UML-LHS Partnership for College Success

UML and Lowell High School (LHS) are collaborating under a Nellie Mae Education Foundation-funded ‘Partnership for College Success’ grant. This project, now in its fourth year, focuses on increasing the number of Lowell High School students who enroll and earn post-secondary degrees. With a focus on embedded institutional policies and strategies, PCS builds on existing resources in Lowell, creates new collaborative opportunities and works to align institutional systems to draw on strengths and assets. UML and LHS have long worked together, and this project deepens that relationship so that collaboratively designed initiatives can be sustained beyond the grant period. For example, PCS has introduced a new Lowell High-Middlesex Community College-University of Massachusetts Lowell science faculty vertical teaming initiative that directly addresses concerns at the high school, community college, and university levels around gaps in science education. This strategy is aimed at influencing policy at all three institutions to better support local students and teachers. PCS-supported communication and co-designed professional development between LHS guidance and UML admissions is another example of aligning systems around stakeholder needs. These kinds of PCS partnering impacts can be felt in the increase of faculty and students from both institutions working together as well as the accompanying structural shifts in how these groups collaborate.