• State Scholars: 4 Years of Progress

    Since September 2005 WICHE has administered a highly successful national project that has made a genuine difference in the lives of thousands of high schoolers: the State Scholars Initiative (SSI), a federally funded program that motivates students to take a rigorous course of study in high school to ready them for college or work and engages businesses in this endeavor. On September 30 SSI’s national office at WICHE closed its doors (though state programs continue).

     
    This is a good time to recount some of the successes logged by SSI – a $6.6 million initiative funded by the U.S. Department of Education through the Office of Vocational and Adult Education (OVAE) under the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act of 1998.
     
    Almost half of all states participated in the program, and 18 remain active: Arizona, Arkansas, Connecticut, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming (six others – Michigan, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, Rhode Island, and Washington – have completed their programs). So far, about 950 school districts have participated in the program, which uses businesspeople to motivate students to take a high school curriculum patterned after the National Commission on Excellence in Education recommendations (four years of English; three years of math; three years of basic lab science; 3.5 years of social studies; and two years of the same language other than English). Over the last four years, business volunteers from over 600 companies have visited 8th grade classrooms and talked to students about how taking a rigorous curriculum in high school will help them in college and their careers. To reinforce its message, SSI collected data on nearly 1.5 million student enrollments, which show that the program has in fact influenced students to take and complete rigorous classes.
     
    But SSI did more. To spread the word about the value of a rigorous curriculum – and the benefit of education and business working together – SSI hosted the National Summit on Academic Rigor and Relevance in Boston in April 2008, attended by some 300 participants from 36 states and territories, with presentations from such experts as Leon Lederman, Nobel Prize winner in physics, Roy Romer, former Colorado governor and retired superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, and Charles Kolb, president of the Committee for Economic Development  (read the summit proceedings.
     
    WICHE would like to thank all of those who made SSI a vital and growing program. But we’re particularly grateful to three individuals: SSI’s director, Terese Rainwater, whose skill at managing the program was a key factor in its remarkable success; its associate project director, Michelle Médal, whose smart, detail-oriented organizational talents ensured that this complex, multistate endeavor ran smoothly; and the initiative’s hard-working project director at OVAE, Nancy Brooks, whose guidance and expertise helped us to make SSI as strong and widespread a program as possible. WICHE is proud to have worked with them and had a hand in growing this valuable program.

     

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  • Mental Health Wins NIMH Grant

    The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) has awarded $1 million to the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education to test a college mental health intervention over the next two years. The grant will fund a groundbreaking study to test whether a community mental health intervention program reduces some of the barriers that keep college students from seeking mental health services. Thirty-two campuses across the nation will participate in the study, which involves a survey of student mental health on each campus, as well as a peer-based mental health education program given to resident advisors on half of the campuses. The goal of the study is to determine whether the education program increases the use of mental health services.

     
    “Our hope is that if we educate students about mental illnesses and their treatments, they will use their enhanced knowledge to intervene when a fellow student shows signs of mental illness,” says Nicole Speer, co-principle investigator for the project. “If the study indicates the education program is successful, it will have a major impact on the early detection and treatment of mental illnesses in college students.”
     
    “Mental health problems such as depression, anxiety disorders, and eating disorders are highly prevalent among college students, and most of these students are not receiving treatment,” says Daniel Eisenberg, a faculty member at the University of Michigan and co-principal investigator for the project. “This study is an opportunity to learn about how to address this issue.” For information about the study, or if your campus would like to participate, please contact Nicole Speer at nspeer@wiche.edu.

     

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  • Mixed Media

    A roundup of recent publications online and in print. 
     

    • Internet 2. Today, more than 60,000 K-20 organizations in 38 states, including schools and school libraries, are connected to Internet2, a not-for-profit advanced networking consortium of more than 200 U.S. universities, as well as corporations, government agencies and other institutions. Louis Fox, vice president of WICHE Technology and Innovation and director of the Internet2 K20 Initiative, recently coauthored “Internet2 and School Libraries: The Time is Now, More than Ever” with James Werle. Read the abstract; or for a copy of the full article, contact Molly McGill at mmcgill@wiche.edu. 
       
