TRiO PROGRAMS CAMPUS UPDATE - Weber State … Programs... · · 2014-09-10TANF, child welfare, and other programs into a single pot of money. States would have to ... ground running

(August 12, 2014) |

Written by Arnold Mitchem

The Problem with “Expanding” Opportunity During my retirement, which has been more hectic and fuller than I’d expected, I’ve finally had a chance to sit down with the latest proposal from Representative Paul Ryan’s House Budget Committee, “Expanding Opportunity in America.” The gist of it isn’t new; consolidation of existing federal programs into block grants or Opportunity Grants or whatever you want to call them is a Nixonian idea. Slate writer Jamielle Bouie cites a pamphlet titled “Government for Tomorrow” that traces the idea back to 1965, but block grants are part of a debate over federalism that one could argue goes back to the beginning of the republic. Yet Ryan’s proposal is very much a brainchild of Nixon. It’s nothing more than a subtle, slick way to eliminate federal investment in social programs, a Trojan horse dressed up in the guise of states’ rights. For anti-poverty programs like TRIO,

consolidation is the first step on the road to elimination. The budget proposal begins with a quote from Robert Woodson, President of the Center for Neighborhood Enterprise. In testifying to the committee back in April, Woodson stated, “I think it is a false dichotomy to assume that if you care for the poor, you spend more; if you do not, you spend less.” Well Mr. Woodson, there’s nothing false about that dichotomy at all. You can’t spend less and get better results. Yes, there is inefficiency and waste in all government. But this discussion draft is nothing more than an overlay of the school accountability movement onto a whole host of existing social services. It blames practitioners for poverty and states that if only there was more case management, the poorest among us would be able to craft life plans with benchmarks and timetables for success, as though people’s lives were just little businesses waiting for the right investment to grow. The big idea that Rep. Ryan suggests is the piloting of Opportunity Grants, which would suck all of the money from SNAP, TANF, child welfare, and other programs into a single pot of money. States would have to compete against each other in this pilot program and subcontract to competing agencies.

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TRiO PROGRAMS CAMPUS UPDATE

Student Support Services / Talent Search / Upward Bound / Veterans Upward Bound

SUMMER 2014

Student Support Services

Eddie Hoyle—Director

Weber State University

3885 West Campus Dr

Dept 1107

Ogden Utah 84408-1107

(801) 626-7349

Talent Search

Rebecca Tierney—Director

Education Access and

Outreach


1122 University Circle

Ogden UT, 84408-1122

(801) 626-7369

Upward Bound

David Trujillo—Director


1252 Edvalson St Dept 3201

Ogden, UT 84408

(801) 626-6798

Veterans Upward Bound

Randy Wilson—Director


Annex 12

1342 Edvalson St Dept. 4401

Ogden, UT 84408

(801) 626-7047

U.S. Department of Education » Bulletin Board

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/07/mississippi_gov_phil_bryant_blames_obama_for_the_state_s_uninsured_some.html

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STUDENT SUPPORT SERVICES

A QUIET SUMMER IN STUDENT SUPPORT SERVICES

Student Support Services had a rather quiet summer. That is a good thing because we hit the ground running when Fall semester started. We are busy taking in new participants, lending textbooks, and scheduling tutoring. We have started a one-credit class for our new participants called "Planning For Success." We have a section on Tuesday and one on Wednesday. Four of our junior and senior student ambassadors attend the class and serve as resource persons for beginning students. They give presentations at the beginning of the class to familiarize new students with opportunities and services on campus. They give encouragement and examples of how they have been able to make progress toward graduation. They each receive a partial tuition waiver for this leadership opportunity. The classes are taught by Gred, Sharadee and Donalyn and cover information and activities on how the brain learns, study skills, financial literacy, StrengthsQuest, career exploration and degree completion. Each student will complete their own study plan, finance plan and graduation plan. Most of the students will be eligible for supplemental grant aid at the end of the semester. Extra money is a real motivator. Sharadee will be on maternity leave until the latter part of October while she cares for her new infant son. He joins an older sister and brother. We certainly wish them well as they adjust to a new family member. Eddie will be attending the COE conference in Washington, DC, this month. He is collecting data and insight into writing a new grant for the upcoming year. This cycle brings excitement as well as anxiety as we all provide input into making SSS a successful program and receiving new funding. Donalyn and Greg will be attending the ASPIRE conference in Grand Forks, SD, in October. It is always enlivening to meet with co-workers from across the region. We continue to pay attention to the best practices for our SSS program. Aruyna, a WSU MBA student from India, is working on archiving our records electronically. She has taken on this tedious project to help us reduce the amount of paper we use and store. We are excited to have our files digitized and accessible through the computer. Pam is in her third year in the ECS PhD program at the University of Utah. She keeps our database accurate and supervises the student workers, Rod and Sherry, at the front desk. We continue to find ways to retain and serve our students and feel very good about how the SSS program at Weber State is progressing.



