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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.

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Target areas of growth

so universities can achieve more equitable outcomes in the enrollment, retention, and graduation of students from diverse backgrounds.

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Provide practical know-how

taught by professionals who have already successfully implemented success programs on their own campuses.

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Utilize predictive analytics

that aid universities in identifying and addressing institutionally created completion barriers.

Services We Offer

The NISS helps schools identify barriers through three solution areas: 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.

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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. 

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. 

Act

IMPLEMENTION 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. 

Innovate

INCUBATOR

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.

NISS research and solutions are constantly evolving and help contribute to our community.

  • DIAGNOSTIC ANALYSIS
  • INDIVIDUAL CONSULTATION
  • READINESS INDICATOR
  • DIAGNOSTIC ANALYSIS
  • INDIVIDUAL CONSULTATION
  • READINESS INDICATOR
  • COHORT COACHING
  • INCUBATOR
  • ACCELERATOR
  • LEARNING PATHWAYS
  • COHORT COACHING
  • INCUBATOR
  • ACCELERATOR
  • LEARNING PATHWAYS

Funding Partners

2021

Supports high-touch services offered by the NISS, such as diagnostics and cohort coaching.

2021

Supports the NISS’s implementation phase, including start-up and endowment capital.

2021

Supports curricular, career-based guidance, work-based learning, capacity building, and technology innovations.

2021

Supports the renovation project of the historic Southern Bell Telephone Company building to house the Student Success Center and NISS offices.

2021

Supports the development of the NISS online Accelerator.

2021

Supports high-touch services offered by the NISS, including services offered to a cohort of HBCUs.

2021

Subsidizes NISS high-touch services for a cohort of HBCUs located in Georgia.

2021

Supports NISS staff training and the delivery of high-touch services, including diagnostic and cohort coaching.

2021

Supports the launch of a Partner Scholarship Program for minority-serving institutions.

2021

Supports the development of the NISS diagnostic tools and the delivery of NISS high-touch services.

2021

Provides long-term support for NISS high-touch services.