Support from the Nellie Mae Education Foundation

            First-year college students sometimes face barriers to their dreams instead of gateways.  For students of color the obstacles can be particularly daunting.  It is widely recognized that, across the country, fewer of these students graduate and fewer achieve high academic success when compared with the general student population.  At Trinity, a groundbreaking effort to confront and remedy this problem has recently attracted the support of the prestigious Nellie Mae Education Foundation, New England’s largest public charity dedicated exclusively to improving academic achievement among the region’s under-served communities.  With three grants totaling $236,000, the Foundation has generously supported the innovative Consortium on High Achievement and Success, a working group of 33 like-minded, highly selective colleges and universities formed at Trinity’s invitation to tackle the challenges of retention and achievement among minority students.   “This is one of our flagship grants,” says Blenda J. Wilson, president and chief executive officer of the Nellie Mae Education Foundation.  “In my mind, the Consortium constitutes a leading-edge effort to promote minority student achievement at the college level.  It is a credit to Trinity to have taken the lead.”

            The Consortium grew from a Trinity College Retention Task Force formed in 1998 and led by Vice President for Student Services Sharon H. Herzberger.  The far-reaching group drew its membership from across the campus.  In addition to faculty and students, administrators from every department were invited to serve, including alumni relations, residential life, admissions, the health center, financial aid, and multi-cultural affairs ¾ everyone who has a role to play in the academic life of minority students.  “We knew we needed to make this an institution-wide initiative,” Herzberger says.  The group explored why students of color graduate at “lower and slower rates,” and provided recommendations for solutions.  Among them were providing more proactive advising, increased peer support, a diverse array of social and cultural activities, and the assurance of faculty participation.  Several recommendations have already been instituted.  For example, special academic support programs were created, including retention teams that work with students when a need for intervention is identified.  In addition, the religious life program at the College was broadened to support the spiritual and religious needs of all members of our diverse community.  

            Notably, one task force recommendation resulted in an effort to collaborate with other colleges and universities about common concerns regarding retention.  The task force held a conference on promoting academic success and student satisfaction, drawing 145 representatives from some 30 colleges and universities to the Trinity campus.  The conference focused on how to retain minority students and ensure that they lead satisfying lives while in college.  Impressed by the budding coalition, the Nellie Mae Education Foundation awarded $10,000 to support the conference, and then another $50,000 to solidify the group as a consortium of schools.  The Consortium is dedicated to encouraging colleges and universities to achieve parity across all groups of students on outcome measures related to high achievement, graduation, leadership, and satisfaction.

            Early in 2002, the Foundation awarded an additional $176,000 to help the Consortium deepen its commitment to collaboration on the challenging work of retention and high achievement. One major goal is to eliminate obstacles to initial success at college ¾ a key problem in overall retention.  The barriers, say Consortium members, often come in the form of entry-level, introductory math and science courses.  These courses are crucial stepping stones in careers such as medicine and engineering, and can be difficult for many students.  A study at Trinity found that approximately 18 percent of students who enroll in introductory chemistry courses do poorly or withdraw from the class.  For some students of color, these courses can be especially challenging.  That same Trinity study found that half of those failing or withdrawing from introductory chemistry courses are minority students, even though they represent only one-third of the students enrolled.  Says Herzberger:  “There are courses like this on every campus.  Instead of serving as a gateway, they are proving to be barriers.” 

            According to Ann E. Reuman, associate dean of students, it is difficult to explain why such courses disproportionately disrupt the academic life of students of color, but secondary school preparation and class climate may be factors.  “Since there are more white students in any given science class, my guess is that more of them had advantages in high school in terms of the hard sciences,” Reuman says.  And once on campus, minorities may find it more difficult to participate fully in class.  “Students of color may not ask a question in a class full of white people,” Reuman says.  “They may feel as if they are being judged even before they speak.” 

            Such problems have led five Consortium member institutions — Barnard College, Union College, Haverford College, the College of the Holy Cross, and Trinity — to launch a “barrier course project” aimed at identifying solutions.  Holy Cross and Trinity have developed pilot projects to test key elements of intervention, such as the use of “supplemental instruction” (SI) study groups, which were originally designed for large university settings.  Led by specially trained and supervised teaching assistants, the groups are open to all students in a given class and are not remedial.  In contrast to conventional tutoring, the teaching assistant attends classes with the students so that he or she remains up to date with the lessons as they are being taught.  The overall goal is to encourage students to solve their own problems, to form study partnerships, and to practice their new resourcefulness so that in test situations they can quickly address the questions before them.  “Our interest is not to make the courses easier; it would be inappropriate at a select private college to do so,” says Herzberger.  “Instead our intention is to figure out what support services and pedagogy are needed to enable the success that we know students are capable of attaining.”

            Early results have been extremely promising.  At Trinity, a supplemental instruction test group focused on an introductory chemistry class taught by Assistant Professor Maria L. Parr ’90.  In a class of 37 students, 17 (46 percent) participated in “SI” sessions, and none of these students withdrew or received a grade lower than a C-minus.  Of the 20 students who did not participate in “SI” sessions, 5 (25 percent) withdrew, passed with a D, or failed.  The results show that considerable improvement is possible.  “These entry level courses are pathways to medical and science careers,” says the Foundation’s Wilson.  “They are crucial linchpin courses for anyone who aspires to these careers.”  Through its grant, the Nellie Mae Education Foundation is enthusiastically supporting solutions that achieve positive outcomes.

More to be Done

The barrier course project is just one small part of the Consortium’s work.  The Nellie Mae Education Foundation grant also supports plans to:

·        Convene the presidents of Consortium colleges and universities, bringing the challenge of retention to the attention of those with the most power to steer an achievement agenda on campuses across the nation.

·        Identify and implement remedies for the special needs of African-American and Latino men.  “On our campus, just as on all Consortium campuses, when we look at which groups of students tend to be the least satisfied with their collegiate experience, it is African-American and Latino men,” says Herzberger. 

·        Generate a Consortium databank.  Led by Vassar College, this project will measure the problems and their solutions through a wide net of data gathering across the variety of member institutions and their student subgroups. 

·        Organize meetings for targeted professionals, such as coaches or career services officers, to ensure that the success and satisfaction of students of color are salient concerns to all campus decision-makers.

·        Create a Consortium Steering Board and hire administrative staff.

A Shared Mission

The groundbreaking work of the new Consortium dovetails with the Foundation’s central mission to provide access to higher education and improve the lives of the region’s underserved communities.  The Nellie Mae Education Foundation, formed in 1998 with the proceeds generated from the acquisition of the Nellie Mae Corporation by Sallie Mae, calls such access a “fundamental civil right” of the 21st century, and “a basic necessity of our common lives both today and in the months and years to come.  Ensuring that the diversity of the nation is reflected in the diversity of its leaders is essential to our shared future.”  Still, the minority achievement gap stands as a persistent, vexing, and complicated national problem ¾ people of color continue to underachieve at all levels of education and at all socio-economic levels.  For the Nellie Mae Education Foundation, the Consortium ¾ by its very existence and through its pioneering work ¾ serves as a key strategy in the search for remedies.  “For the first time, this group of very prestigious colleges and universities admits there is a real problem,” says Wilson.  “That in itself is an achievement.”