On Thursday, Dec. 4, Barry University, represented by President Sister Linda Bevilacqua, OP, PhD, joined President Obama, the First Lady, and Vice President Biden, along with more than 100 college presidents and higher education leaders, to announce new actions to help more students prepare for and graduate from college.
The White House College Opportunity Day of Action helps to support President Obama’s commitment to partner with colleges and universities, business leaders, and nonprofits to support students across the country to help America reach its goal of leading the world in college attainment.
Chosen for its commitment to increasing retention and completion rates of low-income, women, and underrepresented minority students in the STEM fields, Barry University was one of the only South Florida-colleges in attendance at Thursday’s events.
Barry’s focus on the completion rates of its STEM students includes developing a holistic engagement program to provide outreach and opportunity structures that “fill the gap" for students who lack the pre-college academic preparation and developmental necessary for academic and professional success.
One such program already in existence is Barry’s STEM Living/Learning Community (LLC) wherein students both live together and enroll in the same sections of two courses in the first semester. Students in the STEM LLC engage in several guided activities to introduce them to campus life, allowing them to absorb and assimilate information about support services in the context of active involvement with the institution.
Thursday’s participants were asked to commit to new action in one of four areas: building networks of colleges around promoting completion, creating K-16 partnerships around college readiness, investing in high school counselors as part of the First Lady’s Reach Higher initiative, and increasing the number of college graduates in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
During the summit, The President announced new steps on how his administration will help support these actions, including announcing $10 million to help promote college completion and a $30 million AmeriCorps program that will improve low-income students’ access to college. Thursday’s event is the second College Opportunity Day of Action, since January 2014 and included a progress report on the commitments made at the first day of action.
According to the administration, expanding opportunity for more students to enroll and succeed in college is vital to building a strong economy and a strong middle class. Today, only 9 percent of those born in the lowest family income quartile attain a bachelor’s degree by age 25, compared to 54 percent in the top quartile. In an effort to expand college access, the Obama Administration has increased Pell scholarships by $1,000 a year, created the new American Opportunity Tax Credit worth up to $10,000 over four years of college, limited student loan payments to 10 percent of income, and laid out an ambitious agenda to reduce college costs and promote innovation and competition.
Continual efforts by Barry to make college opportunity more easily available to all includes joining the I’m First coalition of schools in August 2014 and its partnership with Complete Florida to deliver college degrees to adult learners.
For more information on the College Opportunity Day of Action , visit this link: WhiteHouse.gov/College-Opportunity