Building Engagement and Attainment for Minority Students (BEAMS) is a multi-year project that fosters data-driven campus change initiatives at historically Black, Hispanic-serving, and Tribal colleges and universities in order to increase student engagement and learning. BEAMS served more than 100 four-year institutions that are partners in the Alliance for Equity in Higher Education.

BEAMS offers five ways for campuses to move toward these institutional goals.

Information from the National Survey of Student Engagement—Each BEAMS campus administered NSSE twice during the course of the project and used NSSE data to identify and assess needed institutional change.
Designing action plans for initiatives to enhance student engagement and learning—Each BEAMS campus participated in a Summer Academy and developed an action plan to be implemented at the institution.
Collegial support for implementing action plans—As a member of a group of campuses working on similar initiatives, each BEAMS campus had access to colleagues on other campuses, project staff, and BEAMS consultants.
Web-based support throughout project participation—The WebCenter offered sites for posting of progress reports, discussion of emergent issues during implementation of action plans, resources about topics pertinent to initiatives on campuses, discussion space for consortia communication, and links to the BEAMS campus' Web sites and to additional resources.
Opportunity to report nationally on campus initiatives and successes—Project campuses participated in national conferences to report on initiatives and progress that emerged from their use of NSSE information and the campus' project activities.

BEAMS is a partnership between the Alliance for Equity in Higher Education and NSSE and is supported by Lumina Foundation for Education.