MCAN awards over $26,000 in grants to support innovative college access and success projects
LANSING, Mich. — Michigan College Access Network is proud to announce three Innovative Program Grants to support promising college access and success projects across the state. Montcalm Community College and Alternatives for Girls each received $10,000, and Michigan Technological University received $6,333. In alignment with Michigan’s Sixty by 30 higher education attainment goal, MCAN’s Innovative Program Grants are designed to encourage creative ideas and initiatives that increase the state’s postsecondary attainment rate.
Michigan Technological University, located just miles from Lake Superior in the Upper Peninsula, will use its grant to implement a program to improve the success rate for incoming first-year students with disabilities. The program includes two tracks. The first track offers six hours of summer instruction on how to succeed at the university with a disability. The second track includes the same six hours of summer instruction supplemented with half-hour mentorship sessions throughout the first semester at the university. Both interventions will be implemented and assessed in conjunction with an MTU student’s doctoral dissertation research.
Montcalm Community College in Mid-Michigan, in partnership with Central Montcalm Public Schools, will use its funding to establish a Career Connected School program in the district’s K-12 schools. This initiative will integrate meaningful conversations about strengths, interests, and values into everyday learning, helping students understand themselves and connect what they do in school with the futures they envision.
Alternatives for Girls, which serves homeless and at-risk girls in Detroit, will use the funding to improve its established and effective HERizons program, with a focus on elements that strengthen participants’ postsecondary readiness and persistence. This grant will enable AFG to integrate new academic and career planning technology, formalize an alumni peer mentoring model, expand structured campus exposure opportunities, and deepen engagement with families and caregivers. The grant will also support evaluation and storytelling to document outcomes and lessons learned, ensuring these strategies can be shared and replicated by other programs across Michigan.
“We can’t get to Sixty by 30 by doing the things we’ve always done, and our Innovative Program Grants were created to promote creative ideas and encourage organizations to take bold steps,” said MCAN Executive Director Ryan Fewins-Bliss. “These grants, which support populations that are often left out or overlooked in college conversations, will remove barriers for students and open up pathways for higher education and the increased economic mobility that comes with it.”
MCAN’s Innovative Program Grants are awarded on a quarterly basis. To learn more about these and other grant opportunities, visit micollegeaccess.org/grants.