Beginning with the fall 2024 semester, the Border Benefit award will expand to include transfer and first-time college students in all counties in Ohio and West Virginia. The Border Benefit is already available to accepted first-time freshmen and transfer students from all counties in Illinois and Indiana as well as select Ohio counties and some counties surrounding the Nashville and St. Louis metropolitan areas.

Students residing in regional areas can receive an estimated $16,000 per year award, which reduces their tuition to the equivalent of Kentucky in-state tuition. Since the award’s inception in 2022, 465 students have received the Border Benefit award. In fall 2023, Border Benefit students made up over 13% of the incoming freshman class.��

“The Border Benefit expansion is just one example of UofL’s dedication to increasing access to and affordability of education,” said Jim Begany, vice president of enrollment management. “We’re eager to help more students find success and earn their college degree without an overwhelming financial burden.”

Incoming students automatically��receive the renewable award upon admission to UofL. No additional application is required. Students must submit a to apply before May 1. UofL guarantees the Border Benefit award until May 1 for students entering UofL in the fall.

For more information on the Border Benefit award, visit

The University of Louisville continues to make progress on its 2020-2022 Strategic Plan. The Gheens Foundation is playing a key role in its success.

Established in 1957 by philanthropists and entrepreneurs C. Edwin and Mary Jo Gheens, the Gheens Foundation has provided more than $130 million in grants to improve the quality of life for the residents of Metropolitan Louisville, particularly in the areas of education and human services. With those priority areas in mind, Gheens contributed $2 million to support the university’s mission in February 2019. About $500,000 was committed to immediate campus safety and security enhancements. In addition to that initial investment in safety and security, UofL has used more than $530,000 of the Gheens funding to support seven strategic proposals submitted by the Strategic Plan subcommittees that will directly impact students, faculty and staff.

“Early in my tenure at UofL, the Gheens Foundation stepped up to ask: ‘How can we help the university better accomplish its strategic goals and improve the lives of students, faculty and staff?’” President Neeli Bendapudi said of the gift. “The Gheens gift continues to make a difference as we target the funds in areas that benefit the university in a variety of ways. By directing the money to these projects, we are ensuring that UofL is and will continue to be a great place to learn, to work and in which to invest.”

Over the next two weeks, UofL News will share information on each of these areas, beginning with:

Chatbot

Recruiting and supporting prospective and current students is a ‘round-the-clock service, as they seek information at times that best fit their schedules and from a number of digital channels. With the implementation of an artificial intelligence chatbot on its website, UofL will be better able to address students’ needs by providing information and support 24 hours per day, seven days per week.

A chatbot is a program that responds to a users’ questions in real time, providing service to students who may not be able to reach offices and individuals during regular hours. This is particularly important for the areas of student recruitment and retention, which deal primarily with students and their families.

The Great Place to Learn subcommittee partnered with the offices of undergraduate and graduate admissions, Information Technology Services, the Registrar’s Office and the Delphi Center to select a chatbot that would best serve the university’s needs. Administered by Mainstay (formerly AdmitHub) and coordinated by the Enrollment Management Systems team, the chatbot program will be implemented in spring 2022 and, eventually, will be available to add to any university website.

Gheens is providing the funds for the three-year initiative, including annual maintenance and licensing fees. The Strategic Enrollment Management and Student Success unit will supplement funding for the program.

“This will be a game changer for us,” said Jim Begany, vice provost for enrollment management and student success. “Students want and deserve the higher level of service we will be able to provide.”

Employee Onboarding

Employee satisfaction begins the day a new faculty or staff member walks onto campus for the first time. A Great Place to Work subcommittee and the Employee Success Center have designed a new, year-long onboarding process to better support new employees. The onboarding process will be enhanced with unit-specific activities such as assigning onboarding mentors and using a checklist to ensure the new employee’s needs are being addressed.

The process also will include a branded gift box that will be sent to new employees, which includes items that will be useful in the first few days on the job, keepsake items and a personal message from the university president. The committee also proposed recognizing employees after their first year of the start date with a message of thanks and a small token of appreciation.

The Employee Success Center hopes to launch the new program in January; training and development of the checklist will begin by the end of this year.

Cultural Wellbeing Index

Between the Covid-19 pandemic and social justice issues, particularly in Louisville, the UofL community experienced significant cultural shocks in 2020-21. The Cultural Wellbeing Index provided an opportunity to gauge the current health of the campus culture at UofL and to establish a baseline for future studies. The Gheens gift provided funding for implementation of the study, which surveyed more than 2,300 students, faculty, staff and alumni.

The study has led or will lead to a number of outcomes, including the previously mentioned restructuring of the university’s onboarding process. The survey results also suggested that the CWI will be effective in assessing the campus community’s response and the university’s actions following any future societal and cultural shocks.

