Latino students at Southwestern College will have more opportunity to succeed, thanks to a $2.397 million U.S. Department of Education Grant awarded to the college.
“The overall purpose of this grant is to strengthen Hispanic-Serving Institutions,” said Linda Gilstrap, dean of institutional effectiveness at SWC.“ Strengthen them in terms of their systems for learning and supporting students to be successful.”
A Hispanic-Serving Institution is a federal education designation for a college that serves a large proportion of Latino students, who are also first generation college students.
SWC serves more than 10,000 Latino students each fall, said Lillian Leopold, chief public information and government relations.
The Puertas al Futuro grant is part of a five-year effort to increase completion rates for Latinos and underrepresented students at SWC. Underrepresented students include students with learning disabilities and those in need of assistance.
The grant goes into effect Oct.1.
“We submitted our application so that we could address student performance and student success and completion rate,” Gilstrap said. “(The grant) was nationally competed for.”
Gilstrap said a completion rate is achieving a student’s educational goal. She said that could be receiving a course certificate, transferring to a four-year university or obtaining an Associate’s Degree.
“It’s completion as defined by the student’s goals,” Gilstrap said.
According to the 2014 California Community College Chancellor Office Scorecard, SWC is behind the pack in completion rates for community colleges throughout California.
The scorecard shows that only 43 percent of students at SWC complete within six-years of study, compared to the California Community College statewide system of 48 percent.
The scorecard also shows that only 24.7 percent of SWC students successfully complete the basic skills math course sequence.
For English as a Second Language Students, the scorecard reports that only 20.4 percent complete the ESL course sequence.
“We want students coming in to be successful and complete,” Gilstrap said. “But those folks that are here, you can see that the percentages are pretty low.”
Funding from the grant will be based off of two components.
The first component is that the grant will be used to create a first year experience incoming freshmen.
The freshmen will work with a college success team and peer mentors to improve study skills and build a learning community. The second component is to shorten the time students spend in basic skills.
Puertas al Futuro funding will also allow the college to utilize a new approach to teaching mathematics and provide specialized tutoring in English writing.
Gilstrap said the money would go toward hiring a counselor for the college success team and to provide tutoring that the college wouldn’t normally provide.
Gilstrap said the grant does not pay for students’ book or financial aid.
Gilstrap said the grant would go along way in helping SWC students.
“It is such a privilege to be able to have this type of targeted funding to address such a critical issue for our students, so that they can be successful and really reach their learning potential,” she said,
