TLDR

The CEA uni groups team piloted running a starter program before the University Group Accelerator Program (UGAP) to:
- Provide resources to more groups.
- Gain more context on groups to see whether UGAP was right for them.
- Improve our mentor-group matching.
We had 81 groups participate in the starter program from over 20 countries.
We faced challenges due to rapid scaling, capacity constraints, and trying to accommodate different target audiences. We are pleased with the results and are glad we scaled quickly but have noted many improvements to be made going forward.
We found that having the starter program separate from UGAP was confusing for organizers and that we would like both programs to have the same criteria for admissions. We also were able to better provide specific start-of-the-year resources to newer groups.
Therefore, next semester we will integrate the starter program into UGAP as one single program. This program will likely be open only to new groups. We are looking into different programming for existing groups such as a continued mentorship network (which will be explained further in a future post)

This post is part of our efforts to communicate more transparently what we are doing. This is the first post in a series of posts and will serve as mostly an update about the starter program specifically. Future posts will dive further into our strategy, Metrics & Evaluation (M&E), and our future plans.

What was the UGAP Starter Program?

We had a virtual two-week^[1] starter program that was open to a larger group of schools than UGAP itself. It provided groups with virtual training and resources to prepare for the semester. This was our first time running this program and 81 universities participated, of which 56 were accepted to UGAP.

Groups were given a starter program guide that pointed to specific resources, attended a kickoff session focused on strategy and getting ready for the semester^[2], and had a meeting with one of our starter program mentors where they discussed a plan for the coming semester. Participants who were preparing to facilitate fellowships were able to participate in facilitator training through EA Virtual Programs. We also offered two optional workshops, one on outreach and another on reasoning.

During the program, individuals from groups were invited to apply for UGAP where they coul...

CEA uni groups team updates - Fall 2022