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Kellogg Endowment Announces Grant Recipients

Kellogg Endowment Announces Grant Recipients

Veronica Beltran and Ruby Vicencio work at the Writing Center in the University Library on Oct. 22, 2010.

The Kellogg Legacy Project Endowment has awarded nearly $1.6 million in grants to 25 campus programs to strengthen academics, support current and incoming students, aid faculty in teaching and research, and continue building relationships with the community.

The $40 million endowment, which was established by a gift from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation in 2010, is particularly focused on reaching and serving historically underrepresented students, including first-generation college students and military veterans.

Six grants were awarded for the 2010-11 academic year, and 19 programs received funding in the spring for the 2011-12 year. The programs comprise various facets of the university, from Renaissance Scholars to raising diversity in STEM fields to supporting veteran students.

The following are summaries of the grant recipients. To learn more about the Kellogg Legacy Project Endowment, visit https://public.dsa.cpp.edu/kellogglegacy/.

Grant Recipients for 2010-11

Renaissance Scholars
Project director: Monique Allard (executive director/Student Support & Equity Programs)
Renaissance Scholars is an academic support program that empowers former foster youth. The program provides financial resources, personal and academic counseling, tutoring, workshops, and seminars to develop important life and leadership skills. The grant will help provide much-needed financial and housing resources.

Parent Institute for Quality Education
Director: Lilian Hernandez (executive director/PIQE)
The Parent Institute for Quality Education (PIQE) provides a nine-week parent involvement program that teaches parents of preschool through high school students how to navigate the school system, assess their children¿s academic progress, and understand requirements for admission to a four-year university. PIQE and the CSU established a partnership in 2006 with several schools in the Cal Poly Pomona campus service area.

Research, Scholarship & Creative Activity
Director: University Research Council
The Research, Scholarship & Creative Activities (RSCA) program provides mini grants and summer stipends to support faculty scholarship, as well as student participation in faculty scholarship. The grant helps support 10 mini grants and 10 student supplements to the RSCA awards.

Engineering professor Vilupanur A. Ravi talks with his research team, which includes Andrew Schissler, Brad Harrison and Gizelle Cuevas.Student Success Dashboard for the Graduation Initiative
Director: Diane Carter (Graduation Initiative Committee)
The Dashboard for the Graduation Initiative will display in a user-friendly format statistics related to retention and graduation. Users will be able to access indicators for student success such as persistence and graduation rates, GPA, academic standing and average unit loads. One of the most valuable features of the dashboard will be to disaggregate information by an array of student characteristics, including gender, ethnicity, residency, college, major and academic standing. A sample of the dashboard will be demonstrated at Fall Conference, with more pages made available to the campus throughout the 2011-12 academic year.

Graduation Initiative Director
Director: Victor Okhauysen
Victor Okhauysen, professor in the industrial & manufacturing engineering department, was chosen as the faculty leader of the Graduation Initiative after a search coordinated by the Academic Senate. He will work with the steering committee to set milestones and ensure that the university is making progress towards those milestones; plan university-wide events to raise awareness of the Graduation Initiative and its goals, and to further those goals; and develop opportunities for units to design, pilot and assess innovative initiatives to support the graduation initiative. His service began winter 2011.

Provost¿s Awards
Director: Provost¿s Office
The Provost¿s Awards for Excellence recognize outstanding faculty accomplishments in the areas of teaching, service, and scholarly and creative activities. Award recipients are announced during the commencement ceremony for their respective colleges.

Grant Recipients for 2011-12

University Library Hispanic Serving Institution Match
Project director: Ray Wang (dean/University Library)
The U.S. Department of Education has invested $2.1 million into the University Library to strengthen library-based learning in three areas: information literacy, print and electronic collections with a focus on Hispanic cultures, and the creation of learning center classrooms and production centers. The grant funding, which will be matched by the Department of Education, will create an endowment to sustain the resources.

