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 popularity is that we’re the District’s top quality, reasonably priced and accessible college,” he mentioned.
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 reaching that aim.
It comprises 9 broad aims, which Edington acknowledged is rather a lot for a strategic plan.
“We’re not making an attempt to enhance incrementally,” he mentioned. “I’m not saying that the establishment is in unhealthy 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 it’s important 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 mentioned.
UDC needs to begin trying like a state flagship
UDC’s historical past dates again to 1851 with origins as a academics’ faculty, and from day one it centered on serving the District’s Black group. It turned a full college in 1976, when three establishments merged into one. As we speak 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 underneath 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 improve from its baseline, and enhance its commencement price 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 targets 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 listing is establishing a scholar success middle. Edington mentioned the deliberate middle will mix a number of companies 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 school taking part in that function, to a purely skilled workers that might work with college students all through their faculty careers.
Extra broadly, Edington needs to roll out a universitywide “scholar success framework,” greater schooling jargon for a bundle of initiatives to spice up outcomes.
The framework his group developed contains practically 30 separate initiatives and packages, every part from curriculum redesign and necessary advising classes 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 potential for 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. Nevertheless, it does lease close by residences — roughly 50 models — for college students.
Many within the area view the college as a commuter college, Edington mentioned. 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 can not spend a lot time on campus past their lessons. “I did not notice, from a scholar perspective, till very lately, how a lot effort goes into attending to campus,” Edington mentioned.
However Edington additionally factors to a much bigger image, tying faculty residence to varsity success. “College students who keep in residence halls have greater retention and commencement charges than those who do not. That’s well-established knowledge,” he mentioned.
Analysis going again to the Nineteen Nineties has related dwelling in residence halls with constructive 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 variety 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.”
Establishing 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 research.
Financing choices doubtless come all the way down to capital appropriations from the District, a partnership with personal actual property buyers, or a mix of the 2, Edington famous.
In a greatest case state of affairs, he mentioned, UDC might break floor inside two years.
Repute: An ‘challenge 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 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 specific about this: “Repute — an element that’s simple to quote however more durable to outline — has been a problem of concern for UDC prior to now; the college continues to wrestle with issues of notion, significantly with District natives who recall years of short-term management, underfunding and stagnant packages.”
That’s a tricky listing of challenges to beat. Whereas the college will be the solely public establishment in D.C., it has some fairly heavy competitors for high college students amongst personal Washington faculties.
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 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 would possibly 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 develop greater schooling choices for District denizens.
“You need 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 that means of “promise” within the plan’s title.
“These phrases have been very rigorously chosen,” he mentioned. “‘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 informed the native politicians and college and scholar leaders in attendance.
Repute, whereas summary, can have a tangible influence, not least of all in recruiting. The strategic plan tackles that challenge partly with communication: new complete branding and outreach efforts, in addition to a brand new college web site.
Additionally key to popularity within the greater ed group: UDC is seeking 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 mentioned. “We now have a variety of college students nationally, I feel, who wish to come to D.C. They cannot all go to Howard College in the event that they’re on the lookout 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 crucial to fulfilling each aims.
This got here dwelling when, on the celebration of the brand new plan — chatting with a principally 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 influence yearly and improve graduates’ lifetime revenue by 57%, in line with the most recent UNCF research 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 accessible sources and offering companies 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 line with UNCF.
HBCUs have sometimes been “punching above their weight,” offering greater 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 capable of do what they do by their method to schooling, 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, comparable to Xavier College of Louisiana’s method 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 often dig into the academic and programming wants of their native market, Njoku mentioned. There once more, UDC has made {that a} precedence in its strategic plan underneath Edington, with the aim of putting up partnerships with native employers and focusing packages on wanted abilities within the area.
Past these specifics, Njoku mentioned HBCUs usually do their work with an academic “urgency” different establishments lack.
“These establishments have been based within the corners of barns underneath candlelight within the worry that they might be killed as a result of they have been studying,” she mentioned. “That worry 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 have been based. That is going to form every part 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 report of outcomes, a “dismal” commencement price 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 slightly acquainted in the present day in 2024. For example, between 2017 and 2022 UDC’s general commencement price rose practically 20 share factors to achieve 35%, a quantity that also leaves vast room for enchancment. For college students looking for bachelor’s levels, the determine hit 54% — higher, however nonetheless properly beneath close by College of Maryland’s 89% commencement price.
By August 2023, UDC’s general commencement price fell once more, by 9 share factors, whereas its bachelor’s commencement charges dipped by 14 share factors, in line 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 mentioned he had heard Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser communicate 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 schooling system. “UDC represents a lifelong dedication, actually, from me and our metropolis to help studying alternatives round a D.C. resident’s complete lifespan,” she mentioned 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 research, 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 discipline on the college.
“We requested the District for help. The mayor and the council mentioned, ‘Sure, that is essential to us. Here is some sources to do it.’” Edington mentioned 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 — 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 will 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 dwelling, which Edington acknowledged makes it arduous to pay aggressive salaries to school and workers. That is one other space the place he mentioned fundraising might assist.
On the similar time, the financial setting might be a profit. Edington famous UDC’s potential for auxiliary income is way greater than at Florida A&M, his earlier establishment.
Particularly, UDC sits in a bustling space with retail house it may 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 mentioned, might be reinvested again into the establishment’s strategic priorities.
Even with present ranges of funding, Edington mentioned UDC might preserve its present trajectory and see some enrollment progress and enchancment.
“If we by no means obtained a further greenback, we might nonetheless enhance,” he mentioned. “However the transformative progress and evolution that we want goes to require extra investments.”
