Maurice Edington, president of the College of the District of Columbia since August 2023, needs to make it a tough alternative 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 status is that we’re the District’s prime 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. Below 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 attaining that purpose.
It incorporates 9 broad aims, which Edington acknowledged is so much for a strategic plan.
“We’re not making an attempt to enhance incrementally,” he stated. “I’m not saying that the establishment is in dangerous form, however we’ve got an formidable imaginative and prescient for the longer term. And it’s my opinion — and to the core of my soul, I imagine 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’s actually just one precedence: scholar success,” Edington stated.
UDC needs to start out wanting like a state flagship
UDC’s historical past dates again to 1851 with origins as a academics’ faculty, and from day one it targeted on serving the District’s Black group. It grew to become a full college in 1976, when three establishments merged into one. Right now UDC homes each a analysis college and a group faculty. As of spring 2024, it enrolled 3,708 college students throughout the establishment, about 2,100 of whom have been Black.
And now, with a newly launched strategic plan below Edington, UDC goals to grow to be “a nationwide mannequin for city scholar success.”
For the college, which means elevating second-year retention charges to 80% by 2029, which might be a 14 percentage-point enhance from its baseline, and enhance its commencement charge by 25 share factors, to 65%. It additionally goals to roughly double the variety of levels it awards to 1,500 a yr.
However attending to these and different objectives will imply totally revamping the college’s operations.
UDC’s enrollment has dipped over the previous twenty years
Fall headcount over the twenty years from 2002 to 2022.
Excessive on the listing is establishing a scholar success heart. Edington stated the deliberate heart will mix a number of providers right into a one-stop hub together with educational and profession advising, well being and different capabilities.
Advising itself is about 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 will work with college students all through their faculty careers.
Extra broadly, Edington needs 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 classes to expanded internships and early warning analytics to assist determine and help at-risk college students.
“There’s 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 potential for constructing the college’s first devoted scholar housing. Edington calls this piece “essential.”
“Many college students depart the District to go to the native faculties, so they don’t seem to be going away from house,” 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 with no residence corridor. Nevertheless, it does lease close by residences — roughly 50 items — for college students.
Many within the area view the college as a commuter college, Edington stated. About three-fourths of its 1,407 undergraduates this previous spring have been D.C. residents, as have been greater than 80% of its 1,738 group faculty college students.
For a lot of college students, commuting means they cannot spend a lot time on campus past their courses. “I did not notice, from a scholar perspective, till very just lately, how a lot effort goes into attending to campus,” Edington stated.
However Edington additionally factors to an even bigger image, tying faculty residence to varsity success. “College students who keep in residence halls have larger retention and commencement charges than those who do not. That’s well-established knowledge,” he stated.
Analysis going again to the Nineties has related residing in residence halls with optimistic outcomes for college students, together with the metrics Edington talked about in addition to the sense of group that’s constructed.
He added, “We draw a whole lot of college students from underserved communities who haven’t got the strongest buildings at house and help buildings, and they also have to 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 making an attempt 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 possible come all the way down to capital appropriations from the District, a partnership with personal actual property traders, or a mixture of the 2, Edington famous.
In a greatest case state of affairs, he stated, UDC might break floor inside two years.
Status: An ‘difficulty of concern’
When UDC says in its transformation plan that it needs to grow to be a “world-class flagship college,” implied is the concept that establishment just isn’t one already. It at present ranks No. 23 amongst HBCUs — up a notch from final yr — and No. 147 amongst regional universities within the North on U.S. Information and World Report’s faculty rankings.
Within the introduction to the strategic plan, titled “Delivering on the Promise,” UDC is express about this: “Status — an element that’s straightforward to quote however tougher to outline — has been a difficulty of concern for UDC prior to now; 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 tricky listing of challenges to beat. Whereas the college stands out as the solely public establishment in D.C., it has some fairly heavy competitors for high college students amongst personal Washington faculties.
UDC’s important campus in northwestern Washington.
Ben Unglesbee/Greater Ed Dive
These embody nationally recognized heavyweights Georgetown College, George Washington College and Howard College. Howard is ranked No. 2 among the many nation’s HBCUs, behind Atlanta’s Spellman 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 may go to UDC. Whereas Washington residents don’t qualify for in-state tuition within the close by states, they will get tuition help by a grant program meant to broaden 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 have been very fastidiously chosen,” he stated. “‘Promise’ is synonymous with dedication. It additionally means potential, and so to ship on the promise is to totally decide to and absolutely notice 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 difficulty partly with communication: new complete branding and outreach efforts, in addition to a brand new college web site.
Additionally key to status within the larger ed group: UDC is trying to enhance 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 personal college friends, one of many keys to their success is the situation,” Edington stated. “We have now a whole lot of college students nationally, I feel, who wish to come to D.C. They can not all go to Howard College in the event that they’re searching for 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 making an attempt 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 essential to fulfilling each aims.
This got here house when, on the celebration of the brand new plan — chatting with a principally Black viewers of maybe 100 individuals— 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 most recent UNCF examine on the sector.
And regional public HBCUs like UDC “signify a cornerstone of the HBCU panorama,” as a 2020 paper by HBCU students Felecia Commodore and Nadrea Njoku famous. They “persistently outperform their regional predominately white counterparts with out there sources and offering providers to Black college students,” they wrote.
UDC’s scholar heart at its important 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’d 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 vice chairman 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 in a position to do what they do by 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 modern pedagogical strategies, corresponding to Xavier College of Louisiana’s strategy to its pre-med program, the place it breaks studying down into modules that assist college students stand up to hurry on advanced scientific ideas incrementally.
HBCUs additionally ceaselessly dig into the tutorial 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 purpose of putting 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 have been based within the corners of barns below candlelight within the concern that they’d be killed as a result of they have been studying,” she stated. “That concern resonates to this present day. These establishments educate college students with as a lot seriousness and urgency as they did on the primary day they have 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 document of outcomes, a “dismal” commencement charge and a realization that UDC wanted to serve native market wants and couldn’t be “all issues to all individuals.”
Regardless of the numerous enchancment since then, the litany all rings slightly acquainted at this time in 2024. As an example, between 2017 and 2022 UDC’s general commencement charge rose practically 20 share factors to achieve 35%, a quantity that also leaves broad room for enchancment. For college students searching for bachelor’s levels, the determine hit 54% — higher, however nonetheless effectively under close by College of Maryland’s 89% commencement charge.
By August 2023, UDC’s general commencement charge fell once more, by 9 share factors, whereas its bachelor’s commencement charges dipped by 14 share factors, in accordance with the most recent 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, actually, 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, town is spending one other $1.1 million to usher in extra educational advisers and arrange the brand new scholar success heart. Additionally it is 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 essential to us. This is some sources to do it.’” Edington stated concerning the $1.1 million in funding. “However we won’t 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 — one more formidable purpose. To that finish, the college established a brand new head of philanthropy function and is constructing new buildings to bolster fundraising. Edington hopes that donors may help help the college’s scholar success and retention initiatives by scholarship funds and different means.
Including to the problem is the D.C. space’s excessive value of residing, which Edington acknowledged makes it laborious to pay aggressive salaries to college and employees. That is one other space the place he stated fundraising might assist.
On the similar time, the financial setting may very well 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 area it could actually 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, may very well 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 development and enchancment.
“If we by no means obtained an extra greenback, we might nonetheless enhance,” he stated. “However the transformative development and evolution that we want goes to require extra investments.”