EAB’s Brittany Motley and Meacie Fairfax share what they’ve learned from working with the ten schools (so far) that have signed on to EAB's Moon Shot for Equity and dedicated themselves to eliminating equity gaps by the end of this decade. We also hear from front-line staff at those institutions about how they’re integrating Moon Shot initiatives into their workflow, about challenges and unexpected blessings they have encountered along the way, and about how they are engaging other campus leaders to join the effort.

President Dr. Benoit-Antoine Bacon of Carleton University and Vice Provost for Diversity and Inclusion Dr. Carol Henderson of Emory University discuss how universities across Canada and the United States are reckoning with their historical ties to slavery, indigenous dispossession, and racial oppression. This discussion was excerpted from a November 2021 EAB webinar moderated by EAB’s Kurubel Belay. The webinar was the first in a series of engagements EAB is leading as part of a new research effort exploring authentic and productive ways for institutions to address and heal from their legacies of racism.

Dr. Roderick Heath explains how his own experience and his study of noncognitive behaviors inform his work as Director of the African American Male Initiative at North Carolina Central University. In a conversation with EAB’s Michael Schwengel, Dr. Heath discusses how he combines data, technology, and a range of motivational tactics to engage these students and foster a sense of belonging he says is crucial to their academic and personal development.

EAB’s Sally Amoruso talks with Colorado State University President Joyce McConnell about ways to drive greater diversity in higher education leadership. McConnell traces her own journey to becoming the first woman President at CSU and shares her thoughts on effective ways of recruiting and cultivating diverse talent. Amoruso and McConnell also touch on the importance of building a culture of trust that empowers staff at all levels and from all backgrounds to speak openly, to listen, and to collaborate in ways that encourage the best ideas to rise based on merit.

The typical university campus has tens or even hundreds of thousands of square feet of office space begging for a makeover. With so many campus employees working remotely, schools have a golden opportunity to transform that space with less disruption. EAB’s Elizabeth Denny and Michael Fischer offer advice to help university leaders think through their options whether they’re looking to pilot a few modest changes or completely reimagine the way that people study, live, work, and interact on their campuses.

Tom Sugar is joined by University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Chancellor Mark Mone, for a look back on lessons learned during year one of EAB’s “Moon Shot for Equity.” Tom and Dr. Mone discuss the importance of going beyond articulation agreements to make it easier for students—and the credits they have earned—to transfer between schools. They also point to two important reasons so many colleges fail to make progress on improving graduation rates: Working in isolation rather than partnering with other schools in their region, and failing to address institutional shortcomings that make the educational journey more complicated than it has to be.

2021 saw an infusion of much-needed federal stimulus dollars as well as record-setting endowment growth. Unfortunately, a fall enrollment dip and other cost pressures have kept most university leaders scrambling to achieve financial sustainability. EAB’s Jeff Martin and Scott Winslow review fall 2021 enrollment figures, possible opportunities for cost-cutting, as well as potential sources of revenue growth. They also explore the gap between hype and reality in terms of the impact of endowment growth on operating budgets.

Many institutions adopted test-optional admissions policies out of necessity in the early days of the pandemic. EAB’s Madeleine Rhyneer, an expert with more than 25 years of experience leading university admissions teams, says those hastily constructed policies are well-intentioned, but many are poorly defined. She and fellow EAB enrollment guru Michael Koppenheffer discuss different sides of the debate over the value of standardized test scores as well as the challenge of comparing apples to apples when evaluating the academic performance of students across different counties or states. They also share their top recommendations for enrollment leaders on how to codify and articulate their test-optional policies, so they are more easily understood by prospective students and their families.

University CIOs are on the front lines of a battle to liberate and leverage data trapped in siloed IT systems that have grown like weeds across college campuses over the past 30 years. Susquehanna University CIO Jennifer Servedio talks to EAB’s Danielle Yardy about how to bring order to this chaos through a more enlightened technology strategy, and how to gain buy-in among key campus stakeholders to approve the associated costs. Ms. Servedio also shares her top pieces of advice on how to prioritize and wring the greatest value out of every IT investment.

EAB’s Amy Luitjens and Will Lamb dig into our latest survey of adult learners to find out how their plans were impacted by the pandemic and to understand their current preferences and motivations. The survey findings suggest that schools will need to hone their recruitment and retention strategies to make any headway in a graduate education market that appears to be losing steam. Amy and Will offer a number of recommendations including beefing up online support services and clearly articulating the “return on education” behind your graduate programs to counteract increased price sensitivity.