Atlas & Crown Co. was founded on a simple observation: most institutions hire strategy advisors who don't have data, or buy diagnostic tools that don't come with strategy. We do both — from the same peer-reviewed evidence base.
For two decades, student success strategy in higher education has been program-shaped: launched in one administration, restructured in the next, defunded in the budget cycle after that. Programs are fragile by nature. Systems are durable by design. Atlas & Crown was built to do the systems work.
The Equity Infrastructure Index emerged from a doctoral dissertation at the University of Georgia that established, at the state Multicultural Student Programs unit level, that governance authority and per-student investment predict retention for underrepresented students. A national IPEDS replication confirmed that finding across 2,595 institutions — five validated completion outcomes, all significant at p < .001. That empirical foundation is what every Atlas & Crown engagement rests on.
Programs come and go. Governance stays. Our work is to build the systems architecture that outlasts the administration that commissions it.
The firm operates as a scholar-practitioner consultancy at the cabinet level. Every commercial product is the direct application of a peer-reviewed methodology, and every methodology is sharpened by the institutional work that follows. The instrument and the advisory relationship are the same project at different scales.
Dr. Staples is the founder and CEO of Atlas & Crown Co. and the developer of the Student Success Capacity Index and the Equity Infrastructure Index. He earned his Ed.D. from the University of Georgia, where his dissertation established the empirical relationship between Multicultural Student Programs & Services unit governance authority, per-student investment, and retention for students of color — using IPEDS data and QuantCrit methodology. That empirical foundation drives every Atlas & Crown engagement.
His scholarly framework centers on three contributions: LiberationQuant, a quantitative research methodology that positions institutions (not students) as the unit of analysis; the EII/SSCI diagnostic toolset, the firm's proprietary instrument; and Structural Navigation Load, a framework connecting organizational loose coupling to differential administrative burden by student population.
He holds graduate faculty status at Valdosta State University, where he chairs a doctoral dissertation committee. Outside consulting, he has led federally funded student success programs including an AmeriCorps VISTA-supported initiative ($189,810 annually) and the USG African American Male Initiative ($18,000 recurring).
Every product in the Atlas & Crown catalog draws from one of three peer-reviewed methodological frameworks. The methodology is the moat, and the moat is intentional.
Institutions, not students, are the unit of assessment. A completion gap is a structural artifact. We measure what produces it, not who experiences it.
Governance determines outcomes. The reporting relationship, the policy owner, the budget authority — these are the levers. Sentiment surveys don't measure them.
Loose coupling creates differential burden. Students who cannot navigate institutional incoherence absorb the cost of the institution's structural failures. We make that cost visible and assign it an organizational address.
The instrument must work in any legal environment. Our framework audits institutional systems, not protected-class programs. It operates in Florida, Texas, and Tennessee the same way it operates anywhere else.
Methodology is the moat. Anyone can write a strategic plan. We build peer-reviewed instruments. Validation is the difference between advice and infrastructure.
Good intentions don't build systems. Strategy does. Programs disappear; governance stays. Our work is to make sure the infrastructure outlasts the intention.