Maurice Edington, president of the College of the District of Columbia since August 2023, desires to make it a tough selection for native excessive schoolers to not keep in Washington and attend the public establishment after graduating.
“Our technique is to evolve and develop as an establishment, in order that our popularity is that we’re the District’s top quality, inexpensive and accessible college,” he stated.
It’s a pitch that the public traditionally Black establishment and its previous leaders have made earlier than. Beneath Edington — who joined UDC after serving 21 years in administrative roles at Florida A&M, a fellow HBCU — the college has simply launched its newest strategic plan for reaching that aim.
It comprises 9 broad aims, which Edington acknowledged is so much for a strategic plan.
“We aren’t attempting to enhance incrementally,” he stated. “I’m not saying that the establishment is in dangerous form, however we now have an formidable imaginative and prescient for the long run. And it’s my opinion — and to the core of my soul, I consider this — that you need to be formidable and aggressive if you wish to make quantum leaps.”
However whereas the plan has 9 priorities, one issues above all and serves because the lodestar for the others. And it’s one which guides many different establishments.
“There may be actually just one precedence: scholar success,” Edington stated.
UDC desires to begin trying like a state flagship
UDC’s historical past dates again to 1851 with origins as a lecturers’ school, and from day one it targeted on serving the District’s Black group. It turned a full college in 1976, when three establishments merged into one. Right now UDC homes each a analysis college and a group school. As of spring 2024, it enrolled 3,708 college students throughout the establishment, about 2,100 of whom had been Black.
And now, with a newly launched strategic plan below Edington, UDC goals to develop into “a nationwide mannequin for city scholar success.”
For the college, meaning elevating second-year retention charges to 80% by 2029, which might be a 14 percentage-point enhance from its baseline, and increase its commencement fee by 25 share factors, to 65%. It additionally goals to roughly double the variety of levels it awards to 1,500 a 12 months.
However attending to these and different objectives will imply completely revamping the college’s operations.
UDC’s enrollment has dipped over the previous 20 years
Fall headcount over the 20 years from 2002 to 2022.
Excessive on the record is establishing a scholar success middle. Edington stated the deliberate middle will mix a number of providers right into a one-stop hub together with educational and profession advising, well being and different features.
Advising itself is ready to vary, with the college shifting from a hybrid mannequin that mixes skilled full-time advisers with college taking part in that function, to a purely skilled employees that may work with college students all through their school careers.
Extra broadly, Edington desires to roll out a universitywide “scholar success framework,” larger training jargon for a bundle of initiatives to spice up outcomes.
The framework his crew developed consists of practically 30 separate initiatives and applications, every little thing from curriculum redesign and necessary advising periods to expanded internships and early warning analytics to assist determine and help at-risk college students.
“There may be actually just one precedence: scholar success.”
Maurice Edington
President, UDC
Tied up in UDC’s scholar success push — in addition to in its broader efforts to lift its profile within the District and past — is the opportunity of constructing the college’s first devoted scholar housing. Edington calls this piece “crucial.”
“Many college students go away the District to go to the native faculties, so they don’t seem to be going away from dwelling,” he famous. “They’re simply going 10, 15, 20 miles away, however what they’re getting is an on-campus residential expertise.”
UDC is the uncommon public college and not using a residence corridor. Nonetheless, it does lease close by flats — roughly 50 items — for college kids.
Many within the area view the college as a commuter college, Edington stated. About three-fourths of its 1,407 undergraduates this previous spring had been D.C. residents, as had been greater than 80% of its 1,738 group school college students.
For a lot of college students, commuting means they cannot spend a lot time on campus past their courses. “I did not understand, from a scholar perspective, till very just lately, how a lot effort goes into attending to campus,” Edington stated.
However Edington additionally factors to a much bigger image, tying school residence to school success. “College students who keep in residence halls have larger retention and commencement charges than people who do not. That’s well-established knowledge,” he stated.
Analysis going again to the Nineteen Nineties has related residing in residence halls with constructive outcomes for college kids, together with the metrics Edington talked about in addition to the sense of group that’s constructed.
He added, “We draw plenty of college students from underserved communities who haven’t got the strongest constructions at dwelling and help constructions, and they also should be in a extra nurturing, supportive atmosphere within the evenings, on the weekends.”
Setting up a residence corridor is Edington’s No. 1 capital precedence.
He’s been attempting to unfold the message of the potential advantages amongst stakeholders. D.C.’s authorities — which performs an intimate function within the lifetime of the college — has put up $1 million to conduct a scholar housing feasibility examine.
