Becoming a Student-Ready College - 2nd Edition by Tia Brown McNair & Susan Albertine & Nicole McDonald & Thomas Major & Michelle Asha Cooper

About the Book

"Higher education leaders may not be directly responsible for preparing students for postsecondary success, but they are responsible for preparing their institutions to serve--in the best way possible--the students they admit. By asking themselves how they can be a student ready college, they can create a new culture of leadership that focuses on understanding and utilizing student assets and social capital to achieve their shared goals for student success."--

Book Synopsis

Reimagining the Culture of Leadership for Student Success

A revision to the practical and popular guide, this book asks the crucial question within today's environment, "What's a student-ready college?" Higher education leaders are responsible for preparing their institutions to serve the students they admit in the best way possible. By asking ourselves how we can transform our institutions into student-ready colleges to create a new culture of leadership that is responsive to current challenges and focuses on understanding and utilizing student assets and social capital to achieve shared goals for student success. Becoming a Student-Ready College shows you how.

Conversations in higher education tend to focus on defining college readiness for students. Too often, we forget to ask the question from the other side, and we miss important opportunities to develop institutions in ways that can help students thrive. Higher education leaders and educators can better serve today's college students through responsive and redesigned practices and policies. This updated edition features revisions and new material that speak to the social realities of today's incoming students and cover the latest strategies and techniques for connecting with learners to foster equity and success.

• Leverage existing resources to the benefit of students and deliver the right support at the right time to achieve equity in student outcomes and build on students' assets
• Design eco-systemic partnerships and support programs that nurture the relationship between the student and the institution
• Strengthen institutional capacity-building for achieving defined student-ready goals
• Build shared governance to promote agency and to foster change and collaboration

Becoming a Student-Ready College explores leaders' shared responsibilities in advancing student success and provides practical recommendations for educators at all levels.

From the Back Cover

TRANSFORM THE CULTURE OF YOUR EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION TO BETTER SERVE STUDENTS

"Campuses need this book more than ever as they recover from the pandemic and try to address longstanding racial inequities on campus where stakeholders no longer have patience to wait for us to redesign higher education so that it is 'student ready.' Using students as the foundation for campus design--policies, practices, structures and ultimately our culture is the essential challenge of the next decade. This book continues to provide the steps campus leaders can take to make all students successful and to fulfill their mission and be accountable to policymakers, parents and students themselves."

--Adrianna Kezar, Wilbur Kieffer Endowed Professor and Dean's Professor of Leadership, USC, Director of the Pullias Center

"In this Second Edition of Becoming a Student-Ready College, the authors are to be commended for making an already outstanding resource even better for college presidents, provosts, deans, department chairs, faculty, student services personnel, board members, and others interested in and committed to promoting student success and closing equity gaps. The book serves as an exceptional 'how-to' guide for colleges laser-focused on promoting success as a student-centered institution."

--Sonny Ramaswamy, President, Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities

About the Author

TIA BROWN McNAIR is the Vice President for Diversity, Equity, and Student Success and the Executive Director of TRHT campus centers at AAC&U. She is co-author of From Equity Talk to Equity Walk.

SUSAN ALBERTINE is the retired Vice President for Diversity, Equity, and Student Success at AAC&U.

NICOLE McDONALD works as Assistant Vice Provost for Student Success Strategies at the University of Houston.

THOMAS MAJOR, JR. is Associate General Counsel at Lumina Foundation.

MICHELLE ASHA COOPER is the Acting Assistant Secretary at the U.S. Office of Post-secondary Education.