Listen to this articleTransfer students from Suffolk County Community College to Stony Brook University will be getting a boost, thanks to a $500,000 Innovation Driven by Evidence and Advanced Strategies grant.
The grant, from the American Talent Initiative (ATI) College Excellence Program and Bloomberg Philanthropies, aims to foster opportunities for transfer students from lower income communities through high impact experiences, research-centered opportunities and the development of workforce-ready skills.
“Thanks to Bloomberg Philanthropies, accepted transfer students from Suffolk County Community College are already a part of the Stony Brook University community prior to their first day of classes,” Richard McCormick, interim Stony Brook president, said in a news release about the grant.
“This grant, awarded by the American Talent Initiative, allows us to expand our commitment to social mobility while providing transfer students with paid experiential learning, academic advising, and career counseling opportunities,” McCormick added.
The grant is supporting the “Seawolves at Suffolk” program, through which the university is partnering with Suffolk Community College. The program is designed to provide an early pathway in which students can engage academically and socially with the university from admission to SUNY Suffolk through the transfer and graduation from Stony Brook.
“SUNY Suffolk has always prepared our graduates for success at elite colleges and universities like Stony Brook. In fact, our “Seawolves at Suffolk” program already fast-tracks students from the SUNY system’s largest community college to its flagship university,” Edward Bonahue, president of Suffolk Community College, said in the news release. “With support from the American Talent Initiative grant, we will provide Suffolk students with an accelerated pathway to engagement at SBU, as well as experiential learning through a Summer Research/Internship Accelerator. In short, this partnership will allow us to support even more deserving Long Island students and families.”
The program includes an “accelerated on-ramp” to paid summer research and internship opportunities with Stony Brook researchers the summer before students transfer to the university. The program features workshops, access to campus life at the university, supported student leadership pipelines, advising support with university advisors on the SUNY Suffolk campus and priority course registration. It also includes mini-grants to take upper-division courses as well as additional wraparound support at Stony Brook, all before transferring.
With the program, Stony Brook aims to increase its enrollments of lower income transfer students, while eliminating disparities in graduation and prioritizing long-term economic benefits and social mobility for students. The university aims to develop a model to address enrollment declines in community colleges, particularly for students from underserved communities.