Financing choices probably come all the way down to capital appropriations from the District, a partnership with non-public actual property traders, or a mix of the 2, Edington famous.
In a finest case state of affairs, he stated, UDC might break floor inside two years.
Status: An ‘concern of concern’
When UDC says in its transformation plan that it desires to develop into a “world-class flagship college,” implied is the concept that that establishment isn’t one already. It at the moment ranks No. 23 amongst HBCUs — up a notch from final 12 months — and No. 147 amongst regional universities within the North on U.S. Information and World Report’s school rankings.
Within the introduction to the strategic plan, titled “Delivering on the Promise,” UDC is specific about this: “Status — an element that’s straightforward to quote however tougher to outline — has been a problem of concern for UDC previously; the college continues to wrestle with issues of notion, notably with District natives who recall years of short-term management, underfunding and stagnant applications.”
That’s a troublesome record of challenges to beat. Whereas the college could be the solely public establishment in D.C., it has some fairly heavy competitors for high college students amongst non-public Washington schools.
UDC’s essential campus in northwestern Washington.
Ben Unglesbee/Greater Ed Dive
These embrace nationally identified heavyweights Georgetown College, George Washington College and Howard College. Howard is ranked No. 2 among the many nation’s HBCUs, behind Atlanta’s Spelman Faculty on U.S. Information’ rankings.
UDC additionally faces competitors from public universities in neighboring Maryland and Virginia, the place HBCUs — together with Morgan State College and Hampton College, amongst others — draw college students that in any other case would possibly go to UDC. Whereas Washington residents don’t qualify for in-state tuition within the close by states, they’ll get tuition help by way of a grant program meant to develop larger training choices for District denizens.
“It’s a must to be formidable and aggressive if you wish to make quantum leaps.”
Maurice Edington
President, UDC
At a mid-November occasion celebrating the UDC plan’s launch, Edington highlighted the double which means of “promise” within the plan’s title.
“These phrases had been very rigorously chosen,” he stated. “‘Promise’ is synonymous with dedication. It additionally means potential, and so to ship on the promise is to completely decide to and absolutely understand our immense potential as an establishment,” he instructed the native politicians and college and scholar leaders in attendance.
Status, whereas summary, can have a tangible impression, not least of all in recruiting. The strategic plan tackles that concern partly with communication: new complete branding and outreach efforts, in addition to a brand new college web site.
Additionally key to popularity within the larger ed group: UDC is trying to increase its analysis profile and be designated by Carnegie Classifications as an R2 establishment, denoting excessive ranges of analysis exercise.
In an interview, Edington expressed hope that UDC’s very location might widen its attraction to prospects. By dint of its historic setting, place among the many halls of energy, and worldwide significance, the District generally is a draw for high college students.
“With our non-public college friends, one of many keys to their success is the placement,” Edington stated. “Now we have plenty of college students nationally, I believe, who wish to come to D.C. They cannot all go to Howard College in the event that they’re in search of an HBCU expertise, proper?”
An ‘urgency’ to coach
In the meantime, UDC faces the identical balancing act that many different public universities do, that of attempting to lift their profile nationally and even internationally whereas nonetheless serving the areas that home and fund them.
UDC’s standing as an HBCU is crucial to fulfilling each aims.
This got here dwelling when, on the celebration of the brand new plan — chatting with a largely Black viewers of maybe 100 folks— Edington drew little response when he famous the college’s standing as D.C.’s solely public college However when he adopted it with “and a proud HBCU,” the room broke into enthusiastic applause.
Throughout the nation, HBCUs are sometimes hardworking engines of regional and particular person financial development. Nationwide, they generate $16.5 billion in financial impression yearly and enhance graduates’ lifetime earnings by 57%, in accordance with the newest UNCF examine on the sector.
And regional public HBCUs like UDC “characterize a cornerstone of the HBCU panorama,” as a 2020 paper by HBCU students Felecia Commodore and Nadrea Njoku famous. They “constantly outperform their regional predominately white counterparts with accessible sources and offering providers to Black college students,” they wrote.
UDC’s scholar middle at its essential campus.
Ben Unglesbee/Greater Ed Dive
The 752 UDC college students who graduated in 2021 will make an estimated $2.1 billion over their collective lifetimes — 51% greater than they might have with out their credentials, in accordance with UNCF.
HBCUs have sometimes been “punching above their weight,” offering larger ed entry to traditionally marginalized college students who lack the sources of their friends, UNCF has famous.
Nonetheless, the sector has been underfunded for many years. Furthermore, no HBCU has an endowment value $1 billion, as Njoku, who’s the previous assistant vp of UNCF’s Frederick D. Patterson Analysis Institute, famous in an interview. Holdings of high private and non-private universities, in the meantime, can run into the tens of billions of {dollars}.
