TLDR: Competition designed to foster institutional collaboration, creativity to combat today’s industry issues
Ellucian® announced at Ellucian Live it is issuing a challenge to its customers to develop innovative solutions to increase student graduation and retention. The Student Success Innovation Challenge, a $50,000 competition delivered by Ellucian on the HeroX platform, is designed to foster collaboration and develop creative ideas from Ellucian’s community of over 2,400 colleges and universities.
For colleges and universities, student success has never been more critical or more challenging. Institutions that are able to deliver an exceptional student experience will see higher retention and graduation rates. The competition presents a forum for institutions to create innovative new technologies, like data-driven interventions, personalized communications, or support services, to solve key issues that may prevent student success.
“While student success has always been core to the mission of colleges and universities, it is now an operational imperative to which we will all be held accountable,” said Michael Betz, senior vice president and chief marketing officer at Ellucian. “At Ellucian, we recognize our strongest asset is our community of higher education leaders. With the HeroX Student Success Innovation Challenge, we will accelerate the creation of new strategies for improving student graduation rates. And we firmly believe technology can now enable outcomes we only imagined possible.”
Each participating institution will set a quantifiable student success goal it wishes to achieve and explain how technology can help them succeed, sustain and even grow that achievement. Judged by a panel of industry experts, the winning institution will receive $15,000. Second place will receive $7,000 and third place, $3,500. In addition, 10 honorable mention schools will receive $2,500 in Ellucian credits.
“I am proud to see Ellucian launch their competition on HeroX,” said Dr. Peter Diamandis, Chairman & CEO, XPRIZE, Co-founder & Board Member, HeroX. “As early adopters, Michael and his team are demonstrating real leadership in empowering their customers to tackle big problems. I am convinced that this challenge will drive innovation in ways that we cannot yet imagine.”
Entries can be submitted on this website: herox.com/studentsuccessx. To follow the conversation on Twitter, use #studentsuccessx.
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Originally published on Reuters
