One example is HCC’s FERPA waiver. HCC had three
different versions of the waiver, which students found confusing. PGH called attention to this situation and persuaded HCC to consolidate the three forms into one to be used campuswide. Another example is HCC’s financial aid refund policy. Depending
on when students started classes, some were not getting their refunds until the semester was almost over. PGH worked with HCC to modify this policy so that all students would get their money when they needed it.
Read the full paper for additional case studies and recommendations of how your organization can build its own higher ed partnerships.
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