ETSU has been awarded a $29 million grant to help further education opportunities and college readiness of first-generation and rural students in East Tennessee.
Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs (GEAR UP) will be working with the sixth and seventh graders at the Carter, Hawkins, Johnson, Kingsport City, Sullivan, and Washington County school districts.
“We’re going to have some programming where we want to talk to families and let them know that college is affordable, show it is possible for their student to be involved in post-secondary and to talk about the value of a college education. There’s a lot of back and forth on what the real value of a college education and a college degree is worth, so we want to talk about those things with students,” explained Ronnie Gross, Executive Director of TRIO Programs.
The grant began on October 1 and will continue for seven years, funded by the Department of Education, as it works to support the students and their journeys of graduating high school and beginning college.
ETSU is currently planning to have site coordinators in the schools around the first of the year.
“The site coordinators are going to work with students, help them with setting goals, help them with college plans, career plans. They will stay with that group of students all the way through high school graduation, and for the 7th graders, it’ll be through their first year of post-secondary,” said Gross.
ETSU’s GEAR UP Program will be partnering with several regional and national partners to provide the best opportunities for the students and their futures. They will also be working with the individual schools to understand what their needs and goals are.
Some of the opportunities ETSU and its partners are working to provide will include: FAFSA completion support, mentorship and advising, college preparatory curriculums and workshops, tutoring and career fairs.
“It’s called a GEAR UP Partnership Grant, and it says a lot that there’s a lot of entities in this region that are willing to come together and do this. They have the school systems, the superintendents, directors, principals, guidance counselors, the faculty here on campus, staff on campus. So having something that the community buys into and a lot of people that want to do good things with the funds and resources for the students, that’s pretty cool,” said Gross.
