ATLANTA — At a time when anxiety is riding high about artificial intelligence and the steep cost of a university education, the National Institute for Student Success at Georgia State is hosting a conversation with author Andrew Gumbel to discuss the university's remarkable success in confounding conventional wisdom and graduating record numbers of low-income and first-generation students.
Gumbel’s book, “Won’t Lose This Dream: How an Upstart Urban University Rewrote the Rules of a Broken System,” documents a pivotal decade and a half in Georgia State history, when the university committed itself to the idea that students of all backgrounds could succeed at the same high rates and ensured they had the opportunities to do so. By testing and then implementing evidence-based, data-driven strategies, the university became a national model for student success, reducing the time it takes to complete a degree by a full semester and eliminating achievement gaps based on race, ethnicity and income.
The book, first published in 2020, has just come out in paperback, and a new afterward highlights how Georgia State has harnessed many of the things other institutions are afraid of — artificial intelligence tools, and changes in work and study habits in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic — to further its work and spread its influence across the country.
“There was a time when Georgia State looked almost eccentric by putting its faith in data technologies to reveal the truth of what students were experiencing and what they needed,” Gumbel said. “Now student success and the Georgia State model are things that no higher education institution can afford to ignore.”
In 2021, Georgia State established the National Institute for Student Success (NISS) to disseminate proven practices to other colleges and universities, and to develop and test the next generation of student supports. NISS partner institutions — which now number more than 100 — are seeing improvements in a variety of student success measures.
“It’s no longer just about higher education, it’s about whole societal change for the next generation,” Gumbel added.
Gumbel will share his insights on Oct. 21 in a conversation with NISS Founding Executive Director Timothy M. Renick, the architect of Georgia State’s student success initiatives.
The event, from 3 to 5 p.m. in the university’s Centennial Hall, will include remarks from students prominently featured in the book, and discussion of how techniques pioneered at Georgia State are beginning to transform lives across the country. Allison Calhoun-Brown, senior vice president for student success and chief enrollment officer at Georgia State University, will provide an introduction, and the Q&A will be moderated by NISS Senior Director of Client Service Delivery Jessica Rowland Williams.
"One of the questions left unanswered when ‘Won’t Lose This Dream’ was first published was whether the innovations that transformed student outcomes at Georgia State would work elsewhere. We now have the answer,” Renick said. “The NISS is working with more than 100 colleges and universities nationally to implement similar data-based student success programs, and student outcomes across these institutions are improving at rates more than four times the national average.
“I look forward to discussing with Andrew Gumbel the ways that Georgia State’s use of predictive analytics, AI chatbots, micro-grants and other programs are being adapted at dozens of other institutions and the lessons we are learning from this work.”
