RESEARCH

AHEAD creates and advances knowledge by conducting high-quality research and disseminating results in scholarly publications and books, meetings of scholars, practitioners, and policymakers, and the popular media. The knowledge produced by these research projects informs our capacity-building work and professional-development programs. These projects focus on improving understanding of:

• The role of public policies and institutional practices in reducing and perpetuating stratification in the opportunity to participate and benefit from higher education;
• The societal forces that promote and limit the public purposes of higher education institutions;
• The internal and external forces that limit and promote full engagement in the shared governance of a higher education institution; and
• Ways to empower students to become future civic leaders and agents of change in a democratic society.

Featured Project

College Promise Programs

Project Description: Over the last decade, but especially in the past few years, programs with a “promise” label have been advanced at the local, state, and federal levels. This project is designed to improve research-based knowledge that can inform understanding of how to design and structure a promise program to achieve particular goals and outcomes.

Funder: The research is supported in part by Civic Nation (September 2015 – June 2016).

Principal Investigator: Laura Perna.   

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