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Expanding Access and Opportunity in Higher Ed

Colleges working collaboratively to expand access and opportunity for highly talented lower-income students

ATI Statement of Commitment

  • The American Talent Initiative’s Statement of Commitment

    Joining the nation’s leading colleges and universities to accelerate opportunity for lower-income students

    Ensuring widespread access to a college degree is more critical than ever to ensuring individual economic opportunity, maintaining national competitiveness by addressing the needs of the future workforce, and strengthening democracy through an educated citizenry.

    This requires institutional leaders across the higher education continuum to address longstanding disparities in bachelor’s attainment for students from low- and moderate-income households. ATI was founded with one central, ambitious goal: by the year 2025, attract, enroll, and graduate 50,000 additional high-achieving, low- and moderate-income students at the nation’s colleges and universities with six-year graduation rates of at least 70% by 2025.

    By signing this Statement:

    • I affirm my institution’s commitment to the ATI goal and pledge to commit publicly to aspirational goals for lower-income student opportunity.
    • My institution also agrees to support the below goals based on 2019-20, pre-pandemic enrollment data:1
      • Members with a lower-income enrollment share below 15 percent will aim for an ambitious goal between 15 and 20 percent by 2025, or an equally ambitious increase in the number of lower-income students by 2025.
      • Members with a lower-income student enrollment share between 15 and 20 percent will make measurable progress toward a 20 percent share of lower-income student enrollment or an equally ambitious increase in the number of lower-income students by 2025.
      • Members with a lower-income student enrollment share above 20 percent will aim to at least maintain opportunity for lower-income students at current levels, if not expand enrollment by 2025.
      • All members, regardless of lower-income share, aim to minimize equity-based graduation gaps by 2025.
    • My institution commits to demonstrate that we are on track to contribute to ATI’s shared 2025 goal by Fall 2023.2

    To help realize progress toward the above aims, signatories will be able to:

    • Engage with other ATI presidents and chancellors on shared challenges and successes at the annual ATI Presidential Summit and other opportunities exclusively for ATI presidents
    • Dedicate institutional teams that can access leading higher education experts, tools, research, and resources through our practice-sharing communities, such as our communities on transfer, veterans, and academic equity.
    • Elevate and garner additional support for their successes through the platforms of the Aspen Institute, Ithaka S+R, and Bloomberg Philanthropies.
    • Access annual aggregate and institution-specific data reports, which are confidential and customized to compare your institution’s Pell enrollment, graduation, retention, first-generation, and income data to the institution's sector and set of self-selected peers.

    Together, we can generate the collective momentum needed to accelerate opportunity for lower-income students across the ATI sector and the nation.

    We hope you will join us in this effort.

    1We are committed to increasing access and opportunity for students from the bottom half of the income distribution, which approximately aligns with the eligibility for the Pell grant. For now, we’ll continue to use the Pell grant to measure ATI’s progress towards its 50,000-by-2025 goal. As we move forward, we will consider other ways to measure student enrollment from the bottom half of the income distribution. In measuring an individual institution’s progress, we’re open to discussing alternative measures of socioeconomic diversity on a case-by-case basis.

    2Measurable progress may include: an increase in the number or share of entering first-time lower-income students, the number of lower-income transfer students, and/or the number or share of continuing/returning lower-income students. These data are already collected as part of the annual ATI data collection. Following consultation with the ATI team, an institution may opt to submit enrollment data by income to demonstrate increases in access for low- and middle-income students, especially those who are near-Pell or who have need, but are ineligible for Pell (e.g., DACA students).

  • You will receive a PDF copy via email for your records.
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Recommitment Signatories

