Brevard, NC- January 20, 2025

The Gardner Institute, a leading national non-profit organization focused on teaching, learning, student success and completion, is pleased to announce the launch of a second cohort in the national Transforming the Foundational Postsecondary Experience® initiative. Launched in fall 2023 with an inaugural cohort of 11 institutions, this effort aims to close performance gaps and improve student success outcomes in ways that move toward eliminating factors such as zip code as the best predictors of who gets to graduate.

The Foundational Postsecondary Experience refers to the critical first two years of college education. Gardner Institute research shows that at least 76% of all attrition occurs sometime during or immediately following the first two college years. Through a systems redesign process, institutions participating in the effort develop and implement plans over a five-year period to close performance gaps, enhance teaching and learning practices, and promote student success, completion, and retention. The plans are supported through context-specific application of more than 20 Gardner Institute engagements as well as efforts to harmonize all other student success initiatives underway at participating institutions.

The initiative has been made possible, in part, through generous support from Ascendium Education Group, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, ECMC Foundation, Lumina Foundation, and The Kresge Foundation. These organizations share the Gardner Institute’s vision of creating a more equitable education system and have provided financial support to implement the Transforming the Foundational Postsecondary Experience effort.

The institutions comprising the second Transforming the Foundational Postsecondary Experience® cohort collectively enroll over 19,000 undergraduate students. Nearly half (47%) of those students receive a Pell Grant; and one-third (33.4%) of the students identify as African American, Hispanic, Indigenous, or two or more races. The institutions include 5 colleges and universities from Kentucky. These Kentucky institutions are participating in the work in conjunction with efforts underway with the Kentucky Student Success Collaborative and support from Lumina Foundation. The cohort 2 institutions include:

• Bellarmine University | Louisville, KY
• Emmanuel College | Boston, MA
• Frank Phillips College |Borger, TX
• Kentucky State University | Frankfort, KY
• Lindsey Wilson College | Columbia, KY
• Mary Baldwin University | Staunton, VA
• Simmons College of KY | Louisville, KY
• Thomas More University | Crestview Hills, KY
• The University of New Orleans | New Orleans, LA

“Colleges and universities must have high expectations for their students. They must also have high expectations for how they teach and support the students they serve,” stated Andrew (Drew) Koch, the Gardner Institute’s Chief Executive Officer. “These nine institutions join the eleven colleges and universities in the first cohort in making a long-term commitment to focusing on what they control, who they serve, and building a more effective undergraduate experience where every student they admit can thrive.”

Over the next five years, the institutions in the second Transformation cohort will collaborate closely with the Gardner Institute to create and implement strategies aimed at fostering a more successful postsecondary experience. By the end of this initiative, these institutions are expected to be well on their way to removing demographics and zip codes as the primary determinants of who succeeds in and graduates from college.

“We are actively recruiting our third cohort for this effort, and there is room at the table” added Koch. “We invite any interested institution and/or system to join ranks with the first two cohorts of colleges and universities in this work.”

The John N. Gardner Institute for Excellence in Higher Education is a non-profit, mission-driven organization that partners with colleges, universities, philanthropic organizations, and others to create and implement strategic plans for student success that improve teaching, learning, retention, and completion. Through doing so, the Institute strives to advance higher education’s larger social mobility and justice goals.