The American Talent Initiative (ATI) is committed to creating postsecondary opportunities for low- and moderate-income students and expanding this group’s access to high-graduation-rate institutions. ATI supports its member institutions by organizing communities of practice to enable peer-to-peer sharing among institutions, collecting and analyzing data to identify trends and best-practices, creating practical analytic tools to develop effective financial aid strategies, and advising presidents on ways to increase the pipeline of low- and moderate-income students into their institutions.

To further this mission, the Initiative launched the Student Success Research Grant Program to fund research studies that focus on better understanding institutional practices and strategies that can improve student success at high-graduation-rate institutions. We are excited to announce the five funded studies, which cover a broad set of topics that will be applicable across ATI institutions. These five studies will be published as part of an edited volume with the Peabody Journal of Education in 2025. Additionally, we will publish issue briefs that outline key recommendations of specific practices for institutional leaders to improve opportunities for low- and moderate-income students. We also look forward to providing opportunities for researchers to share their findings and takeaways directly with member institutions through ATI’s ongoing programming.

SEEK-ing a Better Future, An Evaluation
Theodore Joyce, Baruch College

The Search for Education, Elevation, and Knowledge (SEEK) program provides financial support, academic advising, tutoring services and career counseling at the City University of New York (CUNY) senior colleges. SEEK accepts lower-income first-year students who were not accepted as incoming freshmen at a senior college based on their high school grade point average and/or SAT scores. The students SEEK serves also come from families whose adjusted gross income is no more than 185 percent of the federal poverty level. The study will evaluate the academic outcomes of SEEK cohorts from 2007 to 2018 at all 11 of CUNY’s senior colleges.

Using Data and Local Partnerships to Increase the Enrollment and Success of Transfer Students at High-Graduation Institutions
Laura Nichols, Santa Clara University
William L. Garcia, San José City College

This project is being led by a research team representing a partnership between an ATI college, Santa Clara University, and a local community college, San José City College, and includes undergraduate research assistants who have been/are students at both colleges. The research has two parts: (1) secondary data analysis to provide a blueprint for how selective and highly selective four-year institutions can leverage public data to identify potential community college partnerships and knowledge about prospective transfer students in their local communities and, (2) interviews with current community college students and students who have transferred to Santa Clara University. The aim of the study is to understand student aspirations, needs, and experiences in order to prepare ATI colleges to best serve transfer students. The study will chronicle the development of the community college/ATI campus partnership and include student-centered knowledge of the pathways and supports necessary to transfer to and be successful at an ATI campus.

Developing an Evidence-Based and Practitioner-Informed First-Year Seminar Self-Assessment Tool
Michael Sparrow and Christine Harrington, Morgan State University

The authors have created a self-assessment tool for first-year seminar (FYS) courses using a user-centric, iterative process with practitioner feedback. The tool helps course coordinators and their teams determine how well their university’s course is supporting and setting students from low-income households up for success in college. This study will include a systematic review of literature related to first-year seminars and interviews with practitioners to detail the importance of assessing the FYS and best practices for conducting self-assessments.

Understanding the Use of Basic Needs Services to Better Serve Lower Income Students
Katharine Broton, University of Iowa

Substantial shares of college students, and especially those from lower-income families, struggle to meet their daily material needs. To help meet students’ needs and promote college success, colleges are increasingly implementing an array of basic needs services—including on-campus food pantries, dining hall meal vouchers, and emergency grants—rather than relying on a single initiative. Prior research tends to focus on the efforts of a single initiative rather than jointly consider the suite of services available to students. This study aims to address that gap by using institutional administrative data to descriptively examine how students use multiple basic needs services on a campus, if at all, and which student characteristics are associated with service use. Thus, it seeks to obtain a more comprehensive understanding of how materially insecure students navigate campus services designed to support their college success.

Bucky’s Tuition Promise: The effect of tuition-free aid on persistence, completion, and debt for low-income students
Amberly Dziesinski and Nicholas Hillman, University of Wisconsin, Madison

In 2018, the University of Wisconsin-Madison launched “Bucky’s Tuition Promise” (BTP), a financial aid program covering four-years of tuition and fees for students from families with incomes below a specified AGI. This study identifies how BTP affects first year retention, four-year graduation rates, and cumulative loan debt. We analyze institutional administrative data using a regression discontinuity design. This study extends prior research finding BTP positively impacts student enrollment and speaks to the body of research identifying how reducing complexity in the financial aid process promotes student success. In particular, this research will advance our understanding of how financial aid supports students from low-income backgrounds attending selective institutions.