Summer Academy

The IHEP Summer Academy is an annual gathering of college and university teams in which participants help identify measures to improve access and success for students of color and other historically underserved populations in higher education. With the aid of expert consultants and a rich array of working sessions, teams create comprehensive action plans for institutional change.

Structured as a five-day retreat, the Summer Academy is a unique opportunity to escape the many demands of campus life, while providing a wealth of new ideas, examples, and collegial encounters to sustain institutional change all in a casual and supportive atmosphere. Each year, the Summer Academy location is selected to provide a serene and productive atmosphere in regions of the country where colleges and universities serve significant populations of students of color. Past destinations include a variety of cities and regions such as Rio Grande, Puerto Rico, Birmingham, Ala., Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., and most recently, Santa Ana Pueblo, New Mexico.

The Summer Academy includes daily activities that will help participants integrate best practices in student learning, use data to develop cultures of evidence, and sustain campus change and build buy-in. Through the Summer Academy, campus teams can take part in:

Tailored workshops and plenary sessions to highlight successful approaches to improving student access and success in areas identified as important by your institutional team;
Daily team-based planning sessions to develop and refine institutional change plans;
Structured networking opportunities with other Summer Academy participants to share best practices; and
One-on-one mentoring sessions from national leaders in higher education.

The Summer Academy attracts a broad range of institutions, including minority-serving institutions, public and private colleges and universities, and community colleges, reflecting IHEP's dedication helping build institutional capacity to address disparities in higher education. Summer Academy themes reflect IHEP’s historical commitment to raising awareness and broadening the understanding of issues related to college access and success.

Action Plans for Change

With the aid of expert consultants and a rich array of working sessions, teams create action plans to increase access and success for students of color and other underserved populations in higher education. The purpose of the Summer Academy is to help teams craft plans that are effective and sustainable; therefore, when developing their plans, teams are asked to consider resources available for implementation, plans for building stakeholder buy-in once on campus, a detailed implementation timeline which assigns responsibility for each task, and a plan for assessing the effectiveness of their change strategies. Past institutional team projects cover a variety of strategies and capacity building tactics such as:

Virtual student support centers
First- and second-year learning programs
Bridge programs
Refining transfer and articulation agreements
Faculty development programs
Curricular reform
Service learning

Team-Based Focus

IHEP recognizes the importance of including a range of campus stakeholders in institutional change initiatives; therefore, the Summer Academy is structured around institutional teams. Campus teams typically include at least one senior academic administrator and other campus stakeholders such as faculty, department chairs, deans, and student affairs representatives. Teams are also encouraged to include at least one student member. Multi-institutional and University System teams also convene to work on inter-institutional change efforts! Teams prepare for the event by identifying the vision and goals for their campus project. During the Summer Academy, team members engage in workshops and plenary sessions to refine their projects for successful campus implementation and meet one-on-one with national higher education leaders and IHEP staff for feedback and direction.

History of the Summer Academy

The Summer Academy was first launched by the former American Association for Higher Education in 1996. Since assuming management of the well-established Summer Academy in 2005, IHEP has refined the event’s theme to a broad focus on organization change to its current, more specific, focus on organizational change to improve student access and success. To highlight this shift, IHEP considers the Summer Academy an ideal opportunity to convene, and further the work of, teams from its other student success initiatives including minority-serving institutions involved in the Building Engagement and Attainment for Minority Students, Model Replication Institutions projects, Walmart Minority Student Success Initiative, and community colleges active in the National Articulation and Transfer Network.