About

Our History

We’ve been transforming the undergraduate experience since 1999.

The Brevard, North Carolina-based John N. Gardner Institute for Excellence in Higher Education, co-founded as an independent non-profit organization by Betsy O. Barefoot and John N. Gardner in 2007, traces its origins to work first conducted between 1999 and 2006 under the name of the Policy Center on the First College Year with initial support coming from the Pew Charitable Trusts. Since this time, the Institute has been supported, in part, by an array of philanthropic funders.

Supported thereafter through a combination of grants and fees for service, the non-profit Gardner Institute has served hundreds of colleges and universities of all types – public and private, two-year and four-year, rural, suburban, and urban. The Institute has done so as a mission-driven public charity.

The varied forms of the Institute’s work include efforts such as the development of consortia, the facilitation of a variety of evidence-based student success improvement efforts, the administration and evaluation of national surveys, and other institutional transformation efforts. The Institute is one of the few national intermediaries whose efforts are correlated with significant increases in retention and graduation rates at both the institutional and system levels. The Institute’s staff are also considered some of the foremost thought leaders in the field of student learning and success. As supported by evaluation results focused on its work and scholarly productivity, the Institute’s work has helped the field become more student-ready by transforming and strengthening varied institutions around the country and the globe.