Expansion of MEP Student Success Programs and Services
Project director: Milton Randle (director/Maximizing Engineering Potential)
The MEP program, which seeks to improve the retention and graduation of underrepresented minority engineering students, will expand key academic components, the Academic Excellence workshops, and the Maximizing Engineering Program (MEP) Orientation Course. It will also establish a MEP Scholarship for high-achieving incoming freshmen.

Pipeline Institute: Peer Mentoring, Research, and Engagement
Project directors: Mary Danico, Erika DeJonghe, Stacy McGoldrick and Faye Wachs (Department of Psychology and Sociology)
The peer mentor program will allow students in the psychology & sociology department to directly engage incoming students and provide academic support. Student research assistants will be trained to conduct a longitudinal study of two groups of incoming freshmen and transfer students until they graduate. Both the research and peer mentoring will actively pursue ways to better serve underrepresented and non-traditional students.

SEES Research and Mentoring Program

Project director: Barbara A. Burke (SEES director and chemistry professor)

Upper division SEES students will be introduced to research projects. The grant will also create a transfer student mentoring program for incoming SEES transfer students.

Thumbnail image for Summer bridge students listen to Professor Barbara Burke talk on July 5, 2011 about chemistry classes at Cal Poly Pomona.

Summer Bridge
Project director: Monique Allard (executive director/Student Support & Equity Programs)
Summer Bridge will offer a five-week program for 100 to 200 Educational Opportunity Program and Renaissance Scholars students, assist students with summer course enrollment costs, support the successful completion of summer coursework, and aid in a successful transition. The students will be supported to become academically, socially and emotionally prepared for university life at Cal Poly Pomona.

Bronco Activity Record ¿ Promoting, Measuring, and Enhancing Student Engagement
Project director: Rebecca Gutierrez Keeton (associate vice president and dean of students)
Funds will be used to develop the Bronco Activity Record (BAR), a digital co-curricular record, that can track student involvement in clubs, activities, tutoring, internships and employment. With this tool the campus will ¿Raise the BAR¿ in student engagement, communicating to students that engagement is expected to be an equal part of the college experience.

WestEd Collaborative
Project director: Peggy Kelly (dean/education department)
Funds will be used to create a West Ed partnership with Cal Poly Pomona, which will leadership and school culture support. Faculty from the program will support building a culture of success and realizing the vision of the Social Justice Schools. The partnership will provide for the placement of student teachers, the creation of a tutor/mentor program, and student recruitment.

Fostering Supportive Learning Environments for Diverse Students in STEM Through Cooperative Research Teams
Project director: Winny Dong (professor/College of Engineering and director/Projects & Undergraduate Research)
The grant will help improve the climate of the colleges of engineering and science to support all students and to improve the rate of science degree attainment by underrepresented groups. Engineering and biology faculty will be trained to effectively foster and supervise cooperative student research teams and incorporate cooperative learning into the curriculum.

Introduction of Learning Communities to Cal Poly Pomona
Project directors: Victor Okhuysen and Claudia Pinter-Lucke (Graduation Initiative Committee)
The university will develop learning communities for first-time freshmen, beginning with the formation of a Learning Communities Planning Committee (LCPC). The group will research different types of learning communities and recommend a model for implementation. Committee members will travel to conferences, workshops, and other institutions that have successfully implemented learning communities. A model and project schedule will address the general format and themes for the inaugural year. Faculty and staff will be recruited and trained to lead and participate in the learning communities.

Student Scholarship Administration
Project director: Diana Minor (director/Office of Financial Aid & Scholarships)
Funds will be used to create realistic scholarship goals and benchmarks, streamline guidelines, monitor funds, process applications and awards, notify students about scholarship opportunities, and recognize donors. The STARS Scholarship Tracking and Review System will be used to match students¿ personal and academic information with scholarships.