“A healthy campus culture is vital for any organization and an important factor to consider in determining the direction of the university,” said Faye Jones, interim senior associate vice president for diversity and equity and co-chair of the subcommittee that recommended the survey. “The CWI will assist us in determining the potential impacts of policies and administrative actions on our community. It will help us make decisions that will improve the work environment for our faculty and staff.”��

Next week: UofL News will highlight three more projects funded by Gheens, including safety improvements, a research mentoring program and Cardinal Principles marketing.

When the Belknap Academic Classroom Building opens in August, employees from the strategic enrollment management and student success office will be running the welcome desk.

That set up is purposeful, as the building itself is dedicated entirely student success. Granted, the definition of “student success” can be arbitrary, but for Jim Begany, vice provost for strategic enrollment management and student success, and Joe Dablow, executive director of student success, it comes down to:

• Graduation rates
• Retention rates

En route to that college degree, the enrollment management and student success team helps students adapt to college life and enhances their academic skills for a better college experience.

“We can define (student success) in other ways, such as the experience students have while they’re here, if they get the services they need, if they get jobs after graduation or go onto grad school,” Begany said. “But the graduation rate and the retention rate is ultimately the end result of most of the work we do.”

To support these objectives, the building will feature classrooms and labs that facilitate active learning, as well as a student success center that offers academic support and advising all in one spot. This proximity should better enable the work Begany, Dablow and team are doing to reach UofL’s goals.

“Now, we have staff all around campus and I am looking forward to being in one place. The building can be a starting point for us to make sure we’re efficient in making enhancements and providing the services our students need,” Dablow said.

Although we’re months away from the official ribbon-cutting ceremony, it is important to note that UofL is already on track to hit its 6-year graduation goal of 60 percent by 2020. This is up from the 48 percent graduation rate from 15 years ago.

“We’ve been doing this great work already and have made significant progress already. What we’re excited about when this building opens is to better create a synergy amongst these different areas,” Begany said. “It won’t make this job any easier, but having these folks in the same space will provide a better opportunity to engage our students.”

Exploratory students

Dablow oversees the Student Success Center, which includes first-year programming efforts to promote retention; advising and support to about 1,500 “exploratory students;” and student success coordinators, who are available to help students overcome obstacles and complete the path to graduation.

The exploratory students fall into two main groups: pre-unit students, which include those who know what path they want to be on but haven’t gotten there yet, e.g. a student who wants to be an engineer but hasn’t yet been accepted to Speed; and students who are undecided majors.

“We have students come in and they say they want to do something, but they don’t really know how and we’re helping them get to where they need to be,” Dablow said.

REACH

Resources for academic achievement – more commonly known as REACH – will also be located in the new building. The primary goals of REACH, overseen by Geoffrey Bailey, are to enhance or improve students’ academic performance, help students transition to college life and support retention rates.

Bailey noted that the transition to the BACB will provide more immediate access to the entire team as UofL works to expand its services for the largest (predicted) incoming class in school history.

The unification of services, coupled with other student success-driven services and programs, will enhance the ability to provide immediate assistance to students and foster a high-touch, high-tech approach to academic support, Bailey adds.

“Students will be able to travel from many of their classes directly to our centers and staff, which helps reduce physical and other perceived barriers for access,” he said. “Further, given our close proximity to our partners, we’ll also see enhanced collaborations and referrals that will directly benefit students.”

Bailey anticipates this ability to facilitate high-impact practices and provide personalized attention to set the bar for learning centers nationwide.

“Although student success has always been an essential part of REACH’s mission, the new space and proximity of our partners will foster additional opportunities for us to collaborate and have an integrated approach to supporting student learning,” he said.

Additionally, the new space will provide opportunities to expand the use of innovative academic support models such as peer-assisted learning (PAL). PAL provides academic support in historically difficult, introductory college courses.

“Given the nature and design of the active learning classroom spaces and support services in BACB, it offers the possibility of an additional tool in our arsenal of academic support mechanisms for UofL students. This is absolutely essential for all students, but it is especially true for serving student populations who have been historically disenfranchised or marginalized and for first-generation students,” Bailey said.

“When a student is engaged, they’re more likely to stay. We want to create that for them prior to getting here, when they get here and while they’re here. That will give us a better opportunity of keeping them here,” Begany added.

Recruitment tool

In addition to streamlining student success and engagement efforts, the team is excited about the recruitment possibilities the new building brings. The nearly 170,000-square-foot structure boasts a number of state-of-the-art features from active learning classrooms to technology-rich lab spaces.

“You can’t not get excited when you look at the building and I’m excited about what that means for us in terms of recruitment,” Begany said. “There is a real energy there.”

“A picture is worth a thousand words,” Dablow added. “We can take a prospective student on a walk-through tour and we don’t even have to say anything.”