Decorah Iowa News

News TRiO Program at NICC Receives Five-Year Grant Posted 17 August 2010 The TRiO-Student Support Services (TRiO-SSS) program at Northeast Iowa Community College (NICC) received a federal grant to continue its services through 2015. The refunding for the program supplies $238,496 a year for five years and is made possible through federal Higher Education Act legislation. The TRiO-SSS program serves low-income, first-generation college students and disabled students who seek a college degree at NICC and plans to transfer on to a four-year institution. The Peosta campus TRiO-SSS program was one of 1,500 proposals in the country to be submitted during the current legislative session. All of the current TRiO-SSS programs in Iowa received the renewed funding, and several new programs will get their start because of the federal support. TRiO-SSS program directors and staff at the Peosta campus said that the competitive grant-funded program receives the five-year approval based upon many criteria, including data that shows the program is successful for students who participate. “According to government regulations, two-thirds of the students TRiO-SSS serves must be first-generation, low income college students. At NICC, we have real need,” said Cindy Benedict, TRiO-SSS director. “Over half of the students at NICC are first-generation college students who are from families where neither parent holds a college degree. Also this past year, of the 160 students we serve, 80 percent are classified as low income. That’s huge,” Benedict said. The major TRiO-SSS program objectives for the past year are: persistence, a measure of the percentage of students in the program who completed the academic programs in which they were enrolled; good academic standing, which is the percentage of students who maintain a 2.0 cumulative GPA at NICC; and the graduation/transfer rate of TRiO-SSS students. Benedict said that this year Congress rewrote areas of Higher Education Act legislation, and those changes now require that the third objective shows both the graduation rate for students in their program and the rate of students who graduate and transfer to a four-year college or university. Benedict said that the program at Peosta put up successful numbers in 2009-2010, with 83 percent of TRiO-SSS students completing their academic programs, 89 percent maintaining good academic standing and 67 percent graduating or transferring to earn a bachelor’s degree. The successful program she directs, along with three other TRiO-SSS staff members, is due in large part to their efforts to build connections and relationships with NICC students, she said. “We bond them to the college. NICC is a commuter campus and we completely understand that. We try to make our students’ experience more like a family in TRiO-SSS. If we notice that a student is struggling academically or in other ways, we direct the student to other services at NICC and in the community,” Benedict said. Students praise TRiO-SSS for the support the program offers, such as NICC 2010 graduate Ashley McClain. “The TRiO-Student Support Services program has been a foundation of my academic success. There is always someone in the office if you need to talk about anything, which makes me feel at ease every time I walk into the office,” said McClain, of Dubuque, an Associate in Arts-Business Administration graduate who is transferring to the University of Dubuque this fall. In addition to the TRiO-SSS program, the NICC Peosta and Calmar campuses each have a TRiO-Upward Bound program. TRiO-UB serves high school students from low-income families and from families in which neither parent holds a bachelor's degree. Both programs seek to provide support that assist students in enrolling in, and ultimately graduating from, institutions of post-secondary education. For more information on TRiO programs at NICC, visit www.nicc.edu.

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