BOSTON, MA (August 31, 2015)—Jobs for the Future, with support from The Kresge Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is pleased to announce an exciting new funding opportunity to improve community college persistence and completion by creating a new Student Success Center in up to four states.
Student Student Success Centers organize a state’s community colleges around common action to accelerate their efforts to improve student outcomes. They provide faculty with venues for sharing and learning, aggregate technical assistance efforts, and help colleges collaborate. Student Success Centers build a cohesive approach to policy advocacy across their state’s community colleges so that resources are spent efficiently and reforms help the most students possible earn postsecondary credentials.
“We are thrilled that The Kresge Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are making it possible for more states to benefit from the critical work that Student Success Centers do for community colleges,” said Michael Lawrence Collins, associate vice president at Jobs for the Future. “We’ve seen how Centers can spread innovation throughout a state. These Centers are filling a need for an entity that can work with community colleges focused on leading the student success agenda, and we are excited to continue this work.”
Seven states currently belong to JFF’s Student Success Center Network—Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio, and Texas. Access a toolkit that describes how Centers are structured, highlights what they have accomplished, and provides advice for those seeking to launch a Center in their state.
A webinar to provide more details about the Request for Proposals will be held on Monday, September 14th at 2 pm EST. To register for the webinar, please email Lindsay Newman at lnewman@jff.org.
Read more information about how to apply for this funding opportunity to build a Student Success Center in your state (e.g., eligible applicants, application questions). Please email Chris Baldwin, Senior Director at Jobs for the Future, at cbaldwin@jff.org with questions related to the RFP.
We encourage you to share news of this opportunity with your colleagues and to begin planning for an application process, including considerations such as which stakeholders to engage and potential for local funders. Competitive proposals will have leveraged funding support from colleges, state organizations, or local/national philanthropy. Please note that eligible applicants are a two-year college system, community college association, or other statewide entity in any of the 50 United States with sufficient access to and trust of the state’s community college leaders (excluding those seven states with existing Student Success Centers—AR, CA, CT, MI, NJ, OH, TX). For more on eligibility please see page 6 of the RFP.
