For example, the university was awarded the William T. Grant Institutional Challenge Grant, a five-year, $1 million award received in 2022 by GSU’s Georgia Policy Labs in collaboration with Achieve Atlanta, an educational nonprofit that partners with postsecondary institutions and other nonprofits to help Atlanta Public School students access, afford and earn postsecondary credentials.
“Achieve Atlanta has always been a data-forward organization,” says Jonathan Smith, associate professor of economics at Georgia State University, W.J. Usery Chair of the American Workplace and a faculty director with the Georgia Policy Labs. “But through Georgia Policy Labs, we’ve been able to connect Achieve Atlanta’s data to other organizations to better understand students’ circumstances, financial needs and outcomes in and through college. This has, for example, led to an expansion of the Achieve Atlanta scholarship to more students in the Atlanta Public Schools and [a recently] announced expansion into the Fulton County School District. Additionally, the collaboration and research have led to some programmatic changes within Achieve Atlanta and a better understanding of who benefits the most from the scholarship and under what circumstances.”