Atlantic Cape Leadership Group Collaborates with 25 Institutions of Higher Education to Create NACUBO Student Success Hub

MAYS LANDING — A 10-member leadership group of Atlantic Cape Community College staff and faculty recently completed a nearly-three-year partnership project with 25 other institutions of higher education throughout the country to create a Student Success Hub with the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO).

The NACUBO Student Success Hub, which is a compilation of free toolkits and resources for higher education professionals, offers a flexible and customizable model of practice for business officers to follow. It will ensure that they are prioritizing financial resources and institutional capacity in strategic and impactful ways to improve success for all students. This can assist in determining how an institution uses its time, money and staffing resources to meet the diverse needs of its students. The Hub will create an administrative environment where strategic and sustainable decisions can be made with a primary focus on overall student success.

"Atlantic Cape is proud to have contributed to the development of NACUBO’s Student Success Hub. Our improvement project focused on leveraging funds designated to improve student outcomes.   Utilizing one of NACUBO’s toolkits, we engaged faculty and staff to propose innovative student-facing ideas,” said Leslie Jamison, chief financial officer. “This collaborative approach not only secured funding for initiatives, but fostered interdisciplinary conversations. This work led to much more than just the projects that were funded. We look forward to utilizing more of the Hub’s resources to further advance our student-centered budgeting strategy."

To assist institutions in building capacity for sustainable, student-centered initiatives, the NACUBO Student Success Hub provides a robust suite of tools and resources to catalyze and accelerate the refinement of strategic financial practices to improve equitable student outcomes. The work institutions must undertake to prioritize resources, sustain and scale worthy activities, and sunset unsustainable investments is complex. Institutions will be able to leverage these tools to explore, share, collaborate, and affect change in the spirit of helping every student succeed.

The toolkits are organized in three focus areas: Data to Inform Decisions - Infrastructure, Analytics and Usage; Financial Resource Optimization for Students Using an Enhanced ROI Concept; and Student-Centered Planning, Processes and Budgeting. They will be utilized to ensure comprehensive support and targeted approaches, helping institutions to dedicate resources that are most relevant to their specific challenges and goals.

“In my mind, there is no issue more pressing in higher education than student success, and we at NACUBO are proud to be spearheading efforts to fully integrate student success initiatives with institution-wide finance plans,” said Kara D. Freeman, NACUBO president and chief executive officer. “It is clear that chief business officers can be the catalysts for sustainable institutional change, and with the generous assistance of our funders, the new NACUBO Student Success Hub will help identify institutional opportunities to center the CBO and business office in ways to invigorate collaborative campus teams and affect real improvement for all students.”

This project is a result of more than two years of discovery and design work in close partnership with 26 institutions of higher education, including Atlantic Cape, that represent a diverse portfolio of community colleges, four-year institutions and regional systems. It was funded by generous grants from Ascendium Education Group, College Futures Foundation and Trellis Foundation.

Employees from Atlantic Cape who took part in this project included Dr. Natalie Devonish, vice president, Student Affairs and Enrollment Management; Wendy Gray, assistant director, Advising and Retention; Luis Montefusco, director, Institutional Research, Assessment & Planning; Myrna Morales-Keklak, dean, Nursing & Health Sciences; Dr. Vanessa O'Brien-McMasters, vice president, Institutional Effectiveness and Chief Strategy Officer; Dr. Beth Sanders-Rabinowitz, associate professor; Emily Smykla, senior manager, Grants; Jeffrey Wenzel, director, Restricted Accounting; Dr. Kalpana Jain, former dean, STEM; and Jamison.

Visit nacubostudentsuccess.org to learn more about the NACUBO Student Success Hub.

About Atlantic Cape Community College

Atlantic Cape Community College is a Middle States accredited, 2022 Achieving the Dream Leader College and Hispanic Serving Institution proudly serving the residents of Atlantic and Cape May counties. As a comprehensive, two-year community college, Atlantic Cape offers 47 undergraduate degree programs, and 33 certificate and professional series programs at its Mays Landing, Atlantic City and Cape May campuses. Atlantic Cape is home to the renowned Academy of Culinary Arts, rated the top culinary school in New Jersey, and for more than 50 years, our highly-acclaimed Nursing program. Atlantic Cape also partners with more than 30 colleges and four-year universities to offer students the opportunity to seamlessly earn a bachelor’s degree upon graduation.

About NACUBO

Founded in 1962, the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO) is a nonprofit professional organization representing chief administrative and financial officers at more than 1,700 colleges and universities across the country. NACUBO works to advance the economic vitality, business practices, and support of higher education institutions in pursuit of their missions. For more information, visit www.nacubo.org.