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YELLOW SPRINGS, Ohio (AP) — An Ohio college will try to make it easier for low-income and first-generation students to attend college through a new initiative.
Antioch College is launching a program called ReinventED Lab + Incubator, the Dayton Daily News reports (http://bit.ly/1JB6gGV). The program's goal will be to improve access to college for high-risk students and help prepare them for education beyond high school.
Lori Collins-Hall, Antioch's vice president of academic affairs, says the program may recruit students from charter schools that serve low-income and first-generation students.
Faculty at the college in Yellow Springs in southwest Ohio will evaluate how to create bridging programs that will assist students' transition to post-high school education and help faculty members work with them
Only 30 percent of low-income students enroll in educational programs after high school and as little as 9 percent complete their college degree in the first six years, according to the college.
"A lot of students who don't make it in college, it's because the first couple of months on campus don't work for them," said Antioch's president, Mark Roosevelt. "How can we learn from the research what it is that isn't working and ensure that as few of our students will have those experiences?"
Antioch officials say they will use a $100,000 grant to create more detailed plans this summer and hope to complete those plans over the next year.
The school's president says the new initiative is a formalized framework of thinking on how to connect with students who are the most difficult to reach.
"About half of our students are Pell Grant eligible. Many are first generation college-goers," Roosevelt said. "That's the coming population of college-goers."
About 246 students were enrolled at Antioch as of January.
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Information from: Dayton Daily News, http://www.daytondailynews.com
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