Student Success

UNCF Scales Up Student Success Coaching for HBCUs

• By Rhea Kelly
• 05/03/22

United Negro College Fund (UNCF) has announced a four-year initiative to help students at historically Black colleges and universities access and complete college. The project will expand on a yearlong pilot that utilized student success coaching from InsideTrack to help former HBCU students re-enroll in higher education.

Supported by funding from Strada Education Network, the Macquarie Group Foundation and Blue Meridian Partners, the new program will provide one-on-one success coaching services over four years for 10,000 prospective HBCU students, 4,000 freshman and sophomore HBCU students, and 3,000 stop-out HBCU students who have not completed their degrees. UNCF will work with InsideTrack to create a shared services model for HBCUs that will provide training and staff development support to build institutions' internal capacity for student success coaching and help make student success efforts financially sustainable for the long term.

Participating institutions include Benedict College, Bethune Cookman University, Claflin University, Clark Atlanta University, Dillard University, Florida Memorial University, Jarvis Christian College, Johnson C. Smith University, Lane College, Morehouse College, Philander Smith College, Stillman College, Talladega College, Voorhees College and Wiley College.

"Research — and lived experience — tell us that HBCUs offer a strong positive return on investment for their graduates, while also making a powerful contribution to social mobility across generations," said Edward Smith-Lewis, vice president of strategic partnerships and institutional programs at UNCF, in a statement. "This work is about equipping our member institutions to scale high-impact support services that can help current and prospective HBCU students achieve their education and career aspirations. It's also about helping HBCUs sustain the long-lasting change for alumni, families and communities that we know they are uniquely capable of producing."

"To make good on the promise of HBCU access and completion, we must use every tool at our disposal to enhance the student experience and remove barriers to student success," commented Dr. Glenell Pruitt, provost and vice president of academic affairs at Jarvis Christian College. "This collaboration with other HBCUs and national partners will enable us to pull out all the stops and build our capacity to deliver high-impact student services on our campus."