Columbia College Awarded $1.1 Million USDE Grant

FUNDS WILL EXPAND SERVICES TO DISADVANTAGED STUDENTS

Columbia College has been awarded a $1.1 million five-year grant from the United States Department of Education.  The Student Support Services (SSS) grant will provide funds for increased counseling, advising, and transfer services to students.  The program will also feature group workshops, special activities and events such as field trips to four-year universities, and grant aid directly to qualified students.  The college will hire a full-time faculty Counselor/Project Director and full-time Program Coordinator to implement these activities.

The SSS program known as a TRIO grant will be overseen by the Dean of Student Services, Melissa Raby. “This additional funding could not have come at a better time,” she noted. “Our students really need this extra support, and while our enrollment has been consistently growing over the past few years, our budget has been cut tremendously by the State.”  Current counselor-student ratios at the college are well beyond generally accepted levels for community colleges (<400:1), with only 1 counselor for every 1,379 students. 

The program will specifically target students that are low-income, disabled, or first-generation college students – each of whom typically experience far lower retention, graduation, transfer, and good academic standing rates other than comparative groups. In Fall 2008, 1,722 Columbia College students identified themselves as first generation according to the USDE definition (neither parent has a Bachelor’s degree), which represented 73.1% of the students that provided data regarding their parents’ educational status.  Another 43% reported meeting the low-income criteria, while 14.5% reported a disability of some kind.

Beccie Michael, Director of Development, coordinated the grant proposal’s development.  Ms. Michael was hired through another five-year grant to help expand resources available to the college. “Our proposal scored 297 points out of 300 possible,” she said. “It is so wonderful to see all of our hard work paying off and benefiting the students.”

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Coni M. Chavez
Executive Assistant to the President
Columbia College
11600 Columbia College Drive
Sonora, CA 95370
(209) 588-5115 • (209) 588-5161 fax
chavezc@yosemite.edu