Clark Now 'Entitled' to $1.7 Million

With dwindling financial support becoming the trend from the state, Uncle Sam has stepped in to provide cash at a much-needed time.

 The U.S. Department of Education has awarded Clark $1.68 million in grant money under the Title III Part A program. The department will disburse the funds to the college in annual payments over the next 5 years, beginning with 2011-2012.

 Title III grants, offered under the ‘Strengthening Institutions' moniker, are awarded to institutions of higher education "to help them become self-sufficient and expand their capacity to serve low-income students," according to the Department of Education website.

Though the college cannot use grant money to replace lost funding from the state, the financial booster shot will help bolster student services and program development.

 "We (Clark) have not gotten a Title III grant before," Associate Vice President of Planning & Effectiveness Shanda Diehl said of the award. "It's a huge amount of work (to apply), and it's highly competitive."

Clark is among 34 colleges nationwide that are newly-funded in 2011-2012, according to the Department of Education. Nearly 800 institutions were eligible to receive aid this year. It is not known how many applied.

Diehl, who wrote the proposal for the grant, said that she worked with the Advising, Student Success and Retention and Instruction departments last year to craft a plan to submit.

"This was a great thing that we were able to do because the college was already embarking on a number of planning efforts," she said. She added that much of the proposal includes improvements that the college was already intending to make in these areas. The grant will help fund and complete these improvements.

The money will be funneled into three particular areas: program review and assessment, advising and student completion.

"(Program review and assessment) means looking at all of our instructional programs, or all of our degrees and certificates, and making sure that students who have graduated with those degrees and certificates have actually learned the desired learning outcomes," Diehl said.

One objective that Clark must meet by 2016 is to have a program review and assessment process for each degree and certificate offered.

"For the advising portion of the grant, I am pleased that it will be able to complete the reorganization that was started about 18 months ago," Director of Advising Andrew Long said.

Long indicated that the college's Executive Cabinet approved a reorganization of the Advising Department in the spring of 2010. He said that this reorganization created separate advising divisions within the department, along with support managers to provide training to these divisions. It also called for advising worksheets for every degree and certificate that Clark offers, along with advisor tracking software and a new website to better serve students.

One specific advising objective within the grant is to reduce by 10 percent the amount of students who graduate with at least 25 percent more credits than they need.

The third area poised to benefit from the grant is student retention and completion. A new category that the grant will help fund is that of student learning communities.

"Learning communities link classes together," Dean of Student Success and Retention Ted Broussard said. "Let's say you're taking an English class - you might be linked to a college skills student success class. You'll have two teachers, and you take the classes back-to-back in the same room."

Broussard added that of the handful of learning community courses currently offered, many have a ‘student success,' or human development, component. The Title III grant will help expand these offerings.

"Student learning communities have been the subject of lots of research, and they're one of the most effective ways of ensuring retention," Broussard said. "They work. Students like them, and they help students succeed better."

A student completion requirement that needs to be met within the grant proposal is a 10 percent increase in the amount of first-time, first-year students receiving a degree within three years.

"I think (this grant) is going to be great for student success," Diehl said. "It's really going to give us the infrastructure that we need to be able to set students up initially for success."