    • Data exchange. Brian Prescott, WICHE’s director of policy research, has coauthored a paper with Peter Ewell of the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems. “A Framework for a Multi-State Human Capital Development Data Systems” details how a framework for a multistate data exchange might be organized and governed and what its value to policymakers would be. 
       
    • Virtual lessons. Russ Poulin, interim director of WCET, and Demi Michelau, WICHE’s director of policy analysis, coauthored a chapter in a new volume of New Directions for Higher Education, titled “Lessons Learned from Virtual Universities.” Adult ed. Transparency By Design (TBD) has launched a new Website, College Choices for Adults, funded by Lumina Foundation for Education. WCET provides quality assurance on the standards of data reporting jointly developed by TBD’s member institutions.

     

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  • Meetings Debriefing

    On September 28-29 WICHE convened the annual meeting of its Legislative Advisory Committee at the State Higher Education Policy Center in Boulder. State legislators from 11 of the 15 WICHE states gathered for the meeting, themed, “A Crisis Is a Terrible Thing to Waste: How to Increase Your Return on Investment,” which featured WICHE staff and experts speaking on a variety of topics designed to help participants think about ways to improve higher education in the West.
     
    WICHE hosted a meeting September 16-17 in Denver for the five states involved in the Non-Traditional No More project. Project leaders from Arkansas, Colorado, Nevada, New Jersey, and South Dakota gathered to discuss common challenges and share project successes. The meeting also focused on mapping out plans for sustaining momentum generated by the project for improving access and success for ready adult learners (those who accumulated a large percentage of the credits necessary to earn a degree and are now ready to return to postsecondary institutions to finish).
     
    WICHE convened a meeting of the College Access Challenge Grant Network on July 27-28 at the State Higher Education Policy Center in Boulder. This was the second meeting for college access leaders from Alaska, Nevada, North Dakota, and Washington, who engaged in discussions on programs to increase the number of low-income students who are prepared to enroll and succeed in postsecondary education. Idaho expects to join the network in the coming year. WICHE will issue a publication highlighting successful programs and common challenges in the network states.
     

     

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  • More Ways for Institutions to Save

    The Midwestern Higher Education Compact recently invited WICHE to participate in more group purchasing arrangements to help colleges and universities in the West contain or reduce their administrative costs. Several of the purchasing agreements are also available to K-12 organizations; local, county, and state governments; and nonprofit organizations. The agreements aggregate volume purchases to lower product costs and reduce the time institutions must spend developing and conducting bids themselves. MHEC undertakes the time and expense of the RFP process, and institutions can purchase the goods or services knowing that the due diligence in selecting the vendor has already been done. Contracts available to institutions and organizations in the WICHE region include the following.

     
    • A full line of Dell new or refurbished computer equipment and components, as well as services, including installation, maintenance, support, and training. The contract extends through June 30, 2012. For more information, visit the Dell master price agreement page.
       
    • A three-year contract with four possible one-year renewals with Xerox for printing equipment and document management services. The contract also includes production-level printing services. In addition to hardware – such as multifunction devices, laser printers, copiers, and fax machines – the contract covers Xerox services, including productivity assessments and document advisories to help manage and streamline records and administrative documents. The full range of Xerox Global Services’ offerings is also available, including Xerox Office Productivity Assessments, which examine copy, print, and fax volumes across an entire organization and identify opportunities to save money by consolidating equipment. Members can also utilize Xerox’s Document Advisor Services to help manage the information overload of student records and administrative documents schools continually face.  For more information, visit the Xerox agreement page and the Xerox reseller sales agreement page.
       
    • Systemax (Global Government & Education Solutions and CompUSA) products and services are available under a three-year contract that ends on June 30, 2010. A full product list, including desktop and notebook computers, monitors, LCDs, servers, tape backups, and many other types of equipment and services, is available on the Global Government & Education Solutions and CompUSA contract page.
       
    • Juniper Networks high-performance network infrastructure may be purchased under a contract that extends through December 31, 2011, and covers a range of software, online tools, and hardware. More details are available on the Juniper master price agreement page.

     

     

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Contacts

David Longanecker, President - Phone: (303) 541-0201, email dlonganecker@wiche.edu

Jere Mock, Vice President, Programs and Services - Phone: (303) 541-0222, email jmock@wiche.edu