A Note from Powered by Publics Executive Director Julia Michaels

By Julia Michaels, Executive Director, Center for Public University Transformation

During this difficult time, it’s more important than ever that we stay connected. Each of your universities is developing innovative solutions to delivering high-quality education during a global pandemic. Furthermore, you’re tackling inequity on campus while envisioning how higher education can drive progress toward an anti-racist future. I’ve heard from many of you who have found the support of your peers in the Powered by Publics clusters invaluable to solving these challenging, complex, and urgent problems.

This is the first issue of our Powered by Publics monthly newsletter, which we hope will provide another source of inspiration and learning. Each month, we’ll share a highlight from one of the clusters as well as a few news items and resources. As we begin to re-engage with each cluster, our goal is to maintain support and connection through the crisis while keeping an eye toward broader goals: increasing the number of degrees conferred to low-income, first-generation, and students of color, and reducing equity gaps for those students.

Recently, we shared four strategic priorities for Powered by Publics to advance our degree completion and equity goals in the current environment. Some examples of how we are already making progress toward these priorities:

• Holding foundational equity conversations with clusters (ongoing this summer and fall);
• Launching the Powered by Publics national data collection in early July – many thanks to those campuses that have already submitted data!
• Working to develop a “learning hub” structure around cross-cluster themes of Affordability, Teaching & Learning, and Holistic Student Supports (further details coming this fall);
• Recalibrating our investment from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Intermediaries for Scale program to provide services to a larger number of our members (announcement expected in August).

I look forward to resuming our work together and sharing more stories of campus innovation and success in future issues of this newsletter.