Lehman College is working with the American Association of State Colleges & Universities (AASCU) to create services that will help students across the country succeed.

Lehman is one of six institutions serving as part of an AASCU initiative that will support its member institutions in further enhancing their student success outcomes, especially for low-income students, students of color, and first-generation college students.

“We are thrilled to be part of this initiative,” said President José Luis Crus. “Lehman is focused on helping our students achieve their goals and we look forward to sharing what we’ve learned with other institutions.”

The other schools—which vary in size, urbanicity and student diversity—include Austin Peay State University in Tennessee, Bowie State University in Maryland, California State University-San Bernardino, Henderson State University in Arkansas, and Northwest Missouri State University.

Many public universities across the country recognize the moral imperative to increase graduation rates and narrow achievement gaps for current and future generations of students. However, rather than each campus working on these challenges in isolation, AASCU’s service will harness the power of its members’ collective knowledge to more effectively address the needs of their diverse student populations.

This student success engagement strategy will leverage the collective knowledge of AASCU’s member institutions and draw from emerging national practices—allowing institutions to connect, share tools and expertise, and exchange promising practices. Development of this new service is supported by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

As part of the new service, AASCU will convene a national peer learning network of members undertaking similar student success transformation, allowing campuses to exchange lessons learned and promising practices. In addition, AASCU will provide campuses with custom technical assistance, by conducting an institutional self-assessment, reviewing institutional data, setting measurable goals, and developing a campus plan.

Lehman and the other five institutions will work with AASCU for 15 months to refine and validate the institutional transformation process at the heart of the student success strategy.