Indian Hills Receives $2 Million US Department of Education Title III Grant
Indian Hills Community College is a recipient of a highly competitive United States Department of Education Title III Grant. Indian Hills was recently notified that they will receive more than $2 million over the course of the five-year grant.
The Department of Education Title III Grant provides funds to improve student success by strengthening institutions. The highly competitive grant is awarded to eligible institutions of higher education seeking to expand their capacity to serve low-income students by providing funds to strengthen the institution’s academic quality, institutional management and fiscal stability.
Indian Hills will use the grant to boost student success through active learning, effective teaching and improved student services. The focus of Indian Hills’ award will be establishing an on-campus teaching and learning center, equipping learning spaces with improved technology, improving student financial literacy and creating an on-campus career center for use by both students and local employers.
According to Dr. Matt Thompson, President of Indian Hills, “The Title III grant will allow us to expand opportunities and services that we have available to our students and faculty. This grant will provide needed funding to improve technology in our classrooms to better meet the needs and desires of our current students. We learned through COVID-19 that the college must improve our technology to continue to serve students both virtually and face-to-face. This grant will allow us to better equip current learning spaces to meet immediate and future technology needs.”
The grant will also provide funding to establish an on-campus teaching and learning center where current faculty can participate in professional development and learn new methods of instructional delivery from a designated teaching and learning specialist. “The addition of a teaching and learning center will be integral to continuing to provide high-quality education to students attending Indian Hills. The grant will provide funding for additional technology training, faculty development and an instructional coach,” stated Vice President, Learning and Engagement, Dr. Jill Budde.
Additionally, Indian Hills will use the grant funds to expand the college’s student career services, financial literacy, life skills and work-based learning opportunities. Budde noted, “We are excited to create a single point of contact for on-campus career services. Each individual program has had a very informal career process for many years, but the grant will allow us to centralize all of those resources and provide better services to our current students, alumni and local employers.”
Indian Hills was last awarded a Title III grant in 2009. The previous award allowed for the establishment of the Online Learning Office and focused on improving and expanding the college’s online course offerings.