Laurie Carter

Lawrence University

Barbara Wilson

University of Iowa

Lynn Wooten

Simmons University

Nicole Farmer Hurd

Lafayette College

Alison Byerly

Carleton College

C. Andrew McGadney

Knox College

David Proulx

Rhode Island School of Design

Christopher Eisgruber

Princeton University

Eric Spina

University of Dayton

Amy Gutmann

University of Pennsylvania

Nariman Farvardin

Stevens Institute of Technology

Howard Gillman

University of California-Irvine

Jonathan Alger

James Madison University

Andrew Martin

Washington University in St. Louis

Joyce Jacobsen

Hobart and William Smith Colleges

R Gerald Turner

Southern Methodist University

Phil Hanlon

Dartmouth College

Scott Feller

Wabash College

G. Gabrielle Starr

Pomona College

Zach Messitte

Ripon College

Brian Casey

Colgate University

Pradeep Khosla

University of California-San Diego

Steve Poskanzer

Carleton College

Leon Botstein

Bard College

Robert Brown

Boston University

Lorraine Sterritt

Saint Michael's College

Mark Burstein

Lawrence University

Kathleen Harring

Muhlenberg College

Rosanne Somerson

Rhode Island School of Design

Jonathan Green

Susquehanna University

Peter Salovey

Yale University

Linda Livingstone

Baylor University

Sian Beilock

Barnard College

Gary May

University of California - Davis

L. Rafael Reif

MIT

Julio Frenk

University of Miami

Ana Mari Cauce

University of Washington

Christina Paxson

Brown University

Michael S. Roth

Wesleyan University

Ángel Cabrera

Georgia Institute of Technology

Maurie McInnis

Stony Brook University

Kristina Johnson

The Ohio State University

Daniel Diermeier

Vanderbilt University

John Jenkins

University of Notre Dame

Joseph McShane

Fordham University

Jonathan Holloway

Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey

Hilary Link

Allegheny College

David Greene

Colby College

David Wippman

Hamilton College

James Troha

Juniata College

Milton Moreland

Centre College

Juan Munoz

University of California-Merced

John DeGioia

Georgetown University

Kumble Subbaswamy

University of Massachusetts Amherst

Hiram Chodosh

Claremont McKenna College

Marc Tessier-Lavigne

Stanford University

Harry Elam

Occidental College

Mark Schlissel

University of Michigan

Maud Mandel

Williams College

Joanne Berger-Sweeney

Trinity College

John Keller

The University of Iowa

Darryll Pines

University of Maryland, College Park

Kathleen McCartney

Smith College

Sylvia Burwell

American University

Dennis Assanis

University of Delaware

Biddy Martin

Amherst College

Laurie Hamen

College of Saint Benedict

Rebecca Blank

University of Wisconsin-Madison

Katherine Bergeron

Connecticut College

Teresa Amott

Knox College

Tuajuanda Jordan

St. Mary's College of Maryland

Margee Ensign

Dickinson College

Barbara Altmann

Franklin & Marshall College

Joan Gabel

University of Minnesota

Katherine Rowe

William & Mary

Lawrence Bacow

Harvard University

Martha E Pollack

Cornell University

Elizabeth Bradley

Vassar College

Nayef Samhat

Wofford College

Donde Plowman

University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Clayton Spencer

Bates College

Carol Folt

University of Southern California

Ronald Daniels

Johns Hopkins University

William Dudley

Washington and Lee University

Morton Schapiro

Northwestern University

John Fry

Drexel University

Mary Campbell

Spelman College

James Ryan

The University of Virginia

Eric Kaler

Case Western Reserve University

Cynthia Larive

UC Santa Cruz

Matthew Scogin

Hope College

Carol Christ

University of California, Berkeley

Thomas Rosenbaum

California Institute of Technology

Gene Block

UCLA

Vincent Price

Duke University

Andrew Hamilton

New York University

Henry Yang

UC Santa Barbara

Alexander Cartwright

University of Central Florida

Kimberly Cassidy

Bryn Mawr College

David Leebron

Rice University

Robert Jones

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

James MacLaren

Lebanon Valley College

Victor Boschini

Texas Christian University

Carol Quillen

Davidson College

Harris Pastides

University of South Carolina

Clayton Rose

Bowdoin College

John Bravman

Bucknell University

Alison Byerly

Lafayette College

Ronald Crutcher

University of Richmond

Gregory Washington

George Mason University

Kim Wilcox

University of California, Riverside

Gregory L. Fenves

Emory University

Laurie Patton

Middlebury College

Dennis Murray

Marist College

Julie Sullivan

University of St. Thomas

Lee C. Bollinger

Columbia University

Sonya Stephens

Mount Holyoke College

John Junkins

Texas A&M University

Kevin Guskiewicz

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Alan Cramb

Illinois Institute of Technology

Valerie Smith

Swarthmore College

Paula Johnson

Wellesley College

Robert Iuliano

Gettysburg College

John Simon

Lehigh University

Gregory Crawford

Miami University

Patrick Gallagher

University of Pittsburgh

John Applegate

Indiana University Bloomington

Vincent Rougeau

College of the Holy Cross

Sean Decatur

Kenyon College

Robert Zimmer

University of Chicago

Wendy Raymond

Haverford College

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