You give contradictory information. Either you are the publisher or you are not. There is no such thing as publisher/developer distinction on itch. There are only publishers. And most of them are also the developer.
The role of a publisher is precisly to publish. If you encourage students to self-publish, you literally do not publish them.
If you do not "take ownership" to use this term, the games are not under your umbrella, not under your label, not published by you, have not your seal of quality control, as you have literally no influence over the game's publication or presentation.
Presenting them on your creator profile is no better or worse than any fellow gamer presenting his own favorite game list in a public collection named "Has my seal of approval".
You can edit your collection to be in list view to show bigger blurbs and advertise the collection perma link. That does not look good for bigger collections though, and grid view has a blurb as well. Should you have any followers they will get notification if you put a game on collection, but not if the game gets updates. Space on your profile page is limited, if you showcase collections there. It is 20 games in side scroll with a link to the whole collection above.
Look here for examples. https://itch.io/feed?filter=collections
And of course, you can and should showcase them on your own website. There is no promotion on Itch, like there is on Steam. Games you "publish" will not get any attention whatsoever, just because they are endorsed and visible on your profile page. You are not a social media influencer.
You can embed a link to the project on your site.