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Our Solutions

The National Institute for Student Success offers a range of services to assist in your institution’s student success efforts. We are committed to improving the student success outcomes for thousands of students across the nation.

“The lessons learned by Georgia State are transferable. We opened the National Institute for Student Success to disseminate our practices to other colleges and universities, and the federal government has proposed national funding for the scaling of evidence-based programs that help colleges students succeed. While American higher education was not designed to produce equitable outcomes, we now have the power to redesign our campuses to provide timely, individualized support for all students. As Georgia State University has shown over the past decades, the results can be transformative.“
Dr. Tim Renick, NISS Executive Director EdScoop, 2021 double-quote image for border styling

Data-Driven Foundation

The NISS believes the foundation to all good student success initiatives is the availability of student data and a system of reporting and acting on them. Each of the NISS solutions relies on data inputs including various student success metrics and an institution’s change capacity.

The result of our discovery and insights is a data-driven framework that enables transformative, scalable, and measurable improvements.

Accelerator

The Accelerator is an online teaching and research portal and the gateway to NISS offerings. Content in the library comes in several forms, including webinars, published research, and implementation materials that are concise and easily digestible. The learning pathway portal also includes short courses that provide an introduction to data-driven decision-decision making and outline the implementation steps for best practices in student success programs. Short, self-guided course offerings include evidence-based approaches to improving student onboarding, advising, registration, financial aid, and other administrative systems critical to student success.

Diagnostic

Fee-based Diagnostic services are reserved for institutions that show themselves ready to engage in the process of systemic change. The diagnostic process begins with a holistic analysis of student and institutional data, highlighted by a series of fact-finding engagements and the gathering of survey data with follow-up qualitative interviews of key leadership and staff. At the conclusion of this approximately four-month process, the NISS produces a customized Playbook for the partner institution – a high-level and customized roadmap to implementing and/or augmenting student success programming. The Playbook recommends specific programs for the partner institution and the stapes to get there, including resources required and the leading indicators needed to track progress.

Implementation Support

Institutions that have completed the diagnostic process have the opportunity to procure the NISS’s coaching services. Coaching provides ongoing, personalized consultations and customized implementation assistance based on each institution’s unique characteristics and challenges. Coaching engagements are intense, specialized consulting services that guide institutions in the steps needed to address equity gaps and remove student success obstacles. These long-term engagements consist of scheduled hands-on, individual touch points throughout the year, frequent 1:1 peer support, webinars hosted by NISS subject matter experts, and step-by-step implementation clinics that guide institutions in their identification of strategic priorities to resolve questions about equity gaps and administrative barriers to student success.

Incubator

The Incubator is responsible for the management and execution of research, evaluation, and development of projects associated with the NISS. Through the generation and presentation of relevant, high-quality content, the Incubator team strives to advance the field of data-informed student success across the country.

NISS Core Services

“Six years ago, just 6 percent of the students enrolled at Atlanta's Perimeter College earned a degree in three years. That year, the college merged with neighboring Georgia State University, which has a well-deserved reputation for boosting graduation rates and closing the opportunity gap. The effect has been astonishing – now, more than 80 percent of Perimeter's full-time students have either graduated, transferred or are still enrolled within three years of starting college. Not only has the graduation rate risen, the opportunity gap has been wiped out.“
Dr. David Kirp, Senior Fellow at the Learning Policy Institute Washington Post, 2021 double-quote image for border styling