Building Engagement and Attainment for Minority Students (BEAMS) is a multi-year project that fosters data-driven campus change initiatives at historically Black, Hispanic-serving, and Tribal colleges and universities in order to increase student engagement and learning. BEAMS serves more than 100 four-year institutions that are partners in the Alliance for Equity in Higher Education. Each campus makes a commitment to analyze the scope and character of their students’ engagement in learning by participating in the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) and implementing well-designed action plans to improve student engagement, learning, persistence, and success.
BEAMS offers five ways for campuses to move toward these institutional goals.
- Information from the National Survey of Student Engagement—Each BEAMS campus administers NSSE twice during the course of the project. One administration is funded by the project, the other by the campus. Full reports of results are available to institutions for their own use.
- Designing action plans for initiatives to enhance student engagement and learning—Each BEAMS campus participates in a Summer Academy, a weeklong team-based academy focused on institutional change. After a campus decides what action it wants to take based on survey results, it constitutes a team to develop an action plan that will be implemented in the following academic year(s). The Summer Academy offers concentrated time to develop the plan in the company of a consortium of teams working on similar initiatives.
- Collegial support for implementing action plans—As a member of a group of campuses working on similar initiatives, each BEAMS campus has access to colleagues on other campuses, project staff, and BEAMS consultants. A mid-year meeting of campus representatives during the academic year following academy participation enables reporting on progress and additional mutual support.
- Web-based support throughout project participation—The WebCenter offers sites for posting of progress reports, discussion of emergent issues during implementation of action plans, resources about topics pertinent to initiatives on campuses, discussion space for consortia communication, and links to the BEAMS campus' Web sites and to additional resources.
- Opportunity to report nationally on campus initiatives and successes—Project campuses have the opportunity at national conferences to report on initiatives and progress that emerge from their use of NSSE information and the campus' project activities. This reporting highlights the significant work at BEAMS institutions toward fostering student engagement, learning, and success.
BEAMS is a partnership between the Alliance for Equity in Higher Education and NSSE and is supported by Lumina Foundation for Education.
Project Publications
Brochure
Monograph
Practice Briefs
- Aligning Multiple Campus Initiatives: A Practice Brief Based on BEAMS Project Outcomes
- Collecting Survey Data for Assessment: A Practice Brief Based on BEAMS Project Outcomes
- Cultivating Generative Connections, Commitment, and Engagement Among Campus Constituencies: A Practice Brief Based on BEAMS Project Outcomes
- First-Year Programs: A Practice Brief Based on BEAMS Project Outcomes
- Gaining Support from Campus Leaders: A Practice Brief Based on BEAMS Project Outcomes
- Increasing Student Engagement Through Faculty Development: A Practice Brief Based on BEAMS Project Outcomes
- Leveraging Technology in Campus Change Initiatives: A Practice Brief Based on BEAMS Project Outcomes
- Purposeful Co-Curricular Activities Designed to Increase Engagement: A Practice Brief Based on BEAMS Project Outcomes
- Strengthening Writing Across the Curriculum: A Practice Brief Based on BEAMS Project Outcomes
- Student Support Services: A Practice Brief Based on BEAMS Project Outcomes
© Institute for Higher Education Policy 1993-2008