SHEEO partnership with CUNY ASAP creates opportunity for state replication

SHEEO
2 min readJun 29, 2023
Group of students wearing ASAP t-shirts sit around a table.
CUNY ASAP students receive wraparound services to help eliminate barriers to degree completion.

Here at SHEEO we continue to focus on helping our members find and implement best practices for increasing educational attainment and expanding student access to college opportunities. That’s why we are excited to introduce a new partnership with the City University of New York’s (CUNY) ASAP|ACE National Replication Collaborative.

Over the next 18 months, we will partner with CUNY to help five states explore replication of the Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP), a proven model for student success. ASAP was established in 2007 using a holistic, comprehensive suite of financial, academic, and personal supports to eliminate barriers to degree completion. It has served more than 88,000 CUNY students and nearly doubled graduation rates for participants against non-participants in randomized controlled studies.

The CUNY ASAP model has been replicated already in several states, and we hope to give our members a chance to join the effort. To date, the CUNY ASAP|ACE national replication team has supported replication at 14 institutions across seven states to form the ever-growing ASAP|ACE National Replication Collaborative at CUNY. The collaborative supports our belief that scaling proven student success models across states is possible.

A request for proposals is open through July 21, 2023, to be a part of the inaugural SHEEO|ASAP College Completion Coalition Learning Community. Five states will be awarded $50,000 planning grants to take part in the learning community with the goal of scaling increases to community college completion. A key project objective is to address racial equity gaps in attainment rates. The grant will provide technical assistance, consultative strategic planning, and cost analysis to create a sustainable model within each state’s unique context as they explore replication. The awarded states will move through a year-long engagement including intensive technical assistance from SHEEO and the ASAP|ACE National Replication Collaborative at CUNY. Learning community events will take place between August 2023-June 2024.

SHEEO encourages states to partner with their state community college associations and other college completion organizations to be a part of this work. This learning community will give members the opportunity to work through what implementation of this model could look like in their states. While states in the learning community aren’t tied to actual implementation upon completion of the project, our aim is that this learning community will prompt action plans for states to build their own programs. We believe in the CUNY ASAP model as a proven model to help students succeed, and we’re ready to build up state systems to make a difference across the nation.

Find the RFP, background information, an informational webinar recording, and more resources about the CUNY ASAP|ACE model on our website: https://sheeo.org/project/asapcommunity/.

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SHEEO

Helping states develop and sustain excellent systems of higher education.