2010 IHEP Summer Academy Draws Some of the Nation’s Top Postsecondary Institutions to Focus on “Clearing College Pathways for Underserved Students”
Published May 13, 2014
Washington, D.C., March 9, 2010—Colleges and universities from across the country are gearing up to attend the 2010 Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP) Summer Academy, July 19–23, 2010, at the Hyatt Regency Tamaya Resort & Spa in Santa Ana Pueblo, N.M. This five-day annual gathering brings together institutional teams—consisting of at least one senior academic administrator and other campus stakeholders such as faculty, department chairs, deans, and student affairs representatives—to work with expert consultants on creating action plans that focus on improving access and success for students of color, first-generation students, and other historically underserved student populations in higher education.
The 2010 IHEP Summer Academy—with the theme “Cultivating Student Access and Success: Clearing Pathways for Underserved Students”—targets strategies and best practices to better prepare, enroll, retain, and graduate underserved students. More broadly, this year's event aims to identify successful pathways for supporting underserved student access and success such as early-college initiatives, summer and bridge programs, articulation and transfer options, learning communities, and student-centered financial literacy practices. Team members are given an opportunity to work on institutional plans during the event’s plenary sessions, workshops, and networking opportunities that are all designed around the following daily themes:
- Successful Strategies for Student Learning—Sessions will focus on institutional practices that foster underserved student success. Teams will be encouraged to consider ways of integrating promising practices into their work.
- Data-Responsive Institutions—Sessions will focus on the importance of institutions leveraging a range of local and national data to identify areas of work, assess impact, and refine practices for serving underserved students. Teams will be encouraged to use current data and identify needed data for putting in place and assessing underserved success strategies.
- Integrated and Sustained Campus Change—Sessions will highlight strategies for building stakeholder buy-in, leveraging administrative support, and integrating student success strategies into broader institutional goals to sustain promising practices. Teams will be encouraged to identify levers for sustaining their change plans once they return to campus.
“The Summer Academy offers a relaxed setting to escape the many demands of campus life, while providing team members a chance to think of a variety of new ideas, examples, and collegial encounters to sustain institutional change all in a casual and supportive atmosphere," said IHEP President Michelle Asha Cooper, Ph.D. "We offer institutional leaders an opportunity to examine their data, student population, and practices to drive specific initiatives in an effort of increasing access and success of underrepresented college students.”
Structured as a five-day retreat, the Summer Academy is held each year at 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, New Mexico, and most recently, Birmingham, Ala. This year’s location, situated on the Santa Ana Pueblo and adjacent to Albuquerque, highlights the local Native American and Hispanic communities, and many of the Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs) and Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) with which IHEP works collaboratively.
Registration is now open for the 2010 IHEP Summer Academy. Registration includes extensive conference materials, one-on-one team consultant support, plus most meals. The 2010 IHEP Summer Academy is currently being partially supported with a sponsorship from INSIGHT Into Diversity magazine. Sponsorship opportunities are still available. For more information about the 2010 IHEP Summer Academy including online registration and sponsorship opportunities, visit IHEP's Web site at www.ihep.org/summeracademy.cfm.
