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Topic: Student learning and outcomes

Research Report
March 1, 2022

Teaching with Cultural Heritage Materials During the Pandemic

Cultural heritage materials can offer rewarding learning opportunities and impactful experiences for students across a variety of disciplines, especially in the humanities and social sciences. These learning opportunities create important historical and/or cultural context within a discipline, allowing students to deepen their engagement with a discipline, or see themselves, perhaps for the first time, as a scholar. However, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the attendant move to online instruction at many colleges and universities, disrupted pedagogical practices and the ways that…
Past Event
March 8, 2022

The Chronicle’s Shark Tank: Edu Edition

Catharine Bond Hill at SXSW EDU

On March 8, Catharine Bond Hill will join fellow “sharks” Goldie Blumenstyk and Paul Freedman at SXSW EDU in Austin, Texas. To learn more, please visit the SXSW EDU website. About the session: The seventh annual pitch-a-thon pays homage to the TV show, but with a twist. Our panel of experts brings a mix of viewpoints—from a journalist, a college-president-turned-equity expert, and an entrepreneur—weighing in on transformative ideas from new companies, nonprofits, and big dreamers for improving the college…
Blog Post
February 16, 2022

Understanding Educational Space Needs in Prisons

New Project Announcement

Across higher education, classrooms and study commons have been reimagined to foster student engagement and learning. But for higher education in prison programs, it can prove challenging to find spaces optimized for education, much less space designed to support their educational needs. Access—or the lack of access—to classrooms, libraries, and scientific and computer labs, can play determining roles in the quality of higher education programming. With many competing demands for space, Departments of Corrections (DOC) may be inclined to look…
Blog Post
February 3, 2022

An Interview with Dr. Jay Darr, Director of University Counseling Center at the University of Pittsburgh

A Deep Dive on the Importance of Mental Health and Its Shared Responsibility Across Campus

Dr. Jay Darr is the Director of the University Counseling Center (UCC) at the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt), a member of the American Talent Initiative’s (ATI) Academic Equity Community of Practice (CoP). As part of our Academic Equity Interview Blog series (for our first post we interviewed Claremont McKenna’s Nyree Gray on campus climate), we asked Dr. Darr to help…
Blog Post
February 2, 2022

Bringing Credit Transfer into Focus

New Report on the Articulation of Transfer Credit at CUNY Project

When a student transfers from one college to another, the receiving college has to decide how to treat the credits that the student earned at prior institutions. While the specific process varies from place to place, in general, the institution has to make two interrelated decisions: (1) the course equivalency—how each course the student completed at another institution translates into courses in the catalog at the new institution, and (2) how the translated courses…
Research Report
February 2, 2022

Archiving Degree Audit Data to Measure and Reduce Lost Transfer Credit

Since June 2019, the Articulation of Credit Transfer project (ACT) has focused on streamlining the information, advising, and administrative processes concerning how credits from one City University of New York (CUNY) institution transfer to another CUNY institution. This work addresses a critical challenge at CUNY, and indeed, across American higher education. When students transfer from one college to another, they frequently are unable to count their previously earned credits toward degree requirements at their new institution, jeopardizing their ability to…
Blog Post
January 18, 2022

Turning on the TAP

Restoring Tuition Assistance for Incarcerated Students in New York

In her first State of the State address since taking office, New York Governor Kathy Hochul outlined an agenda that included repealing the 27-year ban on college tuition assistance, also known as TAP, for incarcerated students. In 1995, when the ban was first instituted, incarcerated students accounted for less than 1 percent of TAP funding state-wide. The ban dovetailed with the 1994 Crime Bill’s elimination of federal Pell grants for incarcerated students and…
Past Event
February 17, 2022

Melissa Blankstein at the DREAM 2022 conference

On Thursday, February 17, from  3:00-3:30 pm EST, Melissa Blankstein will present on “Leveraging the 21st Century Academic Library: Opportunities for Collaboration for Student Success” at the DREAM 2022 conference. Abstract How can your library best position itself to support students holistically? Current library programs often straddle both missions of academic and student affairs–how can this unique role be maximized to enhance both institutional and student success? Join representatives from Bunker Hill Community College and the Community College of Rhode…
Past Event
January 25, 2022

Melissa Blankstein Presents on Collaborating to Support Student Success

ACRL Choice Webinar

On, Tuesday, January 25th at 2:00 pm EST, Melissa is speaking at an ACRL Choice Webinar, “Leveraging the 21st Century Library: Opportunities for Collaboration to Support Student Success.” To register for this free webinar, please visit the ACRL Choice website. About the webinar The library is well positioned to play a key role in supporting student success—helping to increase student learning, develop a sense of community, provide technological resources, and act as a hub for many other services. How…
Blog Post
January 13, 2022

15 Best Practices for Basic Needs Data Collection and Management in Higher Education 

Over the past two years, we have been examining how community colleges define and measure student success. Through an extensive landscape review, interviews with institutional research and effectiveness officers, and a national survey of community college provosts, it has become clear that student success is often tied to whether students’ basic needs are being met sufficiently. But collecting data on basic needs—such as…
Blog Post
January 5, 2022

