News

Keith Witham Named New Vice President - Education Philanthropy, Q&A with AHEP’s Ved Price and More

• A Message from Our New Vice President - Education Philanthropy, Keith Witham
• Q&A: AHEP’s Ved Price on the State of Postsecondary Education in Prison Programs
• Grant Partners Selected for Building Evidence to Increase Rural Learner Success

Keith Witham Named Ascendium’s Vice President of Education Philanthropy

Ascendium is pleased to announce Keith Witham has been selected to serve as our new vice president of education philanthropy. A national search for this highly impactful position brought forward many good and interested candidates. After a comprehensive search and review process, Keith’s extensive knowledge of the field and hands-on grantmaking experience made him the ideal person to lead our education philanthropy efforts.

A Message from Our New Vice President - Education Philanthropy, Keith Witham

Keith Witham has been named Ascendium’s new vice president of education philanthropy. Here’s Keith’s thoughts on his new role and ongoing commitment to improving postsecondary learning and training systems so that more learners from low-income backgrounds secure good jobs.

Ascendium Announces Grant Partners for Building Evidence to Increase Rural Learner Success

Ascendium is pleased to announce the grant partners selected to receive funding through our Building Evidence to Increase Rural Learner Success initiative.

Grants to MDRC, CCRC Aim to Drive Change by Building Evidence

Ascendium’s grantmaking supports the next generation of pivotal evidence building as one important contributor to systemic change. Recent grants made to MDRC and the Community College Research Center aim to generate knowledge useful to practitioners, policymakers, funders and other researchers. With the best evidence in hand, these stakeholders can then improve policy and practice to better serve learners from low-income backgrounds.

Q&A: AHEP's Ved Price on the State of Postsecondary Education in Prison Programs

Executive Director Ved Price from the Alliance for Higher Education in Prison speaks with Ascendium Senior Program Officer Molly Lasagna about pressing issues around postsecondary education in prison programs. That includes how the field can prepare incarcerated learners for meaningful employment upon their release.

Community College Transfers to Four-Year Colleges Tumbled Almost 8% Last Fall

A National Student Clearinghouse Research Center analysis reveals that upward transfer, or transfer from a two-year to a four-year postsecondary institution, continues to drop in the aftermath of the COVID-19 health crisis. Upward transfers, an important way that many learners from low-income backgrounds pursue their education goals, decreased 7.5% between fall 2021 and 2022.

From Research to Practice: Holistic Credit Mobility Ensures Learning Counts

Learners today are mobile — they acquire knowledge and skills in many different forms and settings. Still, institutions are often unprepared to evaluate or award credit from prior learning. Gaps in how learning gets captured and applied to a credential result in a loss of time and money for learners who can't afford to lose either. To address this, Ithaka S+R developed a holistic credit mobility framework that that outlines a related set of policy and practice levers critical to a more efficient and equitable system. Ithaka is also expanding the Transfer Explorer, a web-based tool to support credit transfer between two-year and four-year institutions. The expansion will further help institutions and learners capture and count other forms of prior learning.

Ready for Pell Initiative Brings Opportunities and Second Chances to Inmates

JFF and Ascendium’s Ready for Pell initiative is helping some postsecondary institutions, including ones in Wisconsin, prepare for the reinstatement of Pell grant eligibility for incarcerated learners on July 1.

Over $69 Million in New Grants, the Learning and Impact Team Welcomes Jessa Valentine and More

• $69 Million+ in New Grants Highlighted by Investments in Job Pathways, Partnerships and More
• Jessa Valentine Joins Learning and Impact Team
• CORI Research on Digital Skilling is Put into Practice