Overview
Supported by the Gates Foundation, the Digital Holistic Student Supports Initiative will bring together higher education institutions and innovative organizations to design and implement digital approaches that strengthen how institutions support students towards completion.
Funding will be utilized to help institutions harness their existing data, align people and processes, and deploy technology in ways that enable timely, personalized, and proactive support.
This intensive experience will deliver impact by strategically pairing new technology with actionable leadership, accurate data, and thoughtful implementation.
Why It Matters
Today’s students balance work, family, and school yet often must navigate fragmented systems to access support. Colleges and universities want to help, but siloed data, disconnected tools, and outdated technologies make it difficult to provide timely, coordinated guidance — placing a disproportionate burden on students without built-in support networks.
The DHSS Initiative supports colleges in rethinking how student support is organized and delivered. Rather than adding more tools, it emphasizes intentional design — aligning data, technology, and human effort so systems work together to enable proactive, equitable, and human-centered support.
Goals and Outcomes
Through the DHSS Initiative, participating institutions will:
- Develop a digital transformation roadmap aligned with institutional strategy and student success goals (community colleges only).
- Strengthen data maturity through improved governance, literacy, and data use across the institution.
- Implement a unified data system that securely integrates core institutional data sources.
- Use dashboards, predictive analytics, and other tools to support more proactive and holistic student support.
- Build institutional capacity to lead and sustain large-scale digital and organizational change.
- Contribute lessons learned and provide promising practices to inform broader reform across access-oriented higher education institutions and the ATD Network.
Our Partners
ATD is working closely with partner organizations that bring deep technical and research expertise to this work:
- DataKind: A global nonprofit that connects data science and AI experts with social impact organizations, DataKind leads the solution co-design, testing, and implementation as well as the work with university participants.
- MDRC: A nonprofit social policy research organization, MDRC leads the grant evaluation, measurement, and learning efforts.
Participating Institutions
The DHSS initiative includes a group of access-oriented institutions serving as “lighthouses” to lead the way toward shaping this work. Included are four ATD Network colleges and two universities.
- Clovis Community College
- Durham Technical Community College
- North Central State College
- Prince George’s Community College
- Fayetteville State University
- To be added in 2026