Frontier Set

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Key Highlights

• Advancing institutional transformation that dramatically increases student success and eliminates achievement gaps through the Frontier Set network.
• Undertaking a deep-dive examination of how urban universities advance student-centered transformation.
• Broadly sharing lessons from institutional transformation work across higher education.

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The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Frontier Set is a national network of 29 colleges and universities and two state systems of higher education. APLU and the Coalition of Urban Serving Universities (USU) served as an intermediary for a subset of member institutions that have committed to transform their institutional capacity to dramatically increase student success and eliminate performance gaps for low-income, first-generation, and students of color.

Public urban research universities continue to face a host of challenging inflection points, from senior leadership transitions to mergers to shifts to performance-based state funding, to name just a few. How institutions can continue to advance institutional transformation during these pivotal moments is critical to their long-term success in achieving equity and increasing student success.

To help institutions successfully navigate these challenges and ultimately thrive, APLU and the Coalition of Urban Serving Universities (USU) worked with Florida International University, Georgia State University, and Portland State University as part of the Frontier Set initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to understand how to successfully advance transformational change amid senior leadership transitions, institutional mergers, and performance-based state funding models.

APLU and USU released in-depth case studies as roadmaps with insights to help other institutions address these shifts. APLU and USU released case studies on Georgia State University’s growth amid a university merger, Portland State University’s resilience through leadership transition, and Florida International University’s advancing equity and excellence through a state performance-based funding model.