Lowry, governor among three Tennesseans invited to White House summit today

Kim Chaudoin | 615.966.6494 | 12/04/2014

Lipscomb University President L. Randolph Lowry is one of three Tennesseans, including Gov. Bill Haslam and Bob Obrohta, executive director of the Tennessee College Access and Success Network, invited by President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama to Washington, D.C., today, Thursday, Dec. 4, to participate in a summit to celebrate continued efforts to expand access to college for low-income and disadvantaged students. They are among a group of college presidents and other higher education leaders from across the country invited to join the President in announcing new actions to help more students prepare for and graduate from college.

The White House College Opportunity Day of Action celebrates support the President’s commitment to partner with colleges and universities, business leaders and nonprofits to support students across the country to help reach his goal of leading the world in college attainment. The summit will include remarks from the President and First Lady as well as from Vice President Joe Biden, panel discussions and breakout sessions and will focus on programs and initiatives that increase college access opportunities for students across the country.

Participants in Thursday’s summit were asked to commit to new action in one of four areas: building networks of colleges around promoting completion, creating K-16 partnerships around college readiness, investing in high school counselors as part of the First Lady’s Reach Higher initiative, and increasing the number of college graduates in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

“Our role in this effort is in the investment in high school counselors.  At Lipscomb, we have been successful in widening access to a college education for several important groups, but, of course, to increase the number of high school students considering college, we need to start well before they come through our doors,” said Lowry, who visited the White House in 2010 for a policy briefing on Iraq. “Many students just need a little help navigating the process or even seeing themselves in college. The guidance counselor in the high school can impact a student’s direction -- and life -- in an extraordinary way. Being invited to participate in this discussion is a credit to the work Lipscomb’s College of Education and its Ayers Institute (for Teacher Learning and Innovation) has done under the leadership of Dean Candice McQueen.”

For nearly a decade, Lipscomb University has been committed to expanding the opportunity for traditional and non-traditional students to access a college education. Among the initiatives offered to help students meet their educational goals are an innovative competency-based education program, one of the few of its kind in the country; scholarship program for students who are the first generation in their families to attend college among other programs; a Yellow Ribbon Program, allowing eligible U.S. military veterans to attend Lipscomb tuition free or at a greatly reduced cost; a community college scholarship program; a three-year degree program; a program for students with developmental and intellectual disabilities offering a two-year academic certificate experience; and an adult degree completion program.

Lipscomb University’s College of Education was among those institutions invited to propose a commitment for the meeting. University officials submitted a commitment to create a master’s-level school counseling program with a specialty focus in college counseling. This program would be the first of its kind in Tennessee and one of the only programs in the nation that would allow pre-service counselors to specialize in college counseling.

“As our state and our nation increasingly focus on the importance of postsecondary education for our students, counselors need better training to equip them to do this work. Furthermore, Lipscomb will include the possibility of an additional certification in college access counseling for currently practicing counselors so that school counselors who have already completed their Master’s degrees can also access this critical training,” said McQueen, senior vice president and dean of the College of Education.

Lipscomb has committed to train 200 total school counselors and college access practitioners through its College Access Project (CAP) course, which is developed and offered in partnership with the Tennessee College and Success Network (TCASN). Course content covers technical aspects of admissions and financial aid, but goes much deeper to explore common measures and data, building a college-going culture that extends to the broader community, under matching and inequity in higher education, and linking college access to youth development.

“If each participant serves a caseload of 200 students, Lipscomb will help 40,000 students access college,” said McQueen. “Given that each year only about 65,000 Tennesseans graduate from high school, this is a game changer for the state.”

In the proposal, Lipscomb University also committed to partnering with K-12 school districts to assess how CAP is affecting school counselor practice and student-level outcomes around college-going, such as FAFSA completion, decreased under matching, college-going rates and college persistence rates.

The President also announced new steps on how his administration is helping to support these actions, including announcing $10 million to help promote college completion and a $30 million AmeriCorps program that will improve low-income students’ access to college. The event is the second College Opportunity Day of Action, and will include a progress report on the commitments made at the first day of action on Jan. 14, 2014.

U.S. Department of Education officials said that expanding opportunity for more students to enroll and succeed in college, especially low-income and underrepresented students, is vital to building a strong economy and a strong middle class. Today, only nine percent of those born in the lowest family income quartile attain a bachelor’s degree by age 25, compared to 54 percent in the top quartile. In an effort to expand college access, the Obama Administration has increased Pell scholarships by $1,000 a year, created the new American Opportunity Tax Credit worth up to $10,000 over four years of college, limited student loan payments to 10 percent of income, and laid out an ambitious agenda to reduce college costs and promote innovation and competition.

This is the latest meeting that Lipscomb officials have been part of involving President Obama and other White House education initiatives. In January, Lowry and McQueen were among a small number of community leaders invited to attend a speech given by Obama at Nashville’s McGavock High School following the 2014 State of the Union address, at which he addressed issues such as economic disparity and helping the long-term unemployed as well as initiatives to help prepare students for careers following graduation.

In April, Charla Long, dean of Lipscomb’s College of Professional Studies and architect of the university’s competency-based program, met with U.S. Department of Education officials at the White House to discuss competency-based education models, the outcomes of these programs for students and specific issues in current federal law and regulations. She has also spoken at a congressional briefing on competency-based education models, and encouraged Congress to change federal aid regulations to help fund federally authorized “experimental sites” that offer this innovative educational approach.

McQueen, a nationally known expert in education, has been an invited participant in the prestigious Aspen Institute’s Education & Society Program in Washington, D.C., to inform senior congressional staff members on education issues. She was also invited to participate in the America Diploma Project Leadership Meeting in Alexandria, Va., to discuss the work of Lipscomb and Lipscomb’s Ayers Institute for Teacher Learning and Innovation in creating Common Core Standards resources and training for all teacher preparation programs in Tennessee.

Lipscomb’s College of Education has also been recognized nationally for its quality. Earlier this year, Lipscomb University’s undergraduate secondary education and graduate elementary education programs were ranked among the very top teacher preparation programs in the nation in the second annual Teacher Prep Review by the National Council on Teacher Quality.

• The College of Education’s undergraduate secondary program was ranked #2 in the nation.
• The college’s graduate elementary program was ranked #14 in the nation.
• Of the 1,668 programs ranked in the review, only 26 elementary programs and only 81 secondary programs scored high enough to be included among the top-ranked schools.
• Lipscomb University was one of only 10 programs nationwide (the only one in Tennessee) to have both its elementary and secondary programs included in the top-ranked list.
• Lipscomb’s scores earned it the top ranking in the NCTQ’s Southern region.
• Tennessee was one of the top three states with the most programs listed in the top-ranked listings.
• Lipscomb’s programs outranked Tennessee universities such as Vanderbilt, Middle Tennessee State, Tennessee Technological and East Tennessee State universities.

About the Lipscomb University College of Education

Lipscomb University’s College of Education is a known leader and innovator in education in the state of Tennessee. Teaching was one of the first majors established at Lipscomb (started in 1891), and it was the first program to be accredited at Lipscomb. The College of Education, named by the Tennessee Higher Education Commission's Teacher Preparation Program Report Card as one of the best in the state at preparing teachers, is a leader in the movement to support educational progress in Tennessee.

The COE offers undergraduate and graduate programs that enable candidates to teach in 24 different subject areas with students from kindergarten to high school. More than 500 students are currently enrolled in graduate and undergraduate education programs at Lipscomb and at three off-campus sites. The college’s programs are fully accredited by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education and the Tennessee State Board of Education.