Georgia Gwinnett College and Georgia State University are part of a national group of colleges appearing Thursday at the White House for a summit on higher education.
Leaders from the two colleges, along with hundreds of other college and business leaders, have committed to help more students prepare for and graduate from college. The colleges have made commitments focused on better preparation for low-income students, improved college advising for underserved students, better partnerships between colleges and k-12 schools, and higher numbers of students receiving STEM degrees, those associated with science, technology, engineering and math.
The summit follows a similar gathering in January in which several institutions also committed to these types of college access and completion improvements. More than 600 new commitments were to be announced Thursday, White House officials said.
Georgia Gwinnett’s commitment is focused on STEM education, with goals of increasing enrollment in those courses by 25 percent, boosting STEM retention by 5 percent and expanding STEM graduations by 50 percent. It also plans to increase STEM enrollment and retention of underrepresented students.
All the college’s goals have a target date of 2020.
Georgia State’s commitment also involves STEM majors. Over the next three years, the university plans to develop a series of analytics-based alerts and interventions specifically aimed at STEM majors. Georgia State also plans to increase by 20 percent the number of underrepresented and low-income students who graduate with STEM degrees.
Georgia State is already recognized as a national leader in using student data and alerts to provide intensive advising for its students. The system has led to improvements in the college’s retention and graduation rates, and it has helped more students graduate on time.
The White House initiative also includes a plan by the U.S. Department of Education to allocate $10 million over the next five years to promote college completion, along with pledges of $30 million over the next six years from groups such as the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation to improve college graduation rates for low-income students.
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