Building a freshman class has never been an easy proposition.

But attracting and retaining students today requires admission professionals and their university colleagues to possess a different set of skills than in the past.

“At the most basic level, the students of today and tomorrow are not the students of yesterday or yesteryear,” author Karen Gross writes in Breakaway Learners. “…Many of today’s students are the first in their families to attend college, let alone graduate; many are immigrants; many are low income. Many have experienced trauma or toxic stress.”

The book — now available in paperback and electronic format — will be the subject of our next #NACACreads discussion. The hour-long Twitter chat will kick off at 9 p.m. ET on Dec. 12.

In the book, Gross, who spent eight years as president of Southern Vermont College, explains the ways in which higher education must change to successfully recruit and retain our nation’s growing number of at-risk students. She also explores just what it means to be a “breakaway learner” and highlights the deficits (as well the unique assets) such students carry with them on their journey to and through college.

Packed with strategies to aid counselors in higher ed, as well as those working in K-12 schools and community-based organizations, Breakaway Learners calls on educators to rethink the ways they help prepare students for postsecondary success.

Planning to join our #NACACreads chat on Dec. 12? Teachers College Press, the publisher of Breakaway Learners, is offering a 20 percent discount on copies of the book purchased through its website. Use the coupon code “TCP2018” at checkout.

Admitted writer/editor Mary Stegmeir welcomes additional comments and story ideas at mstegmeir@nacacnet.org.