The Pennsylvania Adult Learner Re-Engagement Community of Practice will culminate in a virtual convening on Wednesday, November 5, 2025, from 9:30am-12:00pm ET. The convening will include presentations and discussions with participating institutions about goal implementation, conversations about future work related to adult learner engagement and enrollment, and strategies and promising practices from a forthcoming playbook on enrolling adult learners with some college but no credential in Pennsylvania. Please register here if you’d like to join us!

Adult Learner re-engagement efforts: why they matter and ongoing work

Adult learners are frequently overlooked, but are an increasingly important student population. According to a recent report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, there are 37.6 million adult learners under 65 with some college credit, but no credential in the US and this number is increasing. In response to this challenge, Ithaka S+R is working across the United States to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of pathways for returning adult learners, with ongoing collaborations in Pennsylvania, Kentucky, North Carolina, New Jersey, Tennessee, and Ohio. These initiatives, which vary by state, include efforts to understand the impact of unpaid balances and administrative holds, survey existing supports for adult learners and provide recommendations, facilitate communities of practice that support participants to set ambitious goals, and share promising practices that will support adult learner re-engagement.

In this blog, I focus on Pennsylvania. Roughly one million adult learners with some college but no credential are located in Pennsylvania. Re-engaging and re-enrolling adult learners can help solve several problems for adult learners, higher education institutions across Pennsylvania, and the Pennsylvania economy. These learners have no credential to show for the initial investment of time, money, and effort and are likely missing out on job opportunities that require a postsecondary degree. Colleges and universities across Pennsylvania, as in the rest of the country, are facing dropoffs in enrollment as the pool of traditional-age students decreases. Adult learners could help fill this enrollment gap. The state economy can also benefit from adult learners re-enrolling, learning new skills, and earning degrees and credentials. A recent report notes that by 2031, an estimated 28 percent of jobs in Pennsylvania will require training beyond high school and another 37 percent will require a bachelor’s degree or beyond.

While many Pennsylvania institutions are working on re-engaging and re-enrolling their adult learners, there are limited opportunities for the folks doing this work to gather. The Pennsylvania Adult Learner Re-Engagement Community of Practice, undertaken in collaboration with the Pennsylvania Department of Education and with funding from Lumina Foundation and The Kresge Foundation, was designed to help fill this gap.

An overview and timeline of activities

The community of practice launched in December 2024 to support representatives from postsecondary institutions in the state to define goals and support progress towards re-engaging, re-enrolling, and supporting adult learners at their respective institutions. Nearly 100 individuals from 50 postsecondary institutions are participating in this year-long program. The program is designed to have frequent touchpoints with participants and includes the following components:

  • Setting and refining a SMART goal
  • Four virtual meetings from December 2024 to September 2025
  • Check-in surveys following each meeting
  • Concluding, virtual convening on November 5, 2025

Throughout the initiative, our team gathered participant feedback and worked to adjust some program components in real time to better support participants. For example, through the goal check in forms and an anonymous feedback form, we learned participants wanted more time for peer-to-peer learning and connection. In response, we adjusted the meeting agendas to include more time for small group discussions.

The participant perspective

As a summer intern working with Ithaka S+R, I wanted to learn about participants’ experiences at different stages in our engagement and asked what inspired them to join the community of practice, which features of the initiative were particularly helpful to their goal progress, and what next steps they plan to take moving forward. Four senior leaders from three institutions shared their perspectives with me through 30-minute virtual meetings:

  • Marcy McCarty, Dean of the School of Graduate and Professional Studies at Elizabethtown College
    • Goal Progress: Created a retention task force to map adult learner student experience with the aim of identifying gaps in support services and any duplicate efforts. Preparing to survey students on why they stopped out. Successfully advocated for inclusion of measurable goals focused on adult learner re-enrollment into the school’s multi-year strategic plan.
  • Joseph Paris, Dean of the School of Graduate and Professional Studies at Delaware Valley University
    • Goal Progress: Webpage audit and redesign collaboration with the university’s marketing and communications team in part based on exemplar webpages from peer institutions. Revising webpage FAQ pages to be more useful for adult learners. Pursuing solutions to provide enhanced on-campus childcare support to parenting students.
  • Susan Kolb, Assistant Vice President of Graduate and Adult Education Enrollment and Hillary Saylor Schulze, Director of Student Financial Services Counseling at Alvernia University
    • Goal Progress: Creating a journey map of the re-enrollment process for stopped out students to foster cross-departmental collaboration (i.e., with admissions, student success, and student services), raise awareness of ongoing initiatives, and identify areas for improvement.

Key benefits of participation

Below, I detail several key insights from the conversations.

Community and relationship-building

Participants shared the importance of this community of practice as a meaningful way to break out of what can often feel like isolating, siloed work at their institutions and across Pennsylvania. It gave participants time to meet and connect with peers invested in similar efforts and served an important community-building role. Participants noted they anticipate the relationships developed during the community of practice to extend beyond the conclusion of the program. As Dr. Paris commented, he now feels comfortable and confident “writ[ing] a LinkedIn message or send[ing] an email to [a community of practice connection] to just share notes and to really have a thought partner or somebody who’s willing to share feedback.” The community of practice helped with breaking down institutional siloes, encouraged sustained work on goals, and laid a strong foundation for continued community support moving forward. This community-building work seemed particularly important to participants. Despite, as they described, that Pennsylvania has one of the most competitive higher education marketplaces in the country, they were able to come together to share resources and build a deep sense of community around an important goal.

Access to information

Participants unanimously agreed that access to updated data on adult learners was invaluable. Presentations during the quarterly meetings provided up-to-date data that participants could take back to their home institution and use to motivate and make a case for the merit of their goals. In some cases, the real-time data served to confirm participants’ hypotheses about the student experience and made them feel more confident in pursuing their planned approach to achieving their goal. For example, Lehigh Carbon Community College presented information about the different motivations students had for re-enrolling, and this really resonated with Susan Kolb: “It’s always good to help confirm what you think your messaging should be when you’re trying to reach out to these students. The data presented confirmed ‘ok, we’re on the right track in how we are thinking about the motivation of an adult learner.’” Beyond the presentations by Ithaka S+R, the Pennsylvania Department of Education, and peer institutions, the opportunities to learn from peers working on similar goals were important (e.g., what makes an effective website for adult learners).

Accountability

The community of practice facilitated regular, quarterly virtual meetings, and participants were asked to complete goal check-in surveys after each meeting to share goal progress, request support, and share feedback. Having dedicated time to take part in community and work on their goals was particularly helpful for participants as they navigated competing demands on their time. We hope that the momentum gained during the community of practice will support more long-term goals beyond the conclusion of the program. As Dr. McCarty noted, through data sharing and conversations with other senior leadership, she helped advocate for the inclusion of targeted re-engagement outreach efforts that will span the next four years and will be included as action items in her school’s multi-year strategic plan.

Conclusion and next steps

These reflections suggest that the collaboration between Ithaka S+R and the Pennsylvania Department of Education supported participants’ goal progress in a variety of ways. The meeting format and topics, resources and data shared, and opportunities for peer-to-peer conversations were all valuable components of this community of practice.

The fourth meeting of the community of practice took place on September 3, 2025. If you’re interested in joining for the concluding convening on November 5, 2025, please register here. We are planning to publish a playbook distilling lessons learned through this work in advance of the convening.

Note: If your institution or state is interested in partnering with us to address barriers to adult learner re-engagement, through program implementation, technical assistance, or other solutions, please reach out to Liz Looker, senior program manager, at elizabeth.looker@ithaka.org.