Archived Information

LET'S TALK TRIO -- SPRING NEWSLETTER

**Serving in Communities**

TRIO services are beginning to evolve from the traditional method of
serving students on an individual basis. By serving students with
similar needs and experiences as a group, students develop a network and
support system of their peers. These communities of learners allow such
students to develop a sense of self-sufficiency and interdependence for
supporting their own learning. However, mere grouping of students is not
enough to create what is known in the field as a "learning community."
It is the relation among group members that leads to a meaningful
engagement in learning, a connection between students and their
teachers, and the development of responsibility towards creating and
belonging to a community of peers.

There are a variety of learning strategies that can be employed in these
communities. Collaborative and cooperative learning allows students to
learn actively, through their participation in shared discovery of
knowledge. Discussion groups and seminars allow teachers and students to
converse about the various concepts introduced in their learning
community courses. And lastly, opportunities for ongoing reflection
provides the time, space, instruction, and encouragement students often
need to examine the content, process, and relevancy of what they have
learned and is a critical piece of most successful learning communities.

Research has shown that learning communities increase student retention,
involvement, and motivation, shorten students\' time to degree
completion, and enhance student intellectual development. By being
involved in learning communities, students become more intellectually
mature and accountable for their own learning as well as more interested
in the learning of their peers. Learning communities increase students\'
academic achievement and completion rates in both developmental and
college-level courses, particularly when the communities are focused on
those who may be under prepared for such courses.

Regardless of the structure, all learning communities share the common
goals of fostering kinship among students and connections among courses,
and creating more sustained intellectual interaction among students and
their teachers. A sense of group success and persistence is developed
when students are served as a group and provided a community to which
they can relate. Since college enrollment and completion are the primary
TRIO goals, learning communities can be an efficient and effective
vehicle for ensuring that grant funds positively impact the maximum
number of students while maintaining a high level of program quality.

**QUOTES**

"I think a lot of us will look back on this moment in time as the
'tipping point.' It is the time where we changed our mindset. We stopped
measuring educational success by inputs ... and instead started
examining outputs, measuring whether students are indeed learning."

---Rod Paige, Secretary of Education

"Definiteness of purpose is the starting point of all achievement."

---W. Clement Stone, Founder of Combined Insurance Company

"In every success story, you find someone has made a courageous
decision."

---Peter F. Drucker, Writer and 2002 recipient of the Presidential Medal
of Freedom

"Service is just a day in, day out, ongoing, never ending, unremitting,
persevering, compassionate type of activity."

---Leon Gorman, Chairman of the Board and Former Chief Executive Officer
of L.L. Bean, Inc.

**Message from the Director**

As new grants are being competed, project objectives must be written in
measurable terms. For instance, in the recent Student Support Services
(SSS) competition, applicants were instructed to include objectives,
based on cohort groups made up of the students accepted into the SSS
project each year. These objectives address the reasons identified in
the "Need for Project" section of the application. As an illustration of
this, an acceptable persistence objective for a two-year institution
would measure the percentage of each cohort that remains enrolled in the
institution and those who transfer or graduate each year over the
measurement period. Additionally, in developing the need for the
project, only data that relate to students who may be assisted by the
project would be allowed. Therefore, for example, demographic data of
students not enrolled or accepted for enrollment at the applicant
institution would not be considered in determining the need for the
grant.

By strengthening application criteria and refining project proposal
objectives, we will begin to see an increase in the number of TRIO
projects for which success in meeting their objectives can be accurately
determined and, more importantly, the needs of the students served.

**Ideas into Action**

The University of New Orleans uses a portion of its TRIO funds to
support their SSS Freshman Experience Program (FEP). The FEP is a
structured approach to helping students succeed in their first year of
college. The program involves block enrollment in developmental math,
English, and two designated elective courses. FEP students attend
classes together as a group, receive weekly small-group tutoring
sessions, led by both an instructor and a peer tutor, and participate in
a study-skills development course. Participants also attend three
counseling sessions each semester.

A coalition of university offices (e.g., admissions, retention,
financial aid, TRIO programs, etc.) works to identify 40 first-time
students for the FEP. Selected students enroll in FEP before the start
of their first semester and attend a summer recruitment meeting and a
special orientation during which they register for their first semester
courses.

The FEP has resulted in higher course pass rates compared to overall
university rates. This success is attributed to more intensive
instruction, greater opportunities for students to interact with
instructors, and the importance of peer reinforcement. For more
information on this project, contact Ellen Levitov at 504-280-7036.

**Department Highlights**

TRIO programs are designed to provide a wide range of services to reach
and support students who are low-income, first-generation college, or
with disabilities, enroll in, persist through, and complete college. The
Institutional Development and Undergraduate Educational Service (IDUES)
provide support complementary to that of TRIO. Within IDUES, Title III
and Title V programs support eligible institutions of higher education
by providing funds for faculty development, for administrative
management, for development and improvement of academic programs, and
for student services improvement and strengthening of academic quality.
In FY 2004, approximately \$95 million was awarded through IDUES for
one-year planning grants and five-year development grants to support
these efforts.

With a focus on both institutional improvements and undergraduate
incentives, IDUES provides another avenue for institutions of higher
learning to continue to enhance their abilities in supporting students
to succeed.

Visit the IDUES web site at <http://www.ed.gov/ope/idues> for more
information.

**Tough Problems/Smart Solutions**

Question: For the next grant cycle competition, I want to be certain
that I receive my full number of prior experience (PE) points. What is
the best way to do that?

