EWU receives College Spark Washington Grant

As the academic year at Eastern Washington University is winding down, the most recent funds given to EWU was the College Spark Washington Grant.

This grant will provide EWU with $149,573. The organization gave $1.5 million overall in community grants to help low-income students earn their college degree.

The money will go towards the Eastern’s department of mathematics and it will be used to develop, pilot and scale co-requisite courses, which should help first-year students in the university.

During these classes, students are placed into a college-level course that requires extra support sessions. This helps them to take a first college-level course in their college careers and helps be successful in the course along with the following classes.

“EWU’s math department is excited to spearhead this effort to support students in completing college level math earlier,” EWU professor Jackie Coomes said in a press release. “We expect the characteristics of the courses to greatly improve many students’ progress to college completion.”

According to the College Spark website, all projects that receive Community Grants funding must measure their impact with one or more of the program’s outcome indicators. All funded projects must be designed to both improve student outcomes over an established baseline and to generate knowledge about how to better serve students that will be useful to other organizations.

“Even though most living-wage jobs require a college degree or credential, far too many Washington students either don’t have the opportunity to go to college or face daunting challenges when they get there,” Christine McCabe, executive director at College Spark said in the press release. “These programs were selected because they have the potential to improve persistence and completion rates for low-income students, leveling the playing field for social mobility.”

Since 2005, the College Spark Community program has given more than 100 community grants that equal about $18 million.

For College Spark, the outcomes they strive for focus on the successful transition to college that reducing the rate of students who are required to enroll in developmental education courses. It also has a goal to increase the rate of students who earn their first college-level English or math credits.

Grace Pohl can be reached at [email protected].