TALENT SEARCH

SUMMER IN TALENT SEARCH

The TRIO Talent Search program was busy this summer with campus tours and helping incoming freshmen finish up the enrollment process. On June 13, our Jr High Advisor (Jill Schenck) arranged for 8th graders to tour the Weber State campus. Since research indicates getting students to visit various campuses helps acclimate the students with the college atmosphere and enrolling in college, our spring and summer are a great time to take our Talent Search participants to campuses in the warm weather. Although the summer can include a slower pace on the campus, our High School Advisors (Alejandro Valquinto and Marisol Velasco) have been busy helping incoming freshmen with their last minute details for enrolling in the fall semester of college. Because of their hard work and follow through with the students, our current enrollment rate is 85%. We are very excited about this high rate of enrollment and look forward to match or exceed it this next school year! Talent Search also partnered with the Ogden School District's GEAR UP program to implement a "Kick Start" event on August 1st. Thirty (30) students from the Ogden School District attended the event, where they received help with admissions, financial aid, finding the location of their classes, how to find what books they need based on their schedule, as well as being shown the location of services and programs for them on campus. Free lunch for the students was provided, as well as "college survival kits" that included zip drives, school supplies, hygiene items, towels and what every college student needs to survive.....ramen noodles! Many in attendance commented on the students' excitement that day, it was contagious. Now we are looking forward to the fall which means recruiting more Talent Search participants, helping advise students regarding the importance of completing rigor coursework in high school to prepare them for college, and admissions which is just around the corner for the new high school Seniors.



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UPWARD BOUND

UPWARD BOUND COMPLETES ANOTHER VERY SUCCESSFUL SUMMER

Summer 2014 was an exciting time for Upward Bound. Sixteen seniors graduated high school with just shy of a half a million dollars in financial aid and scholarships. They will be attending WSU, USU, SUU, Dixie, and Colgate Universities. Arriving in Los Angeles, Ca. on June 10

th, Upward Bound students visited the Museum of

Tolerance, Universal Studios, and the California Science Center. Visits to the spaceship Endeavor, the Hollywood Wax Museum, and the Guinness Book of Records Museum were followed up by a trip down the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Following the summer field experience, Upward Bound students attended 5 weeks of intense study on the campus of Weber State University. Coursework in English Literature and Composition, Math, Science, and ASL were taught by WSU students and graduates. Community service followed classes with participation in the Galileo Project for the children’s burn unit in Peru, Cinco de Mayo, the YCC’s “Rose Tea”, the Ogden Marathon, GOAL Foundation’s “Hurt in the Dirt”, the Pepsi Block Party, Ogden City Police Department’s “Night Out Against Crime”, Project Success, and the Boys and Girls Club’s ‘Duck Derby’ which supports the Make a Wish Foundation. Upward Bound has completed its move to Annex 3 and is now preparing to hire new staff to replace our beloved Kassidy who has moved on to more college classes and a new career, and to bring in the new academic year with great excitement and renewed energy.

Dave Trujillo, Director of Upward Bound at Weber State University, was recently honored when The Student Affairs Division selected him to receive the Tony Weight Award. This is the highest award that Student Affairs awards to an individual and is presented during the annual Awards ceremony held in front of the entire Student Affairs Division staff. Dave will soon be retiring from Weber State University and will be a hard act to follow.

CONGRATULATIONS, DAVE!



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(continued from the front page)

Rep. Ryan believes that if only low-income Americans had more providers to choose from, they would be able to better help themselves, as though poverty can be cured by the market. It’s the market that got them there in the first place.

The sad fact is that you can look at a state like Mississippi or North Carolina and know that Ryan’s plan won’t work. Conservative state governments have a terrible track record of prioritizing the needs of their low-income citizens. It’s not a coincidence that more than ninety percent of our most conservative counties are also the poorest. In these areas, government investment is weak and anemic. A recent ranking of best and worst school systems by The Huffington Post cites Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi as the worst in the nation. Not coincidentally, these are the same states that rejected an expansion of Medicaid, preventing millions from receiving adequate medical care. Considering this evidence, the federal government should retain control of essential social services because states often abuse federal money. Too many conservative states are not ideologically committed to the cause of eliminating poverty, so how can we trust them to allocate anti-poverty money effectively? Opportunity Grants would expose the neediest Americans to additional and unnecessary vulnerability. The problem is not that they are receiving inadequate case management, as Rep. Ryan insists; the problem is that the practitioners on the ground are overwhelmed and under-resourced. “Expanding Opportunity in America” reads like a full employment bill for evaluators and data miners. I concede that yes, anti-poverty programs like TRIO desperately need more data to assess their effectiveness. Looking back on my work, it’s one of my many regrets that we don’t have more longitudinal studies. If we had invested in that research, we would be in a stronger political position today. I do have to give credit to Rep. Ryan for putting together a realistic proposal that could gain political traction. I fully support the creation of a clearinghouse for best practices. But TRIO is decentralized and locally-based, the opposite of today’s top-down reforms. It’s incremental, a patchwork woven into the fabric of communities. Although TRIO and other anti-poverty programs live in a federal bureaucracy, these bureaucrats often give great autonomy to local staff. Ryan’s Opportunity Grants would jeopardize this autonomy and centralize the programs in less-experienced and less-efficient state bureaucracies. Just look at Obamacare and how red states have refused to expand Medicaid; these state governments will literally let people die for the sake of an ideology. Even looking at blue states, the efficacy of state control still doesn’t hold water. Both California and New York lack robust opportunity programs. Financial aid and state spending for higher education continues to drop. Why? — Because low-income communities lack adequate representation in these supposedly liberal state governments. For vulnerable demographics shut out of the political process, justice is sometimes only achieved at the federal level. Ultimately our advocacy for low-income programs must co-opt pages from the conservative playbook. We must implement our own longitudinal studies to counteract the impulse to consolidate and cut. We must learn to be slippery too and well-prepared with facts to prove that field practitioners, not budget committees nor policy wonks, know best how to expand opportunity.

