Awarded Grants

This grant supports Achieving the Dream (ATD) in helping its member colleges collect and use learner- and community-level data to drive college-wide reform. ATD will pilot the use of its new Community Vibrancy metrics framework with 15 colleges, learning how the metrics can be applied to drive change and produce tools and a training curriculum to support broader adoption across ATD’s 300+ member institutions.

This grant supports Vera Institute of Justice in providing technical assistance, training and advising to new and existing Second Chance Pell college sites and their state corrections system partners. The goal of these activities is to ensure the implementation of high-quality postsecondary education in prison and to help the field prepare for the full restoration of Pell Grants for incarcerated learners on July 1, 2023.

This grant supports The Chronicle of Higher Education in developing content for its Different Voices of Student Success online resource center. This resource will showcase the voices of underserved students and identify barriers that exist among students, faculty members and leaders. It will also share best practices for improving student completion rates, upward mobility and the reskilling of workers.

This grant supports Dr. Ben Castleman’s University of Virginia research center in engaging in research-practice partnerships that will evaluate Merit America in Texas and Piedmont Virginia Community College’s gateway course reforms.

This grant supports the Gardner Institute, through the Accelerating Just Transformation in the Foundational Postsecondary Experience (TFPE) project, in working with cohorts of colleges with growing populations of first-generation, low-income and other underrepresented student populations to redesign the first-year student experience. TFPE will enable institutions to redesign practices that impede success for learners from low-income backgrounds and identify and act on targeted reforms to promote equitable student success.

This grant supports MDRC in engaging in a continuous cycle of rigorous research, active dissemination and hands-on technical assistance that builds the capacity of colleges and workforce training providers to improve outcomes for learners from low-income backgrounds.

This grant supports the Jesuit Prison Education Network (JPEN), a nationwide coalition of Jesuit colleges, in developing best practices and sharing resources to strengthen postsecondary education in prison programs across the network. JPEN and its research center, the Jesuit Social Research Institute, will strengthen the capacity of member programs to evaluate their programs and build capacity for continuous improvement.

This grant supports Per Scholas in bringing to scale their technology workforce training and professional development model to tens of thousands more learners and hundreds more employer partners throughout the U.S. Ascendium’s investment will support Per Scholas in their efforts to build new partnerships to better reach learners, deepen its bench of highly-qualified instructors and redesign its recruitment and admissions processes to be more learner friendly.

This grant supports the University Innovation Alliance in scaling Georgia State University’s Accelerator Academy program to 10 member institutions. The Accelerator Academy, comprising a suite of comprehensive interventions with demonstrated success, will allow institutions to target students at risk of falling behind or not completing a degree due to a D, F or W (Withdrawn) in critical coursework.

This grant supports WestEd in providing customized support to rural community colleges to help them improve institutional research and data use capabilities, and in the application of those capabilities for federal grant applications and institutional planning efforts. The grant will support up to 20 rural-located/serving institutions—including tribal colleges—and provide an additional 20 colleges with customized coaching.