What a refreshing perspective! Including extensive references from the literature, providing evidence of the initiatives’ success, offering specific guidance for how others can implement in their organizations, and reframing our challenges in hopeful ways with the Beliefs agenda, this book is a must read for those who care about our students’ and colleagues’ success.
In their book, published by Rowman & Littlefield, Dr. Nutt and Ms. Hardman take on a timely and crucial topic in higher education that challenges the status quo. Now, their nationally recognized ideas and innovative approaches, which have been field-tested at their community college, could very well be an answer to one of the nation’s most important and on-going educational concerns.
After a decade of the Completion Agenda, most researchers and higher education leaders agree that student completion has not improved to the desired success level. Lee Ann Nutt advocates that it is time for the next disruptive change in higher education. Complete the Agenda in Higher Education: Challenge Beliefs About Student Success posits that college cultures must move from a Completion Agenda to a Belief Agenda. At the core of the Belief Agenda is the acknowledgement that experiences and beliefs underlie why some students finish despite the obstacles they face and why some students cannot finish anything, including an assignment.
Complete the Agenda in Higher Education: Challenge Beliefs About Student Success reminds us that meeting our students where they are and strategically assisting them in the process of improving their academic and life skills, is both a science and an art. Odessa College’s practices behind the Drop Rate Improvement Program, a pivot to eight-week courses, and supplying Student Success Coaches for all students aligns with the concepts outlined in this text. By shifting our culture to focusing on our students’ successful outcomes, our students have been able to make significant academic improvements.
Lee Ann Nutt, Latoya Hardman, and their colleagues at Lone Star College-Tomball have set their sights on big goals for their students, many of whom struggle with a variety of obstacles and adversity. In bringing GRIT™, a construct developed by Dr. Paul G. Stoltz, to their college, they are changing the school culture and changing the lives of their students in a positive way. Lone Star College's implementation of a carefully designed "GRIT initiative” has transformed instructional practices and classroom/campus environments to help students recognize the nature and value of GRIT and to actually grow it intentionally and purposefully. Through this work, students are empowered to persist— resiliently, tenaciously, and creatively—as they seek to realize their goals and aspirations. Pearson colleagues and I, who have been involved in a partnership with Lone Star College-Tomball to support such changes, are not merely impressed with their results but thrilled to see the caliber of students emerging from the college and creating better futures for themselves. In his famous Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, American novelist William Faulkner offered his view on the future of mankind: "I believe mankind will not only endure, he will prevail." Thanks to this new vision of how to support students, not just in learning necessary concepts and technical skills but also in developing the capabilities to aspire to great goals and to focus unwaveringly on achieving them, however difficult, Lone Star College-Tomball's students will not just survive: in a challenging and uncertain world, they will "prevail."
Complete the Agenda in Higher Education: Challenge Beliefs About Student Success offers an emboldened paradigm for college completion, offering timely guidance for higher education administrators, scholars, and policy makers interested in helping students to achieve their full potential, by completing what they started and getting their degree. It is a treatise that is as much strategic guidance, as it is a heartfelt call to action. President Nutt challenges the community college community to adopt a student success mindset that defines students as important partners that should be empowered to consider their “why” and develop “beliefs that lead to actions that ensure successful results—before, during, and after college.” In a world of much noise, Complete the Agenda in Higher Education offers a beacon, a signal for us to follow as we work to strengthen our economy, prepare a new generation of leaders, and amplify the work of our institutions. It is an important read for anyone interested in leadership, organizational transformation, and empowering students to become more gritty, self-aware, and resilient as they work to achieve their dreams.
What a refreshing perspective! Including extensive references from the literature, providing evidence of the initiatives’ success, offering specific guidance for how others can implement in their organizations, and reframing our challenges in hopeful ways with the Beliefs agenda, this book is a must read for those who care about our students’ and colleagues’ success.
Dr. Lee Ann Nutt is a true leader in the design and implementation of a successful GRIT program for college students. Working collaboratively with faculty and administrators, LSC-Tomball has infused GRIT training and learning up, down, and across the curriculum with measurable results. I've personally witnessed Dr. Nutt's vision come to fruition over only a few years-which is lightning speed for large scale institutional change in academia! The practical recommendations, rooted in her own personal experience, make this a timely and useful read for anyone interested in improving student success and outcomes. With all the current research centered on the future of skills, this couldn't have come at a better time.
Complete the Agenda in Higher Education: Challenge Beliefs About Student Success reinforces a new way of thinking about student success. Dr. Lee Ann Nutt challenges readers to think beyond institutional goals of completion by also focusing on helping students believe they belong and can succeed in college and in life. College leaders and faculty need to rally around growing and reinforcing student GRIT. Backed by empirical research, Dr. Nutt does a marvelous job of harnessing the powerful outcomes that can be achieved by focusing on student GRIT. Look out world, a new movement is on the horizon in higher education—the Beliefs Agenda is here!
After a decade of the Completion Agenda, most researchers and higher education leaders agree that student completion has not improved to the desired success level. Lee Ann Nutt advocates that it is time for the next disruptive change in higher education. Complete the Agenda in Higher Education: Challenge Beliefs About Student Success posits that college cultures must move from a Completion Agenda to a Belief Agenda. At the core of the Belief Agenda is the acknowledgement that experiences and beliefs underlie why some students finish despite the obstacles they face and why some students cannot finish anything, including an assignment.
