Students coming to colleges and universities from urban, under resourced schools are not equitably set up for success in comparison to their peers. At UM-Dearborn, students coming from these school districts have historically been awarded scholarships to mitigate this gap; however, money alone was not enough. After recognizing a continuing large and consistent first-year retention gap of greater than 5% (75% vs. 80%) and graduation gap hovering around 12%, it was clear something more was needed.
This is why, through the Office of Student Success, UM-Dearborn created a point based system coupled with a learning community style Program to enhance the success outcomes for these students such as first-year retention, cumulative GPA, and graduation. After the first full year of the Program, first-year retention of the Scholars increased by 9% to 84.7%, surpassing their campus peers, who held steady at approximately 80%, for the first time since the scholarship’s inception. Beyond this, the first-year cumulative GPA gap has narrowed from .39 to .15 and is showing strong indication that this will continue to be the case.
This session will discuss the Program that was developed, the process used to get to where we are, the outcomes achieved, and how we are continually building out and working to scale the Program to serve a broader audience.