Enhancement of difficult Courses to Increase Successful Student Completion
Project directors: Victor Okhuysen and Claudia Pinter-Lucke (Graduation Initiative Committee)
The Graduation Initiative Committee will create a two-year grant program to support department-based efforts to help students as they take difficult courses, which might delay their graduation. In the first year, departments will develop and pilot the program. In the second year, the project will expand to serve more students, as well as prepare to continue without grant funding.

Boots to Broncos ¿ Student Veteran Transition Support
Project director: Kathleen Street (associate vice president/enrollment services)
Existing campus support services for student veterans will be enhanced, particularly those that build student engagement and community, recognize academic achievement, provide scholarship resources and foster a veteran-friendly campus. Faculty and staff will attend ¿Teaching through Turbulence¿ training workshops to learn about reintegration issues faced by today¿s veterans. Funding will also be used for the ongoing maintenance of the orientation program and veterans¿ website to ensure that it contains current, engaging and time-sensitive information.

Web of Science Subscription & Purchase
Project director: Ann Morgan (Collection Management Coordinator/University Library)
The library will purchase a three-year subscription to the Web of Science database, as well as the back file. The subscription includes all three citation databases: Science Citation Index, Social Science Citation Index, and Arts and Humanities Citation Index. As an interdisciplinary researching tool, the database will help researchers save time and give them confidence that they have not overlooked important publications in other disciplines.

Kellogg Distinguished Public Lecture Series
Project director: Sepehr Eskandari (professor/biological sciences department)
The quarterly university-wide distinguished lecture series will invite notable figures from various disciplines to speak on campus. Each speaking event will aim to educate and inspire the campus community to think and reach beyond the confines of ordinary campus experiences. Special attention will be given to a balanced representation of different disciplines as they relate to the university¿s core values.

First Year Experience Program Review
Project director: Claudia Pinter-Lucke (associate vice president/academic programs)
The First Year Experience Program, which is entering its fifth year, will undergo a self-study and an external review. Based on the review outcomes, a formal action plan will be formed with mutually agreed-upon commitments that will be integrated into planning and budgeting.

Enrollment Communication Plan
Project director: Kathleen Street (associate vice president/enrollment services)
The Enrollment Communication Plan will educate students on issues that may hinder or delay their graduation, such withdrawal from a substantial number of courses or a declining GPA. Faculty and staff advisors or mentors will emphasize that the student¿s academic success is important, set expectations, communicate potential consequences of specific actions, and give their opinions and suggestions.The grant will also be used to update and enhance the new Advising and Future Students websites, as well as produce a quarterly online parent newsletter.

The Kellogg Fund for Transformative Undergraduate Research Engagement (Kellogg FuTURE Program)
Project director: Jeffrey S. Marshall (professor/geological sciences)
A new umbrella program will coordinate and enhance opportunities for mentored undergraduate inquiry and scholarships across all colleges. The program will support the university¿s involvement in the CSU Undergraduate Research Consortium and the system-wide workshop in October. The program is designed to help economically and socially disadvantaged students who may ¿fall between the cracks¿ and are underserved by existing programs.

Reading to Improve Writing
Project director: n/a (director of Learning Resource Center)
The Learning Resource Center/University Writing Center (UWC) will update and improve their writing curriculum by including reading as an integral component. Reading and writing experts will develop several modules to serve as the basis of the developmental English supplementary instruction, the basis for incorporation into current Graduate Writing Test workshops, and the blueprint for tutor training. An evaluator will track students¿ participation and analyze data.

Native American Pipeline to College Program
Project director: Sandra L Dixon (assistant professor/ethnic & women¿s studies)
To increase the number of under-represented Native Americans who attend college, the university will establish a two-week residential program for 25 to 30 Native American high school students in Southern California. The program will reach out to Native American communities; support high school graduation and college enrollment for at-risk Native American youth; provide academic programming in math, writing and SAT preparation; develop a Native American leadership program; and provide leadership training, peer-mentoring and service learning activities for Native American students at Cal Poly Pomona.