Join Upswing for our annual virtual conference. This year’s theme is Student-Driven Retention: Driving Equity & Operational Resilience. The conference is free for any higher ed administrators or professionals to attend.
Join Upswing for our annual virtual conference. This year’s theme is Student-Driven Retention: Driving Equity & Operational Resilience. The conference is free for any higher ed administrators or professionals to attend.
Join us as we bring together higher education professionals to explore practical, equity-centered strategies for strengthening academic support, implementing AI responsibly, and building scalable student success systems that remain rooted in human connection. Registration is free! All sessions will be recorded and shared with registrants after the event. Professional development certificates will be sent to all attendees.
Join Upswing CEO Melvin Hines as he sets the stage for our annual Equity in Education virtual conference. He will share the “why” behind the conference and how Upswing aims to inspire action, foster connection, and spotlight real solutions that move the needle for underserved students.
AI is rapidly becoming embedded across the student success landscape—from advising and early alerts to tutoring, financial aid, and career pathways. Yet many institutions deploy systems they did not build, rarely audit, and often do not fully understand.
In this keynote, Dr. Shmona Simpson, CEO of Paritii, explores how bias enters AI-powered student support tools, why vulnerable students are often the most likely to be misread by these systems, and what institutions can do now to evaluate AI more responsibly before inequities become embedded at scale.
Blending real-world examples with a practical institutional audit framework, this session equips higher education leaders, advisors, and student success teams with actionable strategies to assess the tools already operating across campus—and build a more equitable, accountable future for AI in higher education.
What does it take to use AI to truly expand opportunity without sacrificing human connection, student agency, or equity? In this powerful session, Code the Dream shares how its nationally recognized nonprofit has leveraged AI to support more than 500 adult learners annually in a fully online environment serving immigrants, first-generation Americans, and other historically underserved populations. With over $580 million in projected lifetime earnings unlocked for participants, Code the Dream will reveal the real-world strategies behind its success: designing AI systems that strengthen preparation and persistence simultaneously, reduce instructor bottlenecks, preserve learner ownership, and scale personalized support in resource-constrained environments. Attendees will walk away with practical frameworks, replicable AI feedback models, and actionable strategies for integrating AI and mentorship in ways that drive retention, deepen engagement, and close equity gaps instead of widening them.
Generative AI is redefining how institutions support student writing—making personalized, equitable literacy support more scalable than ever. In this session, you’ll learn how AI can deliver real-time feedback, adaptive writing support, and targeted interventions that help all students succeed, especially those historically underserved. We’ll also explore how institutions can use AI-driven insights to identify and close equity gaps in literacy outcomes while implementing these tools in ways that are ethical, inclusive, and effective.
Time: 12:30 PM–12:45 PM ET
As colleges and universities rapidly adopt AI-powered tools, critical questions remain: Who benefits most? Who risks being left behind? And how can institutions ensure innovation advances equity instead of widening existing gaps?
In this panel, higher education and AI experts will unpack the real opportunities and challenges institutions are facing right now—from student engagement and retention to bias, access, culturally responsive design, and data privacy. Drawing directly from survey responses submitted by conference attendees, panelists will explore how campuses are approaching AI implementation, where concerns are emerging, and which strategies show the greatest promise for underserved student populations.
Join us for a candid, solutions-focused conversation on how institutions can responsibly leverage AI to create more equitable pathways to student success.
Hope Chicago is pioneering a radical approach to neighborhood economic development by treating the family unit as the primary driver of change. By funding debt-free college and career pathways for Chicago Public Schools students and their parents, the organization is investing in the long-term prosperity of Chicago’s South and West side communities from the inside out. This two-generation model is more than an educational initiative; it is a strategic economic mobility engine designed to shift neighborhood trajectories and enhance the collective wellbeing of the city. To support these efforts, Hope Chicago has introduced a number of innovative tools and practices centered on real-time responsiveness. These include the use of regular pulse surveys to assess Scholar experiences in the moment, red flag alerts to identify students in need of immediate support, and data-sharing agreements that allow for seamless tracking of academic progress. Additionally, Hope places a dedicated Campus Contact at each partner institution to serve as a key liaison, helping Scholars navigate challenges as they arise. Together, these elements form a student-centered support system deeply integrated into the postsecondary journey. Preliminary data from the first four years of implementation will be shared during the session, including early indicators of student persistence and retention. Hope Chicago will also offer reflections on what has worked, what challenges have emerged, and what is currently being refined in real time. Participants will hear directly about the organization’s learning journey, including how it is evolving its data infrastructure, building trust with higher education partners, and adapting supports based on student feedback. Attendees will leave with a clear understanding of how frequent student feedback and strong institutional partnerships can move the needle on degree attainment and long-term economic mobility.
