APLU and USU highlight FIU student success best practices as part of six-year collaboration with urban-located universities

FIU’s successful efforts to improve student success while aligning its strategy with state performance metrics were highlighted Thursday at a gathering hosted by the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) and the Coalition of Urban Serving Universities (USU) at MMC. 

Public urban research universities continue to face a host of challenges from senior leadership transitions to mergers to shifts to performance-based state funding. To help institutions successfully navigate these challenges and thrive, APLU and USU worked with FIU, Georgia State University and Portland State University as part of the Frontier Set initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. 

Through strategic and tactical efforts, the Frontier Set participating universities and partnering organizations explored the why and how of institutional transformation. Following six years of collaboration with the three universities, APLU and USU released in-depth case studies at the Thursday gathering as roadmaps with insights to help other institutions address these shifts. 

FIU’s roadmap focused on the university’s response to the state’s performance-based funding (PBF) model. Nearly 30 states have some form of performance-based state funding formula, tying state funding to student outcomes such as graduation, retention, and costs to students. Such funding models can create challenges for institutions seeking to prioritize equity or serve as open-access institutions where students of varying levels of preparation enroll. 

To make a successful transition to the performance-based funding model, FIU made clear that its primary mission involved advancing equity and serving as an anchor institution improving wellbeing in its community – even as the university aligned its operations with new state-defined metrics. FIU focused on data-driven decision making, innovation in teaching and learning and creating new pathways for student success. 

The other roadmaps presented related to Georgia State University’s merger with Georgia Perimeter College in 2016 and Portland State University’s navigation of a leadership transition by adopting a student-centered approach. 

“Our transformation efforts around student success were championed by APLU and USU, with the support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,” said Elizabeth Béjar, FIU interim provost, executive vice president and chief operating officer. “We are proud of the outcomes realized through our work, collaborating in finding solutions to some of the biggest hurdles faced by urban research universities, including the concurrent development and growth  of academic excellence and equity."

“Driving institutional transformation can be a daunting undertaking in the best of circumstances,” said Andréa Rodriguez, Director at USU and APLU’s Office of Urban Initiatives, who led the work alongside APLU and USU colleagues Mitzy Gonzalez and Matt Renn. “Yet we know universities are frequently faced with vexing challenges that can hamper the process of institutional transformation. We’re thrilled to be sharing the examples of three public urban-serving universities that have done exactly that by identifying barriers to student success amid institutional changes of senior leadership transitions, institutional mergers, and shifts to performance-based funding models. The roadmaps are a guide for how other institutions can too be transformative through internal and external shifts.” 

Participants who attend the APLU and USU gathering on Thursday and Friday are eligible to receive a microcredential, issued by FIU in Principles of Institutional Transformation.

 In April, USU will release the open access learning module in which participants can highlight the critical elements and principles of institutional transformation.