$1.1 Million TRIO Grant Enables MCC to Expand STARS Program to 75 Students

Manchester, Conn. (July 7, 2016) – Last week, classes for Manchester Community College’s 2016-17 Student Training and Academic Retention Service (STARS) program started, with the largest enrollment to date, thanks to a $1.1 million federal TRIO grant received by the college last fall.

“This group of 75 students is the largest since the program began,” according to Jason Scappaticci, director of first year and new student programs. “The grant allowed us to hire three previously part-time employees full-time, and we were able to accommodate more students.”

This Student Support Services TRIO program grant from the U.S. Department of Education provides the college with annual funding over a period of five years. The new funding has enabled MCC to increase the size of its current level of support, including the hiring of Philip Burnham, Linda Devlin and Latisha Nielson as full-time student support specialists.

As part of the six-week STARS summer component, students participate in cultural enrichment activities; work one-on-one with tutors, mentors and advisors; and take a three-credit course prior to beginning their first semester at MCC. They also participate in a one-credit study-skills course and math lab. There is no cost to students. The grant-funded program covers the cost of tuition, books, supplies, admission to special cultural programs and even bus fare to and from home.

“How students begin their college careers has a direct impact on their likelihood of completing,” said G. Duncan Harris, dean of student affairs. “The students who commit to our STARS program have the opportunity to transition into the fall semester familiar with the college and its resources, within a group of supportive peers.”

STARS is aimed specifically at low-income, often first-generation college students who place into developmental English and math. Students are retested at the end of the summer session, with more than 70 percent of them advancing directly to college-level work. In fact, recent STARS participants had fall-to-spring retention rates of 91 percent, compared with 83 percent for all new full-time MCC students. STARS students are also less likely to be on academic probation than other new full-time students during their first semester.

“With six weeks of intense remediation, we can remove three-fourths of the participants – about 60 students – from the developmental English classes,” said Scappaticci. “That’s over three course sections’ worth of students who don’t have to take that class anymore.”

Student Support Services TRIO provides a centralized, structured student development and retention program for students as they work toward earning a degree. The TRIO staff advises and mentors first-generation and/or students with financial need, as well as students with disabilities. MCC’s existing support programs allowed the college to be awarded first-time funding, and expand its programs.

For general information about MCC’s student support services, contact Jason Scappaticci at 860-512-3224 or email jscappaticci@manchestercc.edu.

About TRIO

The federal TRIO program emerged out of the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, in response to the Johnson administration’s War on Poverty. In 1968, Student Support Services was authorized by the Higher Education Amendments and became the third in a trio of original programs in the series including Upward Bound and the Educational Talent Search Program, which is now called the TRIO Educational Opportunity Programs. By the late 1960s, the term TRIO was formally adopted to describe these three original federal educational programs. Since that time, the Ronald McNair Scholarship program, the Veteran’s Upward Bound program, and the Educational Opportunity Centers (EOC) program have been added to the TRIO programs.