Answer: To maximize prior experience (PE) points for the next grant
cycle competition, projects must be high quality and provide the
Department with performance data that are accurate, complete, and
readily verifiable. This means you must maintain documentation
supporting data submitted to the Department. You may consider organizing
your data in the following categories:

\* eligibility of students being served,

\* services provided, and

\* objectives.

The performance data obtained during a Department site visit will be
used to compute PE points for the grant. If, during a site visit, it is
not possible to verify the data submitted in the performance report,
then the accuracy of the data submitted for prior budget periods in the
grant cycle, as well as the grantees\' recordkeeping system, are called
into question. In this case, the Department would not award PE points
for previous budget periods in the grant cycle. Also, the Department
would not award PE points in future periods in the same cycle unless the
grantee\'s independent auditor verifies that the project has implemented
the appropriate policies and procedures for ensuring the accuracy and
completeness of performance report data.

**Upcoming Key Dates**

March

1 - Official establishment of the Peace Corps, in 1961

2 - Birthday of Theodor "Dr. Seuss" Geisel (1904--1991)

5 - CCAMPIS grant application workshop in Charleston, S.C.

17 - St. Patrick\'s Day

27 - Easter

April

SSS grants awarded

2 - The first U.S. Mint was established in Philadelphia, Pa., in 1792

3 - Daylight-saving time begins

15 - The luxury liner Titanic sank on its maiden voyage, in 1912

24 - Passover

May

5 - Holocaust Remembrance Day

8 - Mother\'s Day

21 - The American Red Cross was founded, in 1881

30 - Memorial Day

Mark Your Calendar

TS/EOC application workshops will be held in June and July in Washington
D.C, Boston, Chicago, New Orleans, San Francisco, Denver, Seattle,
Phoenix, Miami, and San Juan, P.R.

**1, 2, TRIO**

UB / UBMS / VUB -- Passage of the president\'s FY 2006 budget request
will impact all Upward Bound projects in the 2007--2008 project/school
year.

TS / EOC -- Passage of the president\'s FY 2006 budget request will
impact current four-year TS projects in the 2006--2007 project/school
year and current five-year grantees in the 2007--2008 project/school
year.

We expect applications for new grant projects will be due in August.
Application workshops will be held in Washington D.C., Boston, Chicago,
New Orleans, San Francisco, Denver, Seattle, Phoenix, Miami, and San
Juan, P.R. in June and July.

SSS -- New grants will be awarded in late April. We expect to make 975
awards.

McNair -- Thanks for taking time from your busy schedules to meet the
deadline for submitting your annual performance reports!

Dissemination -- Thank you to grantees who have submitted reports of
accomplishments for FY 2004. TRIO staff is working on developing an
evaluation instrument for project reporting that will be due in the fall
of 2005.

CCAMPIS -- Applications for new grant projects will be due in July. We
expect to make over 200 awards.

**Resources**

The Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher Education (CAS),
an organization well-known for its commitment to developing and
disseminating program standards, has developed Standards and Guidelines
for TRIO and Other Educational Opportunity Programs. These standards and
guidelines clearly communicate the characteristics and expectations of
high-quality, successful TRIO programs. They are available through the
"CAS TRIO Standards and Guidelines Toolkit" that includes these
standards and guidelines, research papers, an online tutorial, models of
TRIO programs that have implemented the standards, an online chat room,
and other useful features. The toolkit may be accessed at no cost from
[www.pellinstitute.org/castoolkits](http://www.pellinstitute.org/castoolkits).

The Counselors and Mentors Handbook on Federal Student Aid: 2005--06,
the 2005--06 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), and other
helpful resources are posted on the FSA for Counselors Web site
[www.fsa4schools.ed.gov/counselors](http://www.fsa4schools.ed.gov/counselors).

The National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) offers the college
pocket guide, College: What You Need to Know Before You Go, for
college-bound students and parents to use during campus visits. The
guide lists a number of questions that research, over the last 30 years,
has shown to be positively related to high levels of student learning
and development during college. It is intended to get prospective
college students and their parents to think about these types of
questions during the college decision-making process. The guide may be
downloaded from NSSE\'s Web site
<http://nsse.iub.edu/e-news/vol2_issue2.cfm>.

Learning Community Resources

\* <http://www.ed.gov/programs/slcp/strategies.html> -- Is an overview
of strategies that may be used to create smaller learning communities.

\*
[http://www.nwrel.org/scpd/sslc/index.shtml](http://www.nwrel.org/scpd/ sslc/index.shtml)
-- Is a result of the Smaller Learning Communities Program of the U.S.
Department of Education and provides information on key components of
learning communities.

\* <http://www.essentialschools.org/cs/resources/view/ces_res/208> --
Discusses the physical structures of schools to support small learning
communities and how it is important educationally to have small learning
communities.

\* <http://learningcommons.evergreen.edu/> -- Is the National Learning
Communities Project home page, and provides learning community resources
for college and university educators.

**GOOD IDEAS**

A Structured Freshman Year for At-Risk Students provides good
information on serving students in groups. Go to
<http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/Home.portal> and enter ERIC \#
ED420265 for the full report.

**GROUP SUCCESS**

Last school year, SSS students in the University of New Orleans (UNO)
Freshman Experience Program had pass rates that exceeded their UNO peers
ranging from 22 percent to 37 percent!

**RESULTS MATTER**

The University of New Orleans (UNO) SSS participant graduate rate based
on the six-year period from September 1998 to August 2004 was 15.2
percent higher than that of a comparison cohort group and higher than
UNO as a whole!

Note: The comparison cohort group consisted of UNO\'s College Life
Program that is another program with comparable low-income and
first-generation students.

**BE PROUD**

Ninety-five percent of the VUB participants enrolled in postsecondary
education are in good standing at their institutions.

Spring 2005