Georgia State Gets Grants Totalling $1.2 Million to ExpandSummer Success Academy for First-Year Students

Newswise — The Kresge Foundation and the ECMC Foundation have awarded Georgia State University two grants totaling $1.2 million to improve and expand its Summer Success Academy, a program that supports incoming freshmen who may need help in the transition to the college classroom. The academy enrolls students during the summer semester before their first fall semester at Georgia State. Students take three college-level courses during the summer, while being supported with intensive advising, supplemental tutoring, financial literacy training and leadership experiences. The Kresge Foundation made a $981,000 grant and ECMC contributed S250,000 to support the Academy. Designed to get college careers off to a strong start, the program has increased the retention rate for students enrolled in the academy from 50 percent in 2011 to 87 percent today. ”We are thrilled to receive this generous support from the Kresge and ECMC Foundations,” said Timothy M. Renick, vice provost and vice president for enrollment management and student success. “The Success Academy has already changed the lives of hundreds of students, affording them the opportunity to succeed in college. These grants will help us expand the program and create a blueprint for other universities to follow nationally.” Hundreds of students have benefitted from the academy, and many participants were representative of groups that struggle, including first-generation and low-income students, as well as members of underrepresented minority groups. Funding from the grant will allow the university to expand the number of students Georgia State can enroll in the Summer Success Academy by 25 percent, as well as to develop a model for using predictive analytics to improve the process of identifying students for the program. Georgia State has successfully used predictive analytics to track students’ academic progress and improve graduation rates, providing a nationally recognized model for increasing student success, especially among first-generation and low-income students. In recent years, graduation rates for Georgia State’s minority students have more than doubled, and the university now graduates students from all racial, ethnic and economic backgrounds at comparable rates. “Georgia State is a national leader in supporting all students to succeed,” said William Moses, managing director of Kresge’s Education Program. “We’re proud to partner with them and the ECMC Foundation to expand the Summer Success Academy to even more students. This program can be a replicable model for using data to support at-risk students with lessons for all those working on student success in higher education.” For more information about student success initiatives at Georgia State, visit www.success.students.gsu.edu. About The Kresge Foundation: “The Kresge Foundation is a $3.5 billion private, national foundation that works to expand opportunities in America's cities through grantmaking and investing in arts and culture, education, environment, health, human services, community development in Detroit. In 2014, the Board of Trustees approved 408 awards totaling $242.5 million. That included a $100 million award to the Foundation for Detroit’s Future, a fund created to soften the impact of the city’s bankruptcy on pensioners and safeguard cultural assets at the Detroit Institute of Arts. A total of $138.1 million was paid out to grantees over the course of the year. In addition, our Social Investment Practice made commitments totaling $20.4 million in 2014.”