Katharine Broton, associate professor of Higher Education and Student Affairs in the Department of Educational Policy and Leadership Studies, is the recipient of an American Talent Initiative Student Success Research Grant.

Broton’s project is entitled, “Understanding the Use of Basic Needs Services to Better Serve Lower Income Students,” and is one of five projects funded through the American Talent Initiative (ATI).

Substantial shares of college students, and especially those from lower-income families, struggle to meet their daily material needs, Broton says. 

“To help meet students’ needs and promote college success, colleges are increasingly implementing an array of basic needs services—including on-campus food pantries, dining hall meal vouchers, and emergency grants—rather than relying on a single initiative,” Broton says.

– Katharine Broton, Associate Professor of Higher Education and Student Affairs

Prior research tends to focus on the efforts of a single initiative rather than jointly consider the suite of services available to students. Broton’s study aims to address that gap by using institutional administrative data to descriptively examine how students use multiple basic needs services on a campus, if at all, and which student characteristics are associated with service use.

“Thus, it seeks to obtain a more comprehensive understanding of how materially insecure students navigate campus services designed to support their college success,” Broton explains.

ATI is committed to creating postsecondary opportunities for low- and moderate-income students and expanding this group’s access to high-graduation-rate institutions. ATI supports its member institutions by organizing communities of practice to enable peer-to-peer sharing among institutions, collecting and analyzing data to identify trends and best-practices, creating practical analytic tools to develop effective financial aid strategies, and advising presidents on ways to increase the pipeline of low- and moderate-income students into their institutions.

To further this mission, the Initiative launched the Student Success Research Grant Program to fund research studies that focus on better understanding institutional practices and strategies that can improve student success at high-graduation-rate institutions. 

The five studies will be published as part of an edited volume with the Peabody Journal of Education in 2025. Additionally, ATI will publish issue briefs that outline key recommendations of specific practices for institutional leaders to improve opportunities for low- and moderate-income students. ATI also looks forward to providing opportunities for researchers to share their findings and takeaways directly with member institutions through ATI’s ongoing programming.

Broton’s research interests include sociology of education, social stratification, and education policy. She uses multiple methods to examine the role of poverty and inequality in higher education as well as policies and programs designed to minimize related disparities and promote college success. She is best known for her work on basic needs insecurity among college students, including the recent book Food Insecurity on Campus: Action and Intervention.

Throughout her years of research, Broton’s work has been cited in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, U.S. News and World Report, PBS, and many other outlets. She has delivered keynote addresses at several conferences, including one in South Africa, and she is the recipient of numerous awards and recognitions. Broton joined the UI College of Education in 2017.

To learn more about ATI and all five projects, read this story on the Ithaka S+R website.