College Achievement Alliance

Understanding and Engaging Under-Resourced College Students &
Investigations into Economic Class in America
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Need higher retention rates?

More under-resourced students than ever before are going to college, but colleges and universities sometimes fail to recognize their unique strengths and challenges.

College culture needs students to conform to standards of behavior and academic performance. A deeper understanding of students from poverty helps create conditions that make success achievable, not merely accessible.

By addressing the needs of the under-resourced college student, this workshop provides a wealth of resources for postsecondary education.

Participants will gain tools to improve retention and graduate students. Strategies include:
  • Move students from concrete learning to the abstract thinking and planning required in college.
  • Tap under-resourced students’ knowledge to redesign programs, policies, and procedures.
  • Build relationships of mutual respect.
  • Develop high-impact community engagement strategies.

Faculty and staff are transformed by building understanding of the “what and why” of under-resourced college students. The remainder of the workshop is devoted to fostering responsive, “how-to” teaching and program-design ideas that help students succeed.
Investigations into Economic Class in America will help first-generation, low-income students stay in school until they earn a degree. The 16-session curriculum improves student retention, achievement, and success by building stability, informed choices, access to power, social capital, removing barriers, and addressing the causes of poverty to create sustainable communities.

Investigations is a 16-session curriculum that helps individuals in poverty build their
resources for a more prosperous life for themselves, their families, and their communities. For many individuals who grow up in poverty where day-to-day survival is the number one goal, planning for the future is a skill that must be taught.

​The Investigations curriculum:
  • Involves rigorous work done in a safe learning environment supported by an experienced facilitator.
  • Enables participants to examine their own experience of poverty and explore issues in the community that impact poverty − banking, housing, jobs, transportation − providing critical information the community can use to take action to end poverty.
  • Addresses all four causes of poverty: individual behaviors, community conditions, exploitation, and political/economic structures.
  • Guides investigators through an assessment of their own resources and how to build those resources as part of their move to self-sufficiency.
  • Puts the concepts, tools, and relationships in the hands of people in poverty to make a difference in their own lives and in the life of their community.

Facilitators for both Understanding and Engaging Under-Resourced College Students and Investigations into Economic Class in America:
Christina Fulsom
Pam Jacobsen
Doug Clark

​​​Contact Pam Jacobsen at 903-216-3211 or pam@ethnn.org for details.