On April 13, 2026, the Social Mobility Lab at The City College of New York hosted its 2nd Annual Summit, advancing our mission to discover new ways to accelerate and expand opportunity for our students, their families, and the communities they represent.
A few highlights from this year’s extraordinary summit:
- — We heard six grantees share their research on social mobility exploring issues ranging from family dynamics, effective supports, and rethinking how we measure and create social mobility.
- — We introduced our new cohort of grantees, increasing the number of scholars the Lab has supported to almost 40 across 19 different colleges and universities across the country — and for the first time, one in Europe.
- — We shared updates on the Lab’s initiatives including our Ideas for Moving Up campaign, our Social Mobility Awe Walkshop, and our partnership with our journalism program.
- — We shared copies of our first publication, the Journal of Up featuring reflections and translations of existing social mobility research in an effort to make their finding more accessible.
- — We introduced our next initiative Up/Words — a text book and digital platform on social mobility written explicitly for young people trying to figure out how to move up and what that means for them.
- — We heard President Vince Boudreau and Dean Marc Ostfield discuss the centrality of social mobility to the mission of higher education generally and specifically City College of New York and the Colin Powell School. They reminded us that the reason to study “social mobility is to create more of it,” and to find and implement “things we can do” to help people in their journeys.
- — Two students shared their moving stories of how “they ended up here,” reflecting on their life journeys to date and reminding us all of why this work is so important.
Missed the event? Watch the recording of the event here, with timestamps that will make it easy for you to jump to different highlights for your convenience.
Finally, if you’re looking for even more inspiration, please check out this student made playlist where each song was chosen by a different student to reflect their ideas and inspiration regarding moving up.
Keep in touch with the Social Mobility Lab and join us for the third Annual Summit in 2027!
About the Social Mobility Lab – The Social Mobility Lab at the Colin Powell School, City College of New York aims to discover new ways to accelerate and expand opportunity for our students, their families and the communities they represent. The Lab supports research, teaching, public discussions, and experimentation — all geared to promote a better understanding of social mobility and the role higher education plays in advancing it. The Lab is unique among organizations focused on social mobility, because it is community-based and geared toward implementation of solutions: as we learn, we will translate that knowledge into programs and practices to help our students move up in life and will engage the people and communities who can most benefit from what we are doing at every stage of our work.
