Document Category: Practitioner Guide

Marrying Stories and Data for Impact (2020)

In the fall of 2019, the American Indian College Fund published a report about a Gallup survey on tribal college alumni. The report illustrates how tribal colleges and universities (TCUs) are institutions that provide Native students with the education, skills, and support they need to succeed. The report also shows that Native students who attend TCUs succeed at greater rates than those who attend other institutions of higher education. Fast-forward to the spring of 2020 when TCUs were forced to move operations to a virtual setting due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As businesses shuttered and outbreaks pummeled Indian Country, the College Fund worked to foster greater awareness of the pandemic’s impact on tribal communities, the TCUs, and Native students in an effort to solicit increased support.

The approach was simple. The College Fund used data from both the Gallup survey and the #RealCollege survey conducted by the Hope Center at Temple University, which interviewed 1,050 students from seven TCUs in seven states nationwide to determine the extent of food and housing insecurity and to understand the impact the pandemic could have on TCUs, their students, and the Native communities they serve. The College Fund also used data gleaned from surveys conducted with its Full Circle scholars in the spring of 2020 to understand how they would be impacted by the pandemic.

But rather than take a purely quantitative approach, the College Fund also reached out to student ambassadors and TCU presidents to ask them to share their personal stories, knowing that people first connect to individuals rather than numbers. “Stories guide us, give us identity, and build shared values,” stated College Fund president Cheryl Crazy Bull, adding, “[the College Fund’s] team members recognize that stories and data go hand-in-hand.”

The result of marrying data with public relations outreach increased national and regional attention to the pandemic’s impact on TCUs and TCU students in national publications such as The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Nation, and Teen Vogue, as well as regional outlets like Montana Public Radio. It is our hope that TCUs can use the data and the following case study for their own public relations and to help raise awareness of the importance of tribally controlled higher education.

Navigating the Mental Health Provider Shortage in Higher Education (2023)

Since the onset of COVID-19 in 2020, there has been a renewed focus on postsecondary mental
health. A growing body of evidence draws explicit links between student mental health and their
likelihood of entering and persisting through higher education, highlighting a truth that mental
health professionals and postsecondary leaders deeply understand in the years following the
pandemic: mental health is a basic need critical to student persistence and academic success.
In response to this need, the Trellis Foundation launched the two-year Postsecondary Mental Health
and Wellbeing Learning Community to support student mental health and academic success.

The State of Food Security at CUNY in 2020 (2020)

In this report, we examine the prevalence and distribution of food insecurity at CUNY at the start of 2020. We also describe and assess the variety of programs, policies and services CUNY and its partners have developed to reduce food insecurity and suggest options for further reducing food insecurity in the coming years. Our goal is to provide the key constituencies at CUNY—its leaders, faculty and staff, students, and the City and State elected officials who fund CUNY—with the evidence they need to make informed decisions about promoting food security and academic success at CUNY. At the end of the report, we provide a brief overview of preliminary evidence on how the COVID-19 epidemic has affected food security at CUNY and the university’s options for reducing it.