NCMC Gets Grant

North Central Missouri College in Trenton will be receiving a training grant through the MoSTEMWINs program in the amount of $663,000.
Statewide, the MoSTEMWINs grant totals $19.7 million and will be distributed among Missouri community colleges and the State Technical College of Missouri. It is awarded through the U.S. Department of Labor’s Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training Grant Program. At North Central, these funds will be used for personnel, curriculum development and tuition waivers for participants.
Jason Helton, NCMC’s Coordinator of Federal Programs, will be the grant lead.
“This new grant effort will allow us to expand certain features from previous TAACCCT grant rounds and offer them to more students.,” Helton said.
Those previous grants were MoHealthWINs (focusing on allied health programs) and MoManufacturingWINs (development of skills in manufacturing production, industrial maintenance and welding). According to the Missouri Community College Association, nearly 5,500 Missourians have received training through the first two grant programs, almost half of whom were unemployed when they started and many who had never demonstrated postsecondary success.
Helton explained the grant’s emphasis at NCMC.
“Traditional college age students, non-traditional students, and incumbent manufacturing workers will all benefit from the elements of this MoSTEMWINs funding, as these programs are focused on student success through enhanced advising, support, instruction, and career preparation,” Helton said. “STEM is an acronym for science, technology, engineering and math, subjects which will be at the center of the project. At our college, we plan to focus on two areas – expanding industry partnerships for our existing Certified Production Technician credential program (which grew from the MoManufacturingWINs grant) and revising delivery methods of beginning/developmental arithmetic and math.”
“We plan to use the teaching methods and procedures developed with this MoSTEMWINs grant project to incorporate into our regular developmental math/algebra series for the entire college population, making this grant extremely valuable to our student body’s enhanced success in this area,” NCMC Vice President of Institutional Effectiveness Dr. Jamie Hooyman added.
At North Central, the implementation of the new grant will begin in a few months though a project team of faculty and staff who possess extensive mathematics/teaching/curriculum development backgrounds.