HBCUs are capable of do what they do by way of their strategy to training, in Njoku’s view. Many have comparatively low student-to-teacher ratios and use what she calls “intrusive advising” to detect early warning indicators {that a} scholar is struggling — one thing that UDC plans to construct out as a part of its scholar success blitz.
She additionally pointed to revolutionary pedagogical methods, akin to Xavier College of Louisiana’s strategy to its pre-med program, the place it breaks studying down into modules that assist college students rise up to hurry on complicated scientific ideas incrementally.
HBCUs additionally often dig into the academic and programming wants of their native market, Njoku stated. There once more, UDC has made {that a} precedence in its strategic plan below Edington, with the aim of hanging up partnerships with native employers and focusing applications on wanted abilities within the area.
Past these specifics, Njoku stated HBCUs typically do their work with an academic “urgency” different establishments lack.
“These establishments had been based within the corners of barns below candlelight within the concern that they might be killed as a result of they had been studying,” she stated. “That concern resonates to at the present time. These establishments educate college students with as a lot seriousness and urgency as they did on the primary day they had been based. That is going to form every little thing you do.”
Funding transformation (after a historical past of underfunding)
In 2017, The Washington Submit — UDC’s hometown newspaper — penned an editorial mulling whether or not the college might flip itself round. It referenced a promising new chief in Ronald Mason Jr., a by then three-year-old strategic plan, a spotty file of outcomes, a “dismal” commencement fee and a realization that UDC wanted to serve native market wants and couldn’t be “all issues to all folks.”
Regardless of the numerous enchancment since then, the litany all rings somewhat acquainted at present in 2024. For example, between 2017 and 2022 UDC’s general commencement fee rose practically 20 share factors to succeed in 35%, a quantity that also leaves broad room for enchancment. For college students looking for bachelor’s levels, the determine hit 54% — higher, however nonetheless nicely beneath close by College of Maryland’s 89% commencement fee.
By August 2023, UDC’s general commencement fee fell once more, by 9 share factors, whereas its bachelor’s commencement charges dipped by 14 share factors, in accordance with the newest federal knowledge.
One factor UDC has going for it’s help from D.C. authorities management. On the strategic plan unveiling occasion in November, Edington stated he had heard Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser converse glowingly of the establishment “in locations the place you did not know I used to be there.”
For her half, Bowser known as UDC a key piece of Washington’s training system. “UDC represents a lifelong dedication, definitely, from me and our metropolis to help studying alternatives round a D.C. resident’s entire lifespan,” she stated on the occasion.
An occasion unveiling UDC’s new strategic plan on Nov. 15. From left to proper: Thennie Freeman, director of Washington’s parks division; UDC President Maurice Edington; and April Massey, UDC chief educational officer.
Ben Unglesbee/Greater Ed Dive
And D.C. is placing cash the place its mouth is. Together with funding the housing examine, the town is spending one other $1.1 million to herald further educational advisers and arrange the brand new scholar success middle. It is usually making a $100 million capital funding into a brand new library and athletic subject on the college.
“We requested the District for help. The mayor and the council stated, ‘Sure, that is necessary to us. This is some sources to do it.’” Edington stated concerning the $1.1 million in funding. “However we will not depend on that course of for all of our wants. … We are able to’t say, ‘The District ought to help each single initiative.’”
And so the strategic plan requires greater than tripling UDC’s roughly $3 million in annual donor fundraising — yet one more formidable aim. To that finish, the college established a brand new head of philanthropy function and is constructing new constructions to bolster fundraising. Edington hopes that donors may help help the college’s scholar success and retention initiatives by way of scholarship funds and different means.
Including to the problem is the D.C. space’s excessive value of residing, which Edington acknowledged makes it exhausting to pay aggressive salaries to school and employees. That is one other space the place he stated fundraising might assist.
On the similar time, the financial setting might be a profit. Edington famous UDC’s potential for auxiliary income is far larger than at Florida A&M, his earlier establishment.
Particularly, UDC sits in a bustling space with retail house it could lease out commercially. The college’s president sees different methods to maximise income, together with by opening its campus for others to host occasions. These monies, Edington stated, might be reinvested again into the establishment’s strategic priorities.
Even with present ranges of funding, Edington stated UDC might preserve its present trajectory and see some enrollment progress and enchancment.
“If we by no means received a further greenback, we’d nonetheless enhance,” he stated. “However the transformative progress and evolution that we’d like goes to require extra investments.”