Green River Community College has been awarded two-year funding from Campus Compact to pilot a program intended to help community college students persist in school and ultimately graduate.
The grant will fund Connect2Complete (C2C) pilots in Florida, Ohio and Washington state, on three community college campuses in each state.
Campus Compact has received funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to launch Connect2Complete.
A competitive application process was employed to choose the states that will work with community colleges.
Green River has proposed initiating a pilot project through which they will define best practices in student engagement and advocacy in an effort to increase community college students’ persistence toward completing credentials by connecting them to peer advocates.
Nationally, only 40 percent of community college students complete their programs of study. C2C will directly benefit students entering developmental education, and Pell eligible students who are statistically more likely to struggle to complete college.
Peer advocates will work alongside faculty in developmental education classes, individually, and in small groups to support students in goal setting, making connections to college life, navigating college systems, and linking to college services designed to help students complete their credentials.
Dr. Deborah Casey, Vice President of Student Services, will head up the Connect2Complete project at Green River. Casey authored the grant application along with TRiO Director Joanne Martin, Development Specialist Matthew Swenson and Career and Advising Administrative Services Manager David Larsen.
Established in 1992 and hosted at Western Washington University, WACC is an affiliate state office of Campus Compact, a national organization comprised of more than 1,200 colleges and universities committed to the civic and public purposes of higher education.
Campus Compact is a nonprofit coalition of nearly 1,200 college and university presidents. For more information about Campus Compact, visit www.compact.org.
