The Center for Higher Eduction Retention Excellence (CHERE) seeks to understand and improve policies and practices that lead to higher college retention, from high school graduation, to college entrance, first-year success, and to graduation and employment, for challenged and underrepresented students.

Created in 2013, CHERE is a program of the Hartford Consortium for Higher Education (HCHE), expanding HCHE's focus and programming beyond its tradition of access work, through a complementary focus on success in higher education.

Goals

• To provide professionals from higher education, secondary education, community organizations, and others, a neutral forum for discussing important subjects in higher education via small, affordable interactive conferences.
• To conduct applied research – ideally through college-age and/or graduate interns – on key subjects, and to publish the results.
• To advocate, both directly and via social media, issues and ideas regarding higher education to elected officials, state and federal government officials, post-secondary and secondary professionals, community-based professionals, and students.

Organizing Principles

• A critical economic development challenge faces our nation: the high failure rate of high school graduates entering post-secondary education.
• We cannot afford up to half of community college students and a third of state university students not surviving their freshman year, not moving on to graduation, and not entering the workforce at their potential.
• Nor can we allow a significant number of high school graduates who are accepted into some type of higher education, but do not enroll.

Learn more about CHERE

Previous CHERE Conferences

2012

• September - Retention to Post Secondary Graduation
• September - The First Year Experience: What Works and Why?

2013

• October - The Summer Melt

2014

• February - Immigrants and Higher Education
• April - Student Debt and Financial Aid: What Can We Do?
• May - Seamless Counseling
• September - Bridge Programs: From Here to There
• November - Career and Technical Education Programs

2015

• February - Big Issues in Higher Education
• April - The Future of Community Colleges
• November - Can Non-Traditional Save Higher Education and Vice Versa?
• Follow up: January 29th, 2016 and March 11th, 2016

2016

• April - Saving Higher Education: Finding Solutions that Work