Activities for Participants

Participating institutions benefit from a range of program activities and supports to aid the development and implementation of their action plans for improving first-generation student success. These include:

Identifying an Institutional Team: Institutions are required to identify, at minimum, a five-person planning and implementation team to work on the Walmart Initiative during the duration of the project. The team must be led by a senior academic administrator, key faculty leading the initiative, and other institutional stakeholders, as appropriate, such as student affairs officers, assessment or institutional research staff, other academic staff, and students. The team will report to the president, who commits to supporting the activities of the team and to providing guidance for planning and implementation.
Convening at the Summer Academy: Participating institutions will send teams to the 2009, 2010, and 2011 IHEP Summer Academies based on the grant’s cohort model. The first 15 cohort institutions attended the 2009 Summer Academy and the remaining 15 institutions attended this past 2010 Academy. All 30 awardees will then meet at the 2011 Summer Academy to wrap-up project work and establish practices to sustain project efforts. While attending the Summer Academy, teams will work with consultants with expertise in the teams’ area of focus to refine project ideas and enhance project strategies.
Use of National and Campus-Specific Datasets: Participating institutions will need to familiarize themselves with and actively draw on national and/or campus-specific datasets to better inform project work and goals. The use of data is integral to an institution’s project and will be used prior to, during, and beyond the grant period. While at the 2009 and 2010 Summer Academies, participating institutions will become better informed on types of datasets and how data may be leveraged to accomplish project goals and tasks.
Consultant Site Visits: In either the 2009-10 or 2010-11 academic years, project consultants will visit with the first 15 cohort institutions with whom they worked at the Summer Academy to aid plan implementation, help build broad buy-in, and trouble-shoot potential obstacles to implementation. Site visits will also take place for the second cohort institutions during the 2010-11 academic year. These visits will be coordinated and funded through IHEP.
Project Webinars and Online Chats: To maintain contact with and among the participating institutions during the project, IHEP staff will convene webinars and online chats. These activities will help institutions develop additional capacity for addressing obstacles to action plan implementation and provide opportunities for participants to share their experiences, challenges, and successes. This activity will be available via IHEP’s WebCenter, an online collaborative tool that will provide information to participating institutions throughout the project.
Progress Reports: Participating teams will submit regular progress reports to help articulate project accomplishments and obstacles and to track implementation progress. Reports will be requested, received, and provided feedback through the WebCenter.
Campus-to-Campus Visits: Institutions are encouraged to visit other participating institutions to observe, collaborate, and further explore alternative practices to inform project work. These visits would be arranged by the participating institutions and must be covered by award money.