Metro requests $1.7 million grant
By Reem Al-Omari
The Metropolitan
Metro applied for a fiveyear, $1.7 million grant to bolster the college in three areas where funding is a major problem.
Student retention, faculty development and retention, and student access to technology are the three areas that would be funded by the grant. Metro faculty and staff submitted the application for the grant March 17.
David Conde, interim associate vice president of Academic Affairs, led the process of applying for the Title III grant from the U.S. Department of Education. About 350 colleges across the nation are competing for the Title III funds, he said.
Conde said Metro applied for the grant to fund programs to bolster the collegeâs lagging retention rate. Metroâs application
for the grant says keeping students from dropping out is ãa major problem.ä
ãMetro is an institution where people come and go,ä Conde said.
Only 3 percent of Metro students graduate after five years, and only 43 percent stay after their freshman year,
the report says.
Metro spokeswoman Debbie Thomas said Metro is working to keep students at the college and the grant will only be improving that area.
ãTitle III is not an all-or-nothing proposition,ä Thomas said.
The student retention program will cost $498,780 over a fiveyear period. Kelly Espinoza, executive assistant to vice president of Student Services, said the grant will help develop 11 initiatives to keep students at Metro.
Those programs would include an expanded mentor program, more tutoring, more personalized academic advising and a computer literacy training course geared specifically toward older students.
According to the grant request, 620 part-time professors teach 32 percent of Metro courses. But the application says that parttime faculty fail to advise students properly because they have little knowledge of the schoolâs
policies and infrastructure. Conde said the grant would give Metro the financial resources to hire more full-time professors.
If Metro is granted the full amount it requested, $507,953 will be used for full-time faculty.
The grant also would be used for is improving student access to technology. Steve Ernst, director of Instructional Technology, said the money would be used for buying more computers for the labs, making laptop computers available to students and improving handicapped access to the computer labs. The student technology programs will cost $518,792.
The rest of the grant money, $185,698, will be used for the project management and the evaluation of the new activities.
Ernst said federal funding may not be approved for all the activities, and that the grant might fund one activity and not the other.
ãGrant money is getting harder and harder to get,ä Ernst said.
After the Department of Education reviews the grant requests, it will begin allocating funds in August.
The grant is given to public colleges such as Metro, where students have access to education at a cost lower than that of other private and public universities and colleges. The average cost per student at Metro is $1,288 for 12 credit hours, which includes health insurance.
Another qualification for the grant is that the college enroll traditional and nontraditional age students.
