Grant Highlights
Education
The foundation supports Houston Community College, one of the nation’s largest and most diverse two-year colleges, which serves 75,000 predominantly low-income and minority students at its six campuses. This four-year grant funds the Adult Degree Completion Initiative, which includes the college’s Veterans Outreach program and five-week Parent Academy.
Founded by two wheelchair-dependent college graduates, Incight operates the Students Transitioning and Realizing Talent program, which provides disabled high school students with the tools, resources, and support to chart their course into postsecondary education. This four-year grant expands Incight’s direct services for START participants while they are in high school and college and strengthens the college access and success pipeline of students with disabilities.
The nonpartisan organization works to make higher education more accessible and affordable for all students through policy research, educational outreach, and advocacy. Grant funding allows the institute to encourage, track, and analyze diverse public comments on the Department of Education’s proposed regulatory changes to federal student aid, and ensure the needs of students, families, and taxpayers are well-represented.
The independent, nonpartisan organization conducts policy research and analysis on programs and practices that increase student access and success in postsecondary education. This grant funds a national scan of the postsecondary landscape, an assessment of existing policy and program needs, and recommendations for geographically based educational grantmaking with the goal of increasing postsecondary achievement nationwide.
The nonprofit IHEP seeks to use research and direct service to increase access and success in postsecondary education. This three-year grant expands, in Michigan, the Project Win Win pilot, through which community colleges award associate degrees to eligible students who qualified for degrees but left the system without receiving them, and re-engage students who could complete their associate degrees relatively quickly.
The college serves as Indiana’s work force-development engine, offering affordable education to many first-generation college students and individuals from nontraditional backgrounds. This challenge grant helps to fund the purchase of equipment for a new campus facility housing the culinary-arts and hospitality programs.
The organization identifies, develops, and promotes education and work force strategies that expand opportunities for youth and adults in more than 200 communities across 43 states. This grant supports its Michigan expansion of “Breaking Through,” an initiative to help community colleges create accelerated education pathways for low-skilled adults seeking postsecondary degrees or credentials.
The organization identifies, develops, and promotes education and work force strategies that expand opportunities for youth and adults in more than 200 communities across 43 states. This four-year grant funds “Accelerating Opportunity,” a collaborative initiative with 40 community colleges in five states to create and expand improved pathways to postsecondary credentials for lower-skilled adults enrolled in adult basic education.
Located in a former coal-mining area where medical facilities lack adequate staffing to serve low-income residents, the college offers access to training in the allied health professions for first-generation and minority students. The construction of a LEED-rated Health Sciences Building, assisted by this challenge grant, enables the institution to increase enrollment in these high-demand programs.
Lane provides nursing and health care education to an ethnically and economically diverse student body, and trains local residents for well-paying jobs in an area hard-hit by the timber industry’s decline. The construction of a LEED-rated Health and Wellness Educational Center, funded in part by this challenge grant, supports increased nursing and health care enrollment.