The Walmart Minority Student Success Initiative

2011 Summer Academy

IHEP is proud to assemble a group of diverse college and university stakeholders committed to campus progress and the academic success of underserved students. With the theme, "A Celebration of Success," this year’s Summer Academy will showcase the work of participating institutions by providing a forum to share promising practices and integrate new ideas to better engage, retain, and graduate minority, low-income, first-generation and other underserved students.

The 2011 Summer Academy: Cultivating Student Access and Success: A Celebration of Success will be held July 24-28 at the Château Élan Inn in Braselton, Ga., north of Atlanta. This year’s academy will only be open to institutions and individuals affiliated with the Lumina MSI-Models of Success Program and the Walmart Minority Student Success Initiative. Campuses in each project have participated in the Summer Academy years past, or similar capacity-building events, and will use the upcoming convening to share and build on their already articulated successes while also drawing attention to communication strategies for sharing their efforts and outlining plans for ongoing sustainability.

Workshops and plenary sessions will give participants the opportunity to reflect on ways their work can contribute to broader understandings of issues critical to the success of the students they serve, their campuses, and higher education as a whole. Overall, teams will be prompted to:

Highlight successful initiatives created to address pertinent issues;
Discuss ways promising practices can be integrated into other institutional initiatives;
Contemplate shared outcome measures,
Outline ways to scale up and sustain ongoing efforts,
Consider institutional, state, and federal policy implications, and
Develop messaging and communication strategies to better advocate for their work.

Keeping in line with past events, participating teams will have allocated time to complete daily assignments and meet one-on-one with project consultants.

Invitations will be sent to teams involved with the Lumina MSI-Models of Success Program, the USA Funds MSI Financial Literacy Cohort, and the Walmart Minority Student Success Initiative in early May with instructions regarding registration, travel, and hotel reservations.

For further questions or additional information, please send an e-mail to summeracademy2011@ihep.org.