Yuma, Arizona - Arizona Western College, in collaboration with NAU-Yuma, received one of six Title V cooperative grant awards from the U.S. Department of Education worth over $3.7 million over 5 years. There were 19 projects awarded nationwide; AWC/NAU-Yuma are the only Arizona schools to receive the award.
The grant will enable both schools to collaboratively strengthen student success systems, including orientation, advising, and peer mentoring, and tutoring for students. Plans also are underway to establish an AWC Transfer Center, an NAU-Yuma Advising/Transfer Center, and a Joint Military Student Support Center. The third goal of the grant is improved use of student information via external data management to better plan for and track student success.
AWC and NAU Yuma were eligible to compete for the cooperative Title V funding because of their designation as Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSI). Schools must demonstrate a rate of 25% or higher to be considered HSI; AWC and NAU-Yuma student bodies are both 59% Hispanic. The grant also considered schools in service areas with high levels of low-income families and first-generation college students. The programs developed by the grants will be available to all students.
Work on the grant will begin in October 2012. Notification on the impeding grant award came Monday from the offices of both Senator John McCain and Congressman Raul Grijalva. This award brings the total of new awards this fiscal year to $20.6M for AWC, an institutional record. Some of those grants are multiple-year awards.