Sinclair Community College was awarded a $2.25 million Title III grant from the Department of Education.
“The concept is that it’s targeted toward first time students who are seeking degrees and certificates,” Adam Murka, director of public relations said. “It compliments a lot of what we’re already doing because we have Completion by Design and we have our City Connects project.”
Kathleen Cleary, associate provost for student completion, said the grant will be called Connect 4 Completion.
“The reason we chose that title is it’s going to be about creating connections on campus,” she said. “So connections between students and other students, between students and faculty, students and advisors, faculty and advisors.”
She said the areas being targeted with the grant will be academic, personal, career and financial.
She said students would be assigned advisors who would be specialists in the desired career fields, and career service advisors who have knowledge regarding specific employment areas as well.
In addition, she said students could potentially have financial and personal advising with individuals with knowledge in specific career fields as well.
“[It will] help you figure out where you’re going in your career long-term and how you can connect to that career along the way, how you can afford it and what to do when life gets in the way,” Cleary said.
She said the grant will assist students in career support to “help them (students) discern what they will be, and try to help them make that decision right away or within the first six months of being here.”
In addition, she said Sinclair would like to offer beginning students an orientation to familiarize them with the expectations of their major and career field.
“We’re going to try and connect people to what the job’s going to really look like early-on to help them decide if this is the right major,” she said.
Cleary said this could be achieved through different career opportunities throughout their time at the college.
“Depending on the discipline, it could be an internship, a co-op, a clinical experience, a lab experience, a practicum, job shadowing, service learning — we want them to have experiential learning in their field,” she said. “And one of the things we will do is divide the college into career communities. So instead of a student coming in and trying to identify as a Sinclair student, one of 25,000 in the fall, they would identify within a smaller career community.”
Cleary said this year will consist of planning; however, students can expect to hear about it by fall semester 2014. Although Cleary said she doesn’t know if students will be assigned advisors at that point.
She said Sinclair must first decide what the career communities will consist of and how advising can support the communities.
“We would like to get to a point where we are helping students make connections with each other, and feel a sense of identity as a student,” she said.
Cleary said this is important for Sinclair to implement within the college because it could help students build a sense of belonging in college.
“Having them have a sense of belonging is probably one of the most important things we can do with this grant or anything else we do,” she said. “Just encourage that sense of ‘I belong in college.’ … Almost every student at some point says, ‘do I belong here?’ That’s a very normal question and for people who have support, they’re going to push through that and say ‘yeah, I do belong’ … I want them to know that if they are among six weeks, seven weeks in saying ‘do I belong in college?’ Yes, they do; they belong here … They absolutely belong here and that’s part of what this grant is trying to do, is to help students realize they belong and there is a whole community here to help them.”