VETERANS UPWARD BOUND

VFW SCHOLARSHIP AWARDED TO VUB PARTICIPANT

"Yandriel (Jimmy) Rodriguez was recognized on June 7th at

the State Convention for the Veterans of Foreign Wars. He was presented a $500 scholarship at the awards portion in Salt Lake City, and was allowed to share some words of wisdom and appreciation. There he shared his passion and gratitude for

past service, as well as thanks for the continued support that the community has shown. Jimmy has plans to transfer from Salt Lake Community College to attend WSU around the summer of 2015 to finish a computer science degree with minor in math. Once completed, Jimmy plans to return to the military as an officer. He loves playing video games, is bilingual, and has two siblings, one who is currently serving as a marine."

(Jimmy is at the podium) VETERANS UPWARD BOUND SHOEBOXES FOR VETERANS In early October flyers and PR will go out to departments and individuals urging you to contribute a shoebox sized container of useful gifts to be presented to homeless veterans or veterans who must live in nursing homes. Last year was the most successful VUB has ever had when we received nearly 500 gift boxes to distribute. Shoe boxes will be available at Annex 12 after the flyers come out but we encourage people to provide their own containers to spare the VUB staff from having to purchase 500 containers that will run slightly over $1.00 each this year. Our intended deadline to have all the packages in hand is December 12, 2014. And, YES, you are welcome to donate more than one package. Wrapped packages are preferred.



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GOOD NEWS FOR TRIO PROGRAMS

(May 28, 2014)

100% Restoration for TRIO Programs

U.S. Department of Education : COE Bulletin Board The Council for Opportunity in Education has confirmed that any TRIO program that has made substantial progress and does not have excess carry forward monies will receive 100% restoration in their 2014-2015 budget. What does that mean exactly? This means that TRIO programs will receive the same funding they received back in their 2012-2013 allocation — before sequestration. TRIO programs had the opportunity to reduce the number of students served this past year. Please note, in 2014-2015, programs will need to return to their original numbers served before sequestration.

TRIO FUNDING LEVELS FOR EACH STATE DURING THE 2013-2014 YEAR



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TRIO Programs

http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ope/trio/index.html

Educational Opportunity Centers Ronald E. McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement

Student Support Services

Talent Search

Training Program for Federal TRIO Programs Staff

Upward Bound

Upward Bound Math-Science

Veterans Upward Bound

Organization and Staff

Student Service Organization Structure The Federal TRIO Programs (TRIO) are Federal outreach and student services programs designed to identify and provide services for individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds. TRIO includes eight programs targeted to serve and assist low-income individuals, first-generation college students, and individuals with disabilities to progress through the academic pipeline from middle school to postbaccalaureate programs. TRIO also includes a training program for directors and staff of TRIO projects.

The recipients of the grants, depending on the specific program, are institutions of higher education, public and private agencies and organizations including community-based organizations with experience in serving disadvantaged youth and secondary schools. Combinations of such institutions, agencies, and organizations may also apply for grants. These entities plan, develop and carry out the services for students. While individual students are served by these entities, they may not apply for grants under these programs. Additionally, in order to be served by one of these programs, a student must be eligible to receive services and be accepted into a funded project that serves the institution or school that student is attending or the area in which the student lives.



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http://www2.ed.gov/programs/trioeoc/

http://www2.ed.gov/programs/triomcnair/

http://www2.ed.gov/programs/triostudsupp/

http://www2.ed.gov/programs/triotalent/

http://www2.ed.gov/programs/triotrain/

http://www2.ed.gov/programs/trioupbound/

http://www2.ed.gov/programs/triomathsci/

http://www2.ed.gov/programs/triovub/

http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ope/student-org.html

Documents

TRiO PROGRAMS CAMPUS UPDATE - Weber State … Programs... · · 2014-09-10TANF, child welfare, and other programs into a single pot of money. States would have to ... ground running