Oakwood University prioritizes connections - between students, staff and faculty - as an essential part of the value they offer their academic community. In an effort to extend that value beyond their physical campus, administrators have chosen READY Education to bring those connections into the online world through the OU Connect mobile app.

“OU Connect digitizes the connections that matter for successful academic and career outcomes for students attending Oakwood University. It’s READY platform connects those vital touch points to provide quality assurance metrics that are unique to Oakwood University’s academic-career pathway.” - Prudence Pollard, Vice President at Oakwood University

Supported by a generous UNCF grant, the OU Connect app builds on the READY Education platform, which has been demonstrated to improve student retention by as much as 4% at major colleges and universities. Beyond the private social network it provides that drives student engagement, READY Education looks forward to bringing its insights from hundreds of other institutions to delivering key signals that will enable the team at Oakwood to enhance student success and intervene based on actionable insights that indicate retention risks.

“For many years as an institution we have felt the need to put all of the critical student success services at the fingertips of our student body” said University President Leslie Pollard. “The 21st-century way of doing that is by attaching an App to their devices. We are grateful to the United Negro College Fund (UNCF) and the Lilly Endowment, Inc. for the significant investment in our institution.”

The Oakwood University community will be able to download OU Connect on iOS or Android devices when it launches this Fall.