A U.S. Department of Education grant designed to improve retention and graduation rates for low-income and first-generation students has been extended at Southeast Kentucky Community and Technical College. School President Lee Harrison said the five-year, 1-point-75-million-dollar TRIO Student Support Services grant will also benefit students with disabilities at their four campuses.
“Students that are interested in the program can be enrolled on any of those campuses and really engage those services, which provides them a lot of individualized services, tutoring, financial aid, scholarship help, career exploration, all those kinds of services,” she said.
In a time when the Trump Administration has frozen or ended many federal education programs, Harrison said she was concerned the TRIO SSS grant wouldn’t be renewed.
“We just have stayed in close connection with our partners, with this grant and the TRIO program, the U.S. Department of Education and kind of just waited it out to find out, and it was a little bit unnerving at times, but we were very thankful to continue to be continued in the program,” she said.
Harrison said since 1972, the TRIO SSS program has served more than 74-hundred students at Southeast Kentucky Community and Technical College.
