Grant to Help Adult Learners Finish