Montclair State University: $2.6M Grant To Address COVID Challenges For Student Pipeline

Press release from Montclair State University:

August 23, 2021

Montclair State University will lead a $2.6 million, two-year grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s Institutional Resilience and Expanded Postsecondary Opportunity (IREPO) program to address the needs of the most vulnerable students, as well as build institutional resilience, in the ongoing global pandemic.

Montclair is the lead partner with two rural Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) – Albany State University in Georgia and Alcorn State University in Mississippi – and the Newark Board of Education on At Home in College in the Age of COVID-19: Improving Instruction, Access, and Engagement in Minority-Serving Institutions, a project seeking to help students overcome obstacles exacerbated by the pandemic and make the leap from K-12 to their college years.

“For this specific grant program, what’s new about it is that it is specifically focusing on the challenges we’ve realized moving through the pandemic in higher education and K-12,” says Associate Provost for Undergraduate Education David Hood. “It provides opportunities for higher ed and K-12 districts to form partnerships that really begin to strategically look at how those institutions were impacted by COVID and come together to research best practices and deliver outcomes on how we provide instruction in the future and how we can support students who experience lots of different challenges.”

The program includes faculty training, student supports, a dual enrollment program with Newark public schools, and modalities and best practices modeled and improved throughout the pandemic.

Broadly, the grant will:

Assistant Provost for Special Programs, EOF and Academic Success Daniel Jean will run The Future College Graduate Institute Dual Enrollment Program – a college access partnership that will strengthen the enrollment pipeline for Newark high school scholars.

Montclair State Assistant Provost for University Advising and Career Services Danielle Insalaco-Egan, who co-wrote the grant, believes the high-impact practices that will be enacted within the partnerships will yield “inescapable engagement” to create a greater sense of belonging for students. “Innovations such as embedding mentoring in the classroom, scaling early warning programs, and utilizing a proactive, data-informed advising model will provide students with a care network of supporters who will help them stay on track toward timely degree completion.”

Also exciting for Montclair State is the opportunity to connect with Alcorn State and Albany State, says Hood.

“Through my network we were able to identify two HBCUs and we were able to form what I believe will be an amazing consortium,” says Hood. “That’s where you are going to see the richness and the power.”

The combination of these “three very distinct and diverse higher education” institutions coupled with the Newark high school students will yield “some very powerful learning coming out of that collaborative and tools for best practices,” adds Hood.

“It’s really about the partnership,” Hood concurs. “Instead of going it alone we decided to join forces.”

“The challenges and the opportunities whether in rural Mississippi or southwest Georgia or in the urban areas of Newark and Montclair, the challenges that we and our students face, are real and very similar in nature,” says Hood.

“I’m so excited to see all of the benefits that are going to be reaped, not so much for the institutions but for students. I am so passionate about the work. It’s so rewarding and so fulfilling. I love to see students have the opportunity to have a better life and achieve so much.”

Adds Jean, “You can sense my excitement. This is what our institution is here for. President Koppell made it clear: We are here to provide access and opportunity. We are fulfilling the mission of Montclair State University.”

Story by Staff Writer Mary Barr Mann.

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This press release was produced by Montclair State University. The views expressed here are the author’s own.