Ohio University Selected for APLU’s Student Success Capacity Investment

Ohio University is proud to announce it is one of 16 institutions participating in the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities’ (APLU) Powered by Publics initiative to receive additional investment and support to advance student-centered transformation.

The 16 institutions part of this student success capacity investment will engage in an in-depth institutional needs assessment, share student success data, and receive targeted professional development and technical assistance based on needs in advising, college readiness policy and practice, and digital learning.

“Student success is a top priority at Ohio University, and we’re grateful to have the opportunity to enhance the ways we advance our students through professional development, advising and digital learning as part of this new initiative,” President M. Duane Nellis said. “We’re proud to continue to work with the APLU to increase student success. I hope that through this investment, we can build on our work as a national leader in student success initiatives and find additional ways to assist our students.”

The initiative will help continue OHIO’s transformation of student success by increasing awareness of successful and promising transformation strategies; informing campus-level decisions about scalable changes and strategies supporting student success; supporting transformation by providing guidance, evaluating, and sustaining changes in policy and practice; and elevating equity as a core value of the institution – including a systemic approach to change.

By being chosen as one of the cohort’s public institutions, OHIO will receive a $15,000 stipend, participate in the Institutional Transformation Assessment and the Postsecondary Data Partnership, and receive customized technical assistance to support student success efforts, elevating initiatives like the OHIO Guarantee+ that are already in place.

The OHIO Guarantee+ Graduation Plan, an initiative with the goal of delivering an individualized graduation plan that ensures students’ success and that they graduate on time and on plan, is just one way OHIO is focusing on student success. Through this plan, OHIO guarantees that if something gets in the way of graduating on time, OHIO will provide the opportunity for students to still achieve this goal by covering the cost of additional courses and getting them back on track to graduation. This way, students know the entire cost of college from the start and can focus on planning for their future success.

The student success initiative comes out of the APLU’s Intermediaries for Scale Grant Opportunity, Transforming Institutions to Increase Student Success, a grant made possible through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

In 2018, OHIO also partnered with the APLU to participate in “Powered by Publics: Scaling Student Success,” a massive effort in which 130 public universities and systems worked together to increase college access, close the achievement gap and award more degrees by 2025.

“We’re very pleased to provide the opportunity to 16 Powered by Publics institutions to receive additional resources to enhance advising, support college readiness, and improve digital learning,” said Julia Michaels, associate vice president and executive director of APLU’s Center for Public University Transformation. “Powered by Publics institutions are laser-focused on collaborating to advance equity, increase degree completion, and share key data and lessons. The 16 institutions participating in this cohort will serve as a model that other universities can draw from as they seek to strengthen their work in this space.”

APLU's Powered by Publics initiative has convened nearly 125 change-ready institutions and state systems within 14 “transformation clusters” – reaching 3 million undergraduate students, including 1 million Pell Grant recipients. Each cluster is focused on solving different pieces of the student success puzzle as public universities work together to tear down long-standing barriers, eliminate the achievement gap, prepare students to thrive in the 21st century workforce, and collectively increase the number of degrees they award. The clusters are advancing collaborative work in thematic areas of affordability, holistic student supports, and teaching and learning, with equity and data as integral, cross-cutting components.