Provost IMPACT Award: Building college readiness through cross-cultural mentorship

LEXINGTON, Ky. (May 5, 2025) — Last fall, the University of Kentucky Office of the Provost announced the second cohort of the Institutional Multidisciplinary Paradigm to Accelerate Collaboration and Transformation (IMPACT) Awards winners. 

The IMPACT Awards initiative, an internal funding program from the Office of the Provost, launched in 2023 to support innovation and transformation within UK’s colleges. The awards recognize the groundbreaking work conducted by faculty and staff across campus, and they create opportunities for transdisciplinary collaboration to occur between UK community members to help the university’s mission of advancing Kentucky.

Fifteen colleges, including UK Libraries and the Graduate School, are working collectively to break new ground on ways to advance Kentucky.

This spring, UKNow is highlighting the 2024-25 IMPACT Award projects and the faculty members who are leading them. Today, we learn more about the project titled “Step-Up: A Service-Learning Initiative to Support High School Students and Young Adults from Immigrant and Refugee Families.”

Step-Up is an interdisciplinary service-learning program designed to support high school students and young adults from migrant and refugee families to navigate the challenges they face in school and help them prepare for postsecondary education. Under this program, UK students serve as tutors and mentors in schools and community organizations offering after-school programs for migrant and refugee youth. Step-Up also organizes tours of the UK campus for high school students in their junior and senior years to inspire them to pursue a college education and enhance their capacity to live successful lives. For most of the students, these tours are their first exposure to a college environment.

The project is led by Francis Musoni, Ph.D., associate professor in the College of Arts and Sciences and director of the program, and Kristen Perry, Ph.D., associate dean of The Graduate School at UK.

UKNow sat down with the team to learn more about the project. You can read more in the Q&A session below. You can also read more about the Step-Up program here.

How has the IMPACT award inspired innovation at UK with your research?

Step-Up is currently focused on service-learning. Thus far, the Step-Up program has provided 111 UK students with opportunities to develop cross-cultural competence, problem-solving and other skills, while helping more than 800 students to complete their homework assignments and obtain better grades than before. Step-Up fellows have also been instrumental in “credit recovery” classes, which are designed for high school students falling behind on coursework required to graduate on time.

How did you decide on this particular topic or research area?

As of July 2023, Kentucky ranked fourth highest for refugee resettlement in the United States. This is in addition to “voluntary” migrants from different regions of the world who have arrived in Kentucky in recent years. The idea to work on this project came after realizing that while migration has added to the state’s cultural diversity and economic growth, families with limited English language competency often struggle to transition into the American education system.

What positive impact will your research have on Kentucky and beyond?

Below are the major highlights and accomplishments of the Step-Up program over the past 24 months:

• Increased participation among UK students: At its inception in the Fall 2023 semester, Step-Up recruited 13 UK students whose involvement in three high schools was sporadic. In the spring of 2024, with the help of a Department of Education grant housed in the College of Arts and Sciences and additional funding from the College of Education, we were able to place 32 mentors/tutors in four high schools and three community-based organizations. Although the number of Step-Up Fellows went down to only five during Summer 2024 (due to limited resources), we recruited another cohort of 30 in Fall 2024 and distributed them across four high schools and four community organizations. This semester (Spring 2025), we have 34 UK students participating in the Step-Up fellowship. All in all, our Step-Up fellows have invested around 4,900 hours in this program, serving more than 800 students from immigrant and refugee backgrounds.
• Improved attendance and retention of precollege ESL students: Our preliminary assessment shows that the involvement of Step-Up Fellows in local high schools and community organizations has helped to increase students’ participation and retention in ESL programs. Indeed, one of our community partners, the Centro de San Juan Diego, reports that their retention of ESL students has dramatically increased from less than 50% to greater than 75%, and they attribute this boost in learner retention to the involvement of Step-Up tutors and mentors in their program.
• Improved academic achievement among ELL students: The feedback we have received from our partner organizations also indicates that the tutoring and mentorship provided by Step-Up fellows is helping students from migrant and refugee families to complete their homework assignments and obtain better grades than before. Step-Up fellows have also been instrumental in “credit recovery” classes, which are designed for students falling behind on coursework required to graduate high school on time.
• UK campus tours for ESL students: In Fall 2024, the Step-Up program organized two tours of the UK campus for migrant and refugee students in their senior year of high school. A total of 115 students from four high schools (Bryan Station, Dunbar, Lafayette and Tates Creek) participated in these tours, which helped them to gain firsthand insights into college life, admissions requirements and potential career pathways. For many of the participants, this was their first exposure to a college environment, and several of them expressed newfound excitement about pursuing higher education at the University of Kentucky.
• Professional development for UK students: Through participating in Step-Up, UK students have found opportunities to apply theories studied in various disciplines and develop leadership, cross-cultural competence, critical thinking, problem-solving and other skills they need to succeed in college and after graduation.

“It’s wonderful to be part of Step-Up,” said Victoria Bravo, a UK sophomore, who was an ESL student in Fayette County Public Schools herself when she was in elementary school. “It’s so rare to find something like this where you can see the impact each and every day. Having such a good grasp on both English and Spanish has allowed me to help Spanish-speaking students navigate the language and their assignments,” she said.

Thelma Owiredu, a UK junior from Ghana, saw Step-Up as a chance to help those not originally from the U.S., just like her.

“It’s definitely been an incredible learning experience. Each student has different needs, so I’ve learned how to tailor what I’m doing and how I’m doing it, to serve that individual student. I’ve had to stretch myself a bit, but the rewards for doing that have been unbelievable.”

Additionally six Step-Up Fellows presented at the Kentucky Refugee and Immigrant Inclusion Summit, that was hosted by the Kentucky Refugee Ministries at Frederick Douglass High School in Lexington in June 2024. Their presentations took place in two panels titled “Empowering Pre-college Students from Immigrant and Refugee Families: Lessons from the University of Kentucky’s Step-Up Program.” Francis Musoni moderated both panels, while two high school teachers served as discussants.

In Fall 2025, three alumni of the Step-Up Fellowship will attend the Engagement Scholarship Consortium Conference in Roanoke, Virginia, where they will present as part of a panel entitled “Step-Up: A University-Community Partnership for Newcomer Education in Kentucky.” The panel’s objective is to explore the impact of the Step-Up program on migrant and refugee students in Lexington. The other panelists include Lisa Hillenbrand (Multilingual Learners Specialist, Fayette County Public Schools) and Musoni. Panelists will discuss the challenges faced by migrant students, the role of university-community partnerships in educational support and best practices for fostering inclusive learning environments. By highlighting the successes and lessons learned from Step-Up, this panel will provide valuable perspectives on supporting migrant and refugee students in Kentucky and beyond.

What comes next for your research?

The key goal of the Step-Up program is to improve academic performance among K-12 students from refugee and migrant backgrounds. Looking ahead, we aim to increase the number of fellows we engage each semester and continue providing tutoring and mentoring services to ESL students in Lexington public schools and community organizations. By providing this support, we anticipate seeing increased school attendance, increased graduation rates and higher self-confidence among the refugee and migrant students. In addition, we hope that the mentoring provided by Step-Up Fellows, the preparation for standardized tests and tours of the UK campus will increase the refugee and migrant high school students’ college readiness and potential to pursue a college education.

We have also started working on an evaluation study to assess Step-Up’s impact and determine further steps to address achievement gaps among Kentucky students. This study will be conducted during the 2025-26 academic year.