APLU’s Office of Access and Success Holds HBCU Summit

The APLU Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) Summit convened HBCU senior-level administrators, faculty, and other stakeholders in a forum to share ideas, tools and resources that will foster greater collective success for the strategic priorities of institutions. The summit was held June 7-8 in New Orleans, LA.

The 2017 HBCU Summit featured innovative strategies to promote student success, which rely on the creative input of a cross-section of institutional leaders. They identified related tasks, assigned roles, needed communications, resources, and accountability structures to implement their plan successfully.

Attendees also had the opportunity to present existing innovative projects during a poster session.

Attendees also heard from leaders in the philanthropic community on their top higher education issues. Design Impact worked closely with APLU’s Office of Access and Success’s leadership team to design and facilitate the summit.

The top three objectives for the HBCU Summit were to:

• Define characteristics that promote sustainable student success programs;
• Refine existing program strategies to promote greater success, sustainability, and team integration; and
• Identify tools and strategies needed to develop grant proposals and to compete effectively in national grant solicitations.

Sessions covered telling the story of HBCU successes; building stronger partnerships with corporate, government, academics, and donors; designing strategies to drive change and innovation; how to develop an institutional culture of accountability, responsibility, and trust; as well as how to directly engage students and faculty in the development of HBCU institutions’ development. Summit attendees represented a host of 1890 Land-Grant Institutions, non-APLU HBCUs, higher education associations, as well as a variety of other outside groups.