In The News

We believe that every student admitted to the University of South Florida will succeed.  The student success movement at USF is built on that simple, fundamental belief.  We hold ourselves accountable for our performance, so we have responded well to the new accountability rules and expectations of improved student outcomes.

For decades, colleges and universities have focused on access as the primary means of fulfilling higher education’s promise to change students’ lives.

The University of South Florida, where I work as the vice president for student success, was no different. But nearly 10 years ago, we began to turn our attention to outcomes. While ensuring more students have access to a college education was an important goal, we knew that access was not enough. We had to provide more students with access to success.

The new chief executive takes over for founder Charles Thornburgh, who had been CEO since launching the company in 2011.

Civitas Learning announced the appointment of Chris Hester as the company’s chief executive officer today. He joins a deeply experienced leadership team and adds more than twenty years of success in the development of software and tools that enable healthcare professionals to apply data-driven insights to practices that improve patient outcomes, at scale.

The University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) today released the results of an ambitious effort to quantify the impact of student success initiatives, in collaboration with Civitas Learning. Designed to determine what works, and target resources at the most effective programs, the UMKC-Civitas Learning partnership was focused on identifying the best strategies to boost persistence among historically underrepresented minority students.

The University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) today released the results of an ambitious effort to quantify the impact of student success initiatives, in collaboration with Civitas Learning. Designed to determine what works, and target resources at the most effective programs, the UMKC-Civitas Learning partnership was focused on identifying the best strategies to boost persistence among historically underrepresented minority students. According to data released today, the institution’s supplemental instruction program (which utilizes tailored group-study in lieu of remedial education) boosts student persistence by 7.8 percentage points.

Rachel Benavides is getting a look behind the community college curtain. What she sees is an industry going through tectonic change.

“In the past, community colleges have been more enrollment-based than outcome-based,” said Benavides, director of Del Mar College’s adult education and literacy program and a member of its inaugural Next Generation Leadership Academy (NGLA). “Now, instead of looking at the front end, we’re looking at the back end and what we as a college have to do to help students get to completion. This is all fresh and new to me.”

Institutions of higher education are facing greater challenges today than ever before. Administrators are grappling with increasing accountability measures, tenuous public support, and the emergent expectations of a diverse student population. At the same time, higher education leaders are also now able to tackle these challenges differently, through access to more abundant data and new tools aimed at improving student success.

One of the quickest ways for a company to fade into obscurity is to remain stagnant. This holds especially true for the tech industry, where companies are expected to adapt to trends at lightning speed. These six Austin companies are well aware of the consequences that come with getting too comfortable and have instead opted for a path of ongoing research and reinvention. Here’s how they stay ahead.

At the annual convening of the American Council on Education (ACE), Sunday, the University of South FlEven more impressive than its record-high first-year retention rate, USF has eliminated achievement gaps by race and ethnicity, as well as income.  African-American and Hispanic students now graduate at six-year rates that are actually higher than white students. Likewise, Pell-eligible students perform on par with higher-income students with only a percentage-point difference.