Pullias and PASS Team Hosts National Summit Focused on Postsecondary Success for At-Promise Students

More than 60 thought-leaders, policy experts, foundation leaders, researchers and practitioners convened last week at the Pullias Center’s “National Summit on Transformative Efforts to Support the Postsecondary Success of At-promise Students.” The summit was organized and led by researchers from the Pullias Center’s Promoting At-Promise Student Success (PASS) project, and supported by a grant from the Susan T. Buffet Foundation. […]

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An Ecological Approach to Career Development in College

Higher education is costly — and it also requires a great deal of time and sacrifice for many students. College educators owe it to students to ensure that they are getting the support they need to make this investment well-worth it.  More needs to be done to support students’ career development during the college years to fully realize the promise […]

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PASS Study Focuses on Student and Practitioner Wellness

By Ralitsa Todorova As well-being becomes an even greater concern for college youth, the Promoting At-Promise Student Success (PASS) project is directing more attention to student and practitioner wellness. The research team is developing innovative mixed methods approaches to better understand students’ experiences and practitioners’ responses. PASS scholars recently published a paper focused on job crafting, with an examination on how practitioner stress […]

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Ecological Validation: Taking the Initiative to Create a Sense of Belonging

By Joseph Kitchen Before the pandemic, many of the typical learning experiences and programming opportunities offered at colleges and universities were simply platforms that enabled students to build connections, community, and belonging. While institutions commonly seek out programmatic and structural solutions to fostering belonging among students—such as first year seminars or a student activity center for instance—they should not lose […]

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Proactive Outreach and Tailored Support: A Recipe for Student Success

By Joseph Kitchen Seeking out connections with students is at the core of another strategy my colleagues and I identified through the Promoting At-Promise Student Success project. Proactive advising outreach and tailored support may offer promising inroads to build relationships with students and foster a sense they are a part of a college community that cares about them and that they are an integral part of […]

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USC Pullias Center for Higher Education Debuts New Website Dedicated to PASS Project 

The Promoting At-Promise Student Success Project (PASS), a Pullias Center study funded by the Susan B. Thompson Foundation, now has its very own website at pass.pullias.usc.edu. Information about the study had previously been integrated into the Pullias Center’s website alongside dozens of current and prior research initiatives.  “As the Pullias Center’s longest-running study, spanning more than half a decade and […]

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PASS Project Researchers Discuss Collaborative Design Study at AERA Annual Conference

Representatives from the Pullias Center, the University of Nebraska, and the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation participated in a special Division J Vice Presidential Session at the annual gathering to discuss their research methods. The Promoting At-Promise Student Success Project (PASS), formerly known as the Thompson Scholars Learning Communities (TSLC) Study, is a multi-year, mixed methods study conducted by the Pullis […]

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Five Years In: Reflections on Studying a Comprehensive College Transition Program

For the past five years, a team of Pullias Center researchers have been engaged in the Promoting At-Promise Student Success (PASS) project, a large mixed methods study of the Thompson Scholar Learning Community (TSLC) program at three of the University of Nebraska campuses. In addition to a five-year scholarship, the TSLC program provided two years of comprehensive support for approximately […]

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Pullias Center Researchers Examine Student Engagement Through the Lens of Comprehensive College Transition Programs

Comprehensive college transition programs (CCTP), which provide academic and social support for at-promise students as they transition to college and begin their academic journey, are gaining traction as a systematic approach to supporting the students’ learning, development, and college success. For the last 5 years, a team of researchers at the Pullias Center have been looking to gain a crucial […]

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Pullias Researchers Investigate Relationship Between Psychosocial and Academic Outcomes in Higher Education

States are increasingly tying postsecondary funding to easily quantifiable outcomes such as retention and graduation rates even as employers emphasize the importance of psychosocial skills. New research looks into whether psychosocial and academic outcomes move together in  postsecondary organizations or whether they are competing goals. “Postsecondary institutions are being pulled in multiple, potentially competing, directions regarding the skills, knowledge, and […]

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