Arcadia University is proud to announce that it is the recipient of a U.S. Department of Education Title III Strengthening Institutions Program Grant for the amount of $2.25 million over five years for work designed to increase student achievement, persistence, and retention.

Advancing Retention through Career Development, Advising, Data Infrastructure, and Inclusive Excellence at Arcadia University (ARCADIA) is an initiative designed to address significant institutional challenges that impact academic quality, institutional management, and fiscal stability and create support infrastructure to allow the University’s students to thrive at Arcadia and beyond,” said Dr. Ajay Nair, president of Arcadia University. “On behalf of Arcadia, I would like to thank all who were integral in securing this funding, in particular project leaders Dr. Sandra Crenshaw, associate provost, and Dr. Rebecca Kohn, vice provost and dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.” 

In its grant proposal, Arcadia developed a multi-year initiative comprising four high-priority activities: Whole-Life Advising, Inclusive Excellence inside and outside the classroom, the Career Ecosystem, and Digital Transformation. In particular, the initiative will work to enhance the student experience by promoting student retention, degree completion, and post-graduation outcomes; building on existing work such as the Arcadia2025 Adaptive Strategy and the University’s anti-Black racism initiatives; enhancing curriculum and pedagogy; supporting the implementation of inclusive excellence; developing advising networks for students; maximizing campus employment impact through professional development; and strengthening the University’s data infrastructure to support students’ advising and mentoring. 

These initiatives will be interconnected through the pivotal fourth activity, Digital Transformation, in which a data warehouse will be developed and implemented to house all student-related information received from and fed into the newly implemented customer relationship management system. Outcomes of all of these initiatives will be sustained by the University after the grant ends. 

The U.S. Department of Education Title III Strengthening Institutions Grant program is to help institutions “to become self-sufficient and expand their capacity to serve low-income students by providing funds to improve and strengthen the institution’s academic quality, institutional management, and financial stability.”