U.S. Dept. of Education awards multi-million grant to help at-risk students

 

POSTED ON Jan 25, 2022

 

The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) has announced that it received a $3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education to help students struggling to complete their degrees. According to UTEP, 94% of their more than 24,000 students are minorities, and half are the first in their families to go to college.

“This grant will allow the university to better understand the barriers some students face to successful completion of their degrees, and to address those issues on a long-term basis,” said John Wiebe, Ph.D., provost and vice president for academic affairs, and the grant’s principal investigator.

Many of these issues have been exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic, Wiebe said. They include financial complications such as the loss of employment for the student or a member of their household, the loss of financial aid, unexpected medical expenses, and others. These events can lead to situations in which students drop out of school to work.

A campaign executed jointly by the divisions of Student Affairs and Academic Affairs will identify and engage students who have stopped out.  Some of these projects are aimed at stop-outs, while others are designed to prevent students from falling into that category. These include increasing financial literacy and awareness of existing resources, both on and off-campus, among current students.

Administrators in the Provost’s Office will also look to leverage the resources and expertise of the Extended University, UTEP’s hub for online and other nontraditional academic programs, professional training, and education. This is an effort to improve access by strategically adding online courses so that students who can’t physically be on campus can progress academically in that way.

The grant from the Department of Education is also supporting the development of two innovative projects related to student employment. The university is also in the planning stages of an effort to reach out to community partners to provide paid internships with off-campus entities for students who would otherwise need to work off-campus to support themselves and their families.