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We Generate and Implement Proven Student Success Solutions

Address the Problem

The NISS’s approach is founded on compelling evidence that colleges and universities inadvertently create administrative and bureaucratic obstacles to college access, progression, and completion.

Identify

problems so that universities can understand the ways in which their practices and systems impede student progress.

Implement

evidence-based solutions taught by professionals who have successfully implemented the programs on their own campuses.

Scale

what works to maximize efficiencies and impacts, ensuring that students from all backgrounds can succeed.

What We Offer

The NISS helps universities identify and remove barriers to student success through three core services: the Accelerator, the Diagnostic, and Implementation Support. In addition to these direct client services, the NISS Incubator supports continued research and the development of innovative best practices in student success.

    Explore

    ACCELERATOR

    Our online teaching and research portal is a gateway to NISS offerings. The Accelerator learning portal and library is open-access and aims to provide an introduction to data-driven decision making. The Accelerator courses provide implementation steps for best practices in student success programs. The course offerings are self-guided and include evidence-based approaches to improving student onboarding, advising, financial aid, and other administrative systems critical to student success. The Accelerator service is free. 

    Features

    • featured_play_list Free access to resource library and learning modules
    • featured_play_list 27 published courses on best practices in student success
    • featured_play_list Self-guided learning pathways

    Understand

    DIAGNOSTIC

    For those schools who engage in the fee-based, full diagnostic services, the NISS provides an in-depth, team-based diagnostic process including surveys, data analysis, and interviews between NISS specialists and institutional representatives. The Diagnostic culminates in a customized Playbook — a high-level roadmap to implementing and/or augmenting student success programming.The Playbook’s prioritized actions detail the programs and resources required to increase success outcomes and include the leading indicators needed to track progress. The Diagnostic is a fee-based service and the selection process is competitive. 

    Features

    • featured_play_list Analysis of longitudinal institutional data
    • featured_play_list Qualitative analysis of an institution's enrollment management systems
    • featured_play_list Dedicatd NISS diagnostics team includes senior program advisor, coach, and Director of Diagnostics
    • featured_play_list 4-5 month engagement: weekly team meetings and a final deliverable presentation
    • featured_play_list Playbook – key insights and actionable recommendations

    Act

    IMPLEMENTATION SUPPORT

    Institutions that have completed the diagnostic process have the opportunity to procure the NISS’s Implementation Support services. This service option provides ongoing, personalized consultations and customized implementation assistance based on a client’s unique characteristics and challenges. Implementation Support engagements are intense, specialized consulting services that guide institutions in the steps needed to address equity gaps and remove student success obstacles. The 12-18 month engagement consists of scheduled, hands-on individual touch points throughout the year, frequent 1:1 peer support, webinars, and step-by-step implementation clinics that guide institutions through the prioritized actions detailed in the Playbook. Implementation Support is a fee-based service and requires a Diagnostic engagement. 

    Features

    • featured_play_list Intensive coaching to scope and implement action items from Playbook
    • featured_play_list Dedicated NISS coaching team including a senior program advisor and support coaches
    • featured_play_list Structured asynchronous learning
    • featured_play_list 12-36 month engagement: weekly check-ins, community conversations, scheduled webinars hosted by subject matter experts

Approach to Innovation

The NISS is an innovator in student success. We design and test the latest evidence-based approaches that produce better and more equitable student outcomes. Research projects are developed by teams internal to the NISS as well as by research fellows from universities across the country. Through the generation and presentation of relevant, high-quality content, the Incubator team strives to advance the field of data-informed student success programming. The Incubator is not a client-facing service; however, the research and development produced here shapes the national conversation on improving student success outcomes. The Incubator pilots programs that feed into the Accelerator learning pathways and then become part of the solutions offered during Implementation Support. incubator