Providing Library Services for Higher Education in Prison

An Interview with Jessica Licklider and Jeannie Colson

In a previous blog post I interviewed Jeanie Austin of the San Francisco Public Library about their new book on providing library services to incarcerated people. With the restoration of Pell funding for incarcerated students set to take place in 2023, the field of higher education in prison (HEP) is currently grappling with how to prepare for this long-awaited expansion of funding and opportunity, and academic libraries that wish to serve this student group must likewise prepare to meet…
Blog Post
December 8, 2021

A Sustainable Solution to Settle Students’ Debt and Release Stranded Credits

Ithaka S+R and Eight Ohio Public Institutions Announce Promising New Pilot

Since publishing our first report on the subject in October 2020, Ithaka S+R has been at the forefront of defining the problem of stranded credits. We are now moving ahead with testing a potentially groundbreaking solution. “Stranded credits” are credits that students have earned but can’t access because their former institution is holding their transcript as collateral for an unpaid balance to the institution. Ninety-five percent of…
Blog Post
December 7, 2021

Providing Library Services to the Incarcerated

An Interview with Jeanie Austin on Their New Book

Providing library services to people held in prisons and jails can be a challenging endeavor. Those who take on this work will need to navigate complex, and not always welcoming, corrections’ bureaucracies and face censorship or be themselves co-opted into censoring in ways that are antithetical to the ethical tenets of librarianship. Yet the information needs among incarcerated and detained people are immense given their limited access to the internet or other technologies…
Blog Post
November 11, 2021

Engaging Undergraduates in Primary Source Research

An Interview with the Authors of Two New Books

Creating meaningful learning encounters with primary sources involves dynamic collaboration between instructors and those who work with cultural heritage collections, including librarians, archivists, and museum professionals. Here at Ithaka S+R we have been engaging in a series of studies in collaboration with academic libraries, archives, and museums to understand instructors’ support needs in this area, including how to support their teaching with digital cultural heritage materials as classes went remote during the pandemic. In addition to understanding instructors’ experiences…
Blog Post
September 27, 2021

An Interview with Nyree Gray, Chief Civil Rights Officer at Claremont McKenna

A deep dive on campus climate and how the Campus Climate Survey can help build a more equitable academic and social environment

Nyree Gray is associate vice president and chief civil rights officer at Claremont McKenna College (CMC). She has previously presented on a webinar for the American Talent Initiative (ATI) Academic Equity Community of Practice (CoP) and at the 2021 Academic Equity CoP Summer Institute, focusing on the intersection between campus climate and curriculum. In particular, she’s shared how she evaluates insights gained from…
Blog Post
September 14, 2021

As War Ends, Let’s Ensure Veterans Have Access to Higher Education

The similarities between the helicopters that left Saigon and the scenes last month at the Kabul airport are painful. For whatever reasons, we have not learned to retreat safely for our citizens and allies. We have failed in our obligations and commitments to those Afghans who most importantly assisted and protected our young men and women who we sent in harm’s way.  There is another lesson from Vietnam that I hope we have learned, even if…
Blog Post
September 13, 2021

What Does It Mean to Be Successful as a Student During a Pandemic?

Centering Student Experiences

Ithaka S+R has long explored how students define their own success and how academic and student support services can most effectively advance that success—and our work on these issues has only ramped up during the pandemic. When it became clear that the pandemic was here to stay, students had to face dramatic shifts to their learning, a staggering amount of communication and newly-implemented policies from their institutions, and new expectations on what it means to be a…
Blog Post
September 9, 2021

How Can the Library Best Support Student and Institutional Success?

Perspectives from a National Survey of Community College Library Directors

For the past three years, Ithaka S+R has explored how student-facing service departments—including academic libraries—are organized, funded, and staffed at community and technical colleges across the country. As part of this ongoing IMLS-funded Community College Academic and Student Support Ecosystem (CCASSE) research initiative, we surveyed community college library directors this past February. Today, I’m pleased to announce the publication of our findings from that national study. In Library Strategy and Collaboration Across the College Ecosystem…
Research Report
September 9, 2021

Library Strategy and Collaboration Across the College Ecosystem

Results from a National Survey of Community College Library Directors

How can the library be best positioned to continue enabling student and institutional success? The Community College Academic and Student Support Ecosystem research initiative seeks to examine how student-facing service departments—including academic libraries—are organized, funded, and staffed at community and technical colleges across the country. In February 2021, we surveyed 321 community college library directors to provide the community with a snapshot of current service provision, leadership perspectives on the impact of COVID-19, and challenges faced in making decisions and…
Past Event
September 17, 2021

Rayane Alamuddin and Christy McDaniel at the 2021 First Year Student Success Virtual Institute

On September 17th, Rayane Alamuddin and Christy McDaniel will present during the 2021 First Year Student Success Virtual Institute during a session titled, “The Past and Future of First Year Programming at Two Year Institutions”. For more information on registration, please visit the link here. …