SPC Title V Program awarded five-year $2.46 million grant
LEVELLAND – South Plains College recently received a five-year $2.46 million federal grant from the United States Department of Education beginning Oct. 1, 2020. The grant, “ENDGAME: Graduation and Transfer Success for Hispanic and Low-Income Students” will be funded for the first year at $473,046 and will be used to significantly benefit students, employees, the college, and the community as a whole.
According to ENDGAME Project Manager/Activity Director Todd Holland, competition has increased across the country as more colleges and universities qualify for HSI (Hispanic Serving Institution) status and pursue Title V funding. In order to achieve federal HSI designation, an institution must demonstrate that at least 25 percent of students are Hispanic and at least 50 percent of those students meet low-income criteria. At SPC, 49 percent of students are Hispanic and 51 percent qualify as low-income.
“In the competition, there are schools from across the country including California, Arizona, Nevada, Texas, New York, and Puerto Rico,” he said. “So, we don’t always know which school will win the funding.”
Dr. Gail Malone, director of the Teaching and Learning Center, chair of the Department of College Literacy and Education, and current Title V Project director, said input from across the institution strengthened and broadened the scope of the project. Two vice presidents, all departmental deans as well as faculty and staff members contributed to the proposal which received perfect scores from all reviewers at the US Department of Education.
“Part of the grant focuses on high school outreach so we asked for input from our dean of Dual Enrollment and he worked with us,” she said. “The grant addresses all of the problem areas that we identified and it will enhance everything we do here at South Plains College. We aim to create Bridges to Success with clearly articulated pathways from high school to SPC graduation and then transfer to baccalaureate degree-granting institutions.”
Grant funds will support Bridges to Success, college readiness improvement, course redesigns, retention maximization, increased course completions, improved graduation/transfer rates and reduced student debt. The project is anticipated to result in a $1.8 million annual increase in retention, completion and success point funding for the college.
Through the grant, South Plains College will strengthen its academic programs in those areas where at-risk students have the greatest difficulty. Targeted courses include those that enroll 100 students or more each semester (identified as high-impact courses) and in which less than 75 percent of students pass with a grade of C or better (identified as high-risk courses). The average-passing rate for all courses at SPC is 75 percent.
A key strategy of the grant is to strengthen professional development for faculty by emphasizing research-based practices and equipping classrooms to support technology-rich instruction across the curriculum. The plan targets a different group of courses each summer for the next five years whereby faculty teaching those courses can compete for mini-grants for participation in a Faculty Leadership Academy and completion of course redesigns.
“Another key issue we face is 30 percent of our students tend to self-advise and they end up taking classes that aren’t required for their degree plans,” Malone said. “By taking these extra courses, students also are not only extending their time in college, but also accumulating debt.”
She said based on the current data, students leave SPC with $16,404 of debt. Goals of the project are to reduce that to $15,000, raise the graduation success rate from 23 to 33 percent, and the transfer rate from 24 to 34 percent.
SPC President Robin Satterwhite recently appointed 14 college employees to serve on the grant management team. “We have a great team here at South Plains College and we expect even greater things to happen as a result of this project,” Malone said.
