Western Success Scholars program wins 2024 Beacon Award for Excellence in Student Achievement and Success
The Western Success Scholars program was awarded the 2024 Beacon Award for Excellence in Student Achievement and Success from the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities in the category of institutions with an enrollment exceeding 6,000 students. According to NWCCU’s criteria, the award is presented to institutions that can “demonstrate distinctive, measurable, and replicable innovations that have resulted in student achievement and success at the institutional or programmatic level.”
The award was presented at the annual conference in Seattle on Nov. 21, 2024, and was received by Melynda Huskey, vice president for Student Affairs and Jon Stubblefield, WSS program manager.
“This program has exceeded the ambitious goals we set when the program began in 2019 with grant funding from the East Seattle Foundation. We are thrilled that NWCCU chose to shine a light on this work in the hopes that others can replicate this transformational program on their own campuses,” said vice president Huskey.
The WSS program is committed to improving the educational outcomes for students who have experienced foster care or homelessness by providing wraparound services to meet their needs through transition, graduation, and post-graduate planning. WSS generally supports 100-125 students per year with retention rates for those students served by the program ranging in the upper 80th to low 90th percentile. In the past two years, a total of 40 WSS students graduated from Western Washington University.
“Each day presents new and unique experiences for the students served by this program – experiences that constantly test their resilience. While the work is challenging, it is so heartening to see our students build community, to lean into each other during difficult times, and to celebrate their individual and collective successes”, said Stubblefield.
As one former WSS student shared, “I think coming to Western has been the first time I’ve really felt such system support and it’s been fantastic to find that there are people here who are willing to offer me a safety net while I sew my parachute in free-fall.”
To learn more about the Western Success Scholars program, visit their website. To learn more about the Beacon award, visit the NWCCU website.