Clinton School graduate Harvell Howard (’10) was part of a team from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock to give a presentation about the university’s African American Male Initiative at the 24th International Conference on The First-Year Experience last month in Manchester, England.
The conference focused on best practices for retaining first-time entering students in higher education and was sponsored by the National Resource Center for The First-Year Experience & Students in Transition at the University of South Carolina and co-hosted by a team of higher education institutions from across the globe.
Howard joined three members from the Office of the Vice Chancellor for the Division of Educational and Student Service at UALR to present the university’s work to retain and graduate first-generation African American male college students.
The purpose of the discussion was to promote conversation and ideas about strategic planning for programs designed to positively impact marginalized students in higher education and to unify program standards to increase the retention and graduation rates of these students. The session gave participants the opportunity to share what their institutions are doing to ensure the success of all students and how to improve upon current practices, Howard said.
“It was a great experience to share ideas with and to learn from individuals from all over the world,” he said.
Howard also presented recently at EBI’s MAP-Works Conference in Indianapolis, where he joined a panel from across the country to discuss how to implement intrusive interventions to impact student success while utilizing EBI’s MAP-Works software.
In order to identify student needs, plan early intervention activities and to implement intrusive involvement with students, UALR’s African American Male Initiative utilizes the MAP-Works (Making Achievement Possible) online assessment instrument, a computerized advising software tool.
This coming Fall, Howard will enter his second year as the coordinator of the African American Male Initiative at UALR which he helped launch for his final Clinton School Capstone project in 2010.
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