Scaling high-impact academic support requires moving beyond one-off interventions to structured, consistent, and relationship-driven programs. This session explores how the Empowered Equity Leadership (EEL) framework can be practically applied to integrate proactive, human-centered student support directly into the academic environment. Using Durham Technical Community College’s Early Success System (ESS) and Center for Academic Excellence (CAE) as a working model, attendees will learn how to leverage technology to identify at-risk patterns early and seamlessly connect students with targeted, empathetic human interventions. We will demonstrate how to utilize the five pillars of the EEL framework to secure stakeholder buy-in, ensure equitable scale, and guarantee that technology amplifies—rather than replaces—meaningful human connection in student success initiatives.
Time: 3:00 PM–3:05 PM ET
There are an estimated five million students in the United States who are providing unpaid, care, support, and assistance to ill or disabled family members, friends, romantic partners, and other individuals close to them. These student caregivers, often called “youth caregivers” in scholarly literature, balance caregiving responsibilities with their academic pursuits, both at the undergraduate and graduate level. The AARP (2020) found that seven in ten student caregivers report that caregiving has affected their academic performance to some extent, and nearly a third reported that they are very concerned over their ability to stay in school while caregiving. Student caregivers can be found at every institution across the U.S., though research with this population suggests a higher preponderance at community colleges and trade schools (Lewis, 2018). The widespread nature of youth caregiving coupled with the impacts onto their mental and physical health and academic performance necessitates thoughtful consideration and action on the part of student affairs professionals. This session will provide an introduction to the presenter’s own international (U.S., United Kingdom, and Europe) research with student caregivers. The session will feature the innovative work taken by the presenter and colleagues at Vanderbilt University, a R1 university in Nashville, TN, to advance supportive caregiver programs and policy creation. Student affairs professionals will receive a “lessons learned” examination of the highs and lows of programmatic generation, including barriers to success. Attendees will be armed with a holistic profile of student caregiving and best practice recommendations to take back to their respective institutions.
As colleges and universities face tighter budgets and intensifying demands for accountability, sustaining their student success initiatives requires new approaches. This presentation shows how the Association for Undergraduate Education at Research Universities (UERU) worked with 30 of its member institutions to reform curricular structures using Curricular Analytics, an approach that reveals the structural barriers to degree completion and how to overcome them. Such structural reform is a powerful but underutilized lever for institutional resilience during times of political and financial complexity. Drawing on a national policy perspective (articulated in Curricular Analytics in Higher Education: Analyzing a Hidden Barrier to Student Success, forthcoming from Routledge in 2026), the session demonstrates how reducing unnecessary curricular complexity can measurably improve retention and time to degree without compromising learning outcomes or program quality. Research documenting an inverse relationship between curricular complexity and student success challenges longstanding assumptions that equate academic rigor with extensive prerequisite chains and high credit loads. In an environment defined by career readiness mandates, declining public trust, and affordability concerns, Curricular Analytics gives institutions a practical way to optimize degree programs for learning outcomes and student success. The presentation will conclude by sharing UERU’s ongoing Curricular Analytics Project (CAP) Community of Practice, a collaborative space supporting practitioners who are applying curricular data to reform degree pathways and sustain student success amid evolving policy and funding landscapes, and the forthcoming UERU Leadership Summit in August 2026, featuring an expert workshop on Curricular Analytics and transfer student success.
3:50 PM–4:00 PM ET: Melvin Hines, Co-Founder & CEO, Upswing
