Student-Ready Strategies (SRS) has been selected by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to provide policy support for their national network of colleges and universities. The partnership will focus on assisting institutions as they pursue more equitable outcomes for students, with a special focus on Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and poverty-affected students.
“So many colleges are ready and willing to do things differently, but they need support to transform,” said SRS founder and CEO Sarah Ancel. “We are so pleased that the Foundation has embraced the need for capacity support and that we will have the privilege of working side-by-side with institutions to drive meaningful change for students.”
SRS joins a cohort that includes four other organizations, referred to as “capacity partners,” who are charged with assisting institutions in the areas of leadership, data analysis, information technology, and strategic finance. SRS will serve as the policy support provider for a minimum of three years.
Student-Ready Strategies will leverage their decades of experience in state, institution and organization-level policy to assist institutions in examining the impact of their policies on different student groups and support them as they refine, replace or eliminate those policies. SRS will also provide thought partnership and support for the other organizations in the network and the Foundation itself.
“Much attention is paid to education policy at the federal and state levels, but the policies colleges and universities set for themselves impact students just as much, if not more, and are often overlooked in policy conversations,” said Dr. Vanessa Keadle, SRS’s chief strategy officer who has also been elected to serve as a member of the Foundation’s steering committee for higher education strategy.
The broader effort, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s postsecondary ecosystem strategy, seeks to promote widespread adoption of proven strategies to increase student success. Intermediary organizations help identify needs amongst the network of institutions and connect them with capacity partners such as SRS and other related service providers to support implementation and catalyze meaningful change.
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