A ‘landmark’ scholarship for refugee students

The measure also required all participants to meet regularly to discuss common challenges and share best practices. There is real value in colleges’ working together on issues of refugee and displaced students, said Colleen Thouez, founder of the Refugee Resettlement Initiative at the National Association of System Heads. Individual Institutions “shouldn’t have to go it alone.”

Thouez thinks public-college systems are especially well positioned to take a “top-down, bottom-up” approach to aiding refugees because they can work as partners with federal, state, and local agencies and organizations, as well as with their member institutions. She said she’d like to see the Kentucky Scholarship program replicated elsewhere.