Moon Shot for Social and Economic Mobility: Northern Kentucky University, Greater Cincinnati Region

A technology-enabled partnership to transform college and life outcomes for all students

Higher education has the potential to change the lives of individual students and whole communities, but not all students who start college earn a degree—and not all students with a degree find a successful career. How do we improve?

NKU's Vision is that our university will "empower diverse learners for economic and social mobility." EAB’s Moon Shot for Social and Economic Mobility is a technology-enabled partnership to create better long-term social and economic opportunities for students. Built on proven practices from higher ed’s largest collaborative of student success leaders and experts, Moon Shot for Social and Economic Mobility is helping to guide NKU to meaningful and sustained change for our future—and the futures of our students. NKU is a member of the Greater Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky region, committed to deploying Moon Shot best practices proven to to help students persist and complete degrees, ready for the careers of today and tomorrow.

Importantly, Moon Shot is helping NKU make progress on current institutional initiatives and goals so we can achieve the goals of Success by Design.

What have we done so far?

NKU started with 3 Moon Shot teams that from 2021-2023 focused on Hold Reform, Transfer Pathways, and Emergency and Retention Awards. NKU made tremendous progress on undergraduate student retention and graduation rates, but not all students were succeeding in the same way. Our data showed that first generation, low-income, transfer, and African American students were being retained or graduating up to 10 points below other student populations.

Thanks to the work of the first 3 Moon Shot teams and many others around campus, these achievement gaps have begun to close. From fall 2021-2023, transfer student retention increased by 6%, graduation rates reached all-time highs, and nearly 100 holds and other barriers were removed to help students move forward.

Your Role as a Faculty/Staff Member

For student success to improve, the leadership of faculty and staff is essential. Whether it might fall within your role to reach out to students who have stopped out, to advise or mentor students more effectively, to help students learn and succeed at higher levels in your courses, or to improve their wellbeing and resilience, we need your help.

Please reach out to our campus leads for each team if you want to be involved or see a way you can make a positive impact.

Current Best Practice Projects

Proactive Advising

Leveraging Technology for Proactive Advising is about creating an intentional, structured, and consistent strategy to reach out to students who need help rather than waiting for them to seek help. The Proactive Advising team is also working to implement overall recommendations to improve advising for all students.

Team Members

Ryan Padgett, team lead

Amy Danzo

Rebecca Hamm

Amy Racke

Jessica Ferguson

Amy Pieper

David Kime

Cathleen Wolff

Mike Irvin

Sam Nelson

Second Chances for Learners

Critical to creating access to a second chance is removing barriers to reenrollment and creating flexible learning environments to enable stopped out students, or stopouts, to complete their degrees. With proper outreach strategies, more than half of stopouts will return within one year. NKU will create a strategy for traditional undergraduate stopout students as well as tap into a promising adult learner market with “some college, no degree.”

Team Members

Amy Danzo, team lead

Rusty Mardis

Peg Adams

Amanda Kilmer

Sara Conwell

Burke Miller

Shannon Frederick

Rhonda Davis

Jeffrey Fox

John Hall

Student Belonging

Student belonging encompasses a student’s sense of connection, engagement, and overall comfort with their institution. A strong sense of student belonging is associated with positive outcomes like retention, academic success, and overall wellbeing. NKU will seek to improve student belonging through a focus on active and engaged learning in the classroom, mental health and wellbeing, cocurricular and social engagement, and faculty mentoring and support.

Team Members

Yasue Kuwahara, team lead

LaVette Burnette

Greg Moore

Tiburcio Lince

Cindy Knox

Joyce Couch

Denice Robertson

Christopher Lawrence

Heather Burgess

Frequently Asked Questions

What other institutions are involved?

The Greater Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky Moon Shot Region includes Northern Kentucky University, Gateway Community and Technical College, Cincinnati State Technical and Community College, and Miami University. NKU and our partners will work together to leverage our collective wisdom and efforts to change the opportunity landscape of the region, with added support and resources from our local and national partners.

Our region is the second consortium to join the Moon Shot initiative. EAB launched the national effort in October 2020 in cooperation with an inaugural consortium of colleges and universities in Southeastern Wisconsin. A third region has also been announced in Southeastern Pennsylvania; several other geographic regions are in preliminary discussions.

In January 2022, we had the opportunity to engage with representatives from Moon Shot's Southeastern Wisconsin region and learn from their experiences as the inaugural cohort.

View Moon Shot Panel

How does this initiative relate to Success by Design?

The two initiatives are complementary. Work currently underway through Success by Design will feed directly into our Moon Shot efforts, and Success by Design will benefit from the outside expertise and resources provided by EAB.

Moon Shot for Social and Economic Mobility will enable us to work together with regional partners to develop coordinated efforts and utilize resources in ways that could not happen independently. Together, Moon Shot and Success by Design will help us achieve peer-leading student success outcomes, as we fulfill our role of regional stewardship.

What will success look like?

In the short term, success will be determined by the initial projects selected by the regional team.

Long term, we will measure our success by increasing the number of individuals pursuing academic degrees, improving retention and graduation rates, and ultimately, by growing the number of credentialed residents in our regional workforce across all demographics.

NKU is committed to this partnership for five years, but the reality is that this should be a perpetual and ongoing initiative to help improve our ability to aid underserved student populations.

What best practice projects has the region already engaged in?

After a period of assessment, three best practice projects were selected by the regional team: 1) Holds Reform, 2) Emergency and Retention Awards, and 3) Transfer Pathways.

Campus teams were formed in 2022 to examine these issues and make recommendations to remove barriers and improve the student experience.

Moon Shot for Equity Regional Meeting

The first Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky Moon Shot for Equity regional meeting was held April 5, 2022. Attendees from NKU, Gateway CTC, Cincinnati State and Miami University gathered to hear from expert guest speakers, including a keynote address from Dr. Tim Renick, Executive Director of the National Institute for Student Success at Georgia State University.