$2 Million in Philanthropy Invests in Student Success

Building upon a strategic framework that puts the success and well-being of its students at the forefront, Ursinus has received two new philanthropic gifts that create greater support for students in perpetuity.

The Samuel Darrow Lord ’62 and Carol-Ann Teresa Lord Endowed Student Retention Fund ($1 million) and the Frances Rose Sternberg ’52 and Rolf Sternberg ’53 Endowment Fund ($780,000) will help create new cohort-based programs and campus-wide support networks for students, with the goal to foster retention and enhance personal achievement.

“At Ursinus College, our top priority is the success of our students. That means providing even more holistic supports that prepare students to excel in their personal, professional, and civic lives,” President Robyn Hannigan said. “We’re intentionally creating an ecosystem in which faculty, staff, and students work more closely with one another creating a networked support system for the achievement of all students across the entire student experience. We are grateful for this philanthropic support and excited to dedicate more resources toward retention.”

Those resources include building out dedicated teams tasked with supporting every individual student and creating an interconnected web of resources so that each student has a personalized network on campus to ensure their success in and out of the classroom. Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of Students Missy Bryant will lead this new approach and work collaboratively across divisions to offer new and enriched cocurricular, cohort-based programs.

Bryant said Ursinus already excels at being a close-knit community in which students are empowered to make connections with their peers and interest groups. Too often, this comes in the form of natural affinities—an athletics team, scholarship program, Common Intellectual Experience class, Greek organization, or extracurricular clubs, for example. But it’s crucial to identify students who might not already have those connections.

“I’d like to build out small teams for every student in a way in which we can harness the power of community-wide support for each of them. Finding that network for everyone will be essential to impacting their experience for all four years,” she said.

As part of its strategic framework, Ursinus has an eye on attaining a first-year retention rate of 92 percent. Bryant said a new enrollment and retention committee, charged with thinking differently about how best to support entire student experience, will focus on putting these strategies in place. And she hopes to focus more attention on Ursinus’s large population of first-generation students and continuing to enhance the experiences of commuter students, a population that has grown from three percent to 10 percent over the last 13 years.

Student retention is a shared responsibility, and in the continued spirit of “One Ursinus,” Bryant will coordinate with the divisions of Inclusion and Community Engagement, Health and Wellness, and Academic Affairs on cocurricular initiatives. The Institute for Student Success, which traditionally led campus-wide retention efforts, is now being realigned under academic affairs to strengthen academic support services—in partnership with faculty—for students transitioning to Ursinus and to implement best practices for academic success throughout their time on campus.

Thanks to this new endowed funding, Ursinus can now fast-track its retention efforts.

“I’m thrilled to see the power of philanthropy impacting mission-critical, student-centered priorities like our retention efforts, which clearly align with our new strategic framework,” Vice President for Advancement Michelle Yurko said. “We’re grateful to both the Lords and the Sternbergs for reinforcing their own respective legacies at Ursinus through their estate planning and demonstrating leadership by dedicating their investment to the areas of greatest need.”