Inside Higher Ed profiles UC's College Possible coaching program

Last year, the University of Cincinnati became the first institution in Ohio to launch the Catalyze program, an initiative of College Possible, a nonprofit AmeriCorps organization focused on helping low-income students get admitted to, and graduate from, college through an intensive curriculum of coaching and support.

Now, Inside Higher Ed profiles the university’s successes with Catalyze in a feature story on the program, currently in use by nine colleges and universities nationwide — four private and five public.

The initiative pairs first-generation A&S students who are Pell Grant recipients with “success coaches” — recent college graduates who mentor students as they navigate what can be a complicated college maze.

Lisa Holstrom, senior assistant dean of UC’s McMicken College of Arts and Sciences who’s quoted throughout in the story, notes that UC saw a 5 percent increase in semester-to-semester persistence from students assigned a coach from fall 2018 to spring 2019, compared to low-income first-year students from fall 2017 to fall 2018.

The story also features Alison Trimbur, a 2018 UC alumna with a political science degree who served as a coach in the 2018-2019 academic year, and UC student Latasha Hamner, a sophomore majoring in digital media at UC's McMicken College of Arts and Sciences.

Read the story here.

Featured image at top: Incoming UC Arts and Sciences success coaches and their supervisor, from left to right: Nadya Streicher, Jayla Means, Pamela Rogers, Paige Visagie, and Maurisha Whitlow. UC/Beth Vleaminck