Grant to Help Latino Students at Channel Islands

California State University – Channel Islands has announced it received a $600,000 grant from the Education Department to fund its “Channel Your Success” initiative.The program is designed to help Latino students graduate on time, the Camarillo college said in a statement; Latinos make up 56 percent of CSUCI’s student population.“We are doing a couple of things with this grant,” said Michelle Hasendonckx, director of student academic success and equity initiatives at CSUCI. “We want to create a culture of degree completion. We want to make sure all students have the same chance to complete their degrees in a timely manner.”Channel Your Success will have a faculty and teacher component. Professional development programs funded by the initiative will teach faculty about student inclusivity in the classroom and apply student equity data to a wider campus snapshot, CSUCI said in a statement.“They will be looking at data with an equity lens,” Hasendonckx said. “For example, if there are high rates of students doing badly in a particular course, you dig deeper to notice patterns and find out why. We can hone in where the gaps really are. Is it lack of support? Lack of resources? Does the course itself need to be re-evaluated to integrate active learning strategies that often engage more students in the learning process?”The student side is more of a mentorship program for freshmen, specifically those who are taking a college math course in their first year, students with an undeclared major, and those who are the first in their family to attend college, said CSUCI.This year’s grant is part of a larger five-year grant for more than $3 million, the university said.