Grant Writing

The issue I chose to address is Access to Higher Education because I believe that especially in the Albany area, the odds of teenagers graduating from high school and going on to college are not likely. The problem is that these teens don't have role models showing them how important education is. They need to learn that in today's world it is very difficult to survive without a college degree.

To address this issue, I would like to implement a program starting in middle school(I originally thought it should start in high school, but when I looked at the blogs of others I agreed that it should start earlier) where we would begin to introduce the idea of college to them. It's crucial to make a college education seem attainable to them because many don't see it as a realistic goal. At the middle school level the program would focus on educating students on the importance of a college education. At the high school level as Hannah mentioned students should be getting SAT prep. I also think that we should introduce them to different scholarships that can be offered especially because many may not be able to afford higher education, but their are so many scholarships out there that people do not know about. After reading Steph's idea about having students play Dr. Johnson's game from Sociology last year, I feel like that could work in this case also because students would realize how challenging it is to survive without higher education.

This is a service learning project because it would engage the Siena community with the Albany community. It would require a variety of students with different majors to help out. Each aspect of the program that I listed above would need the help of students from various majors. For example a finance major would help students figure out how they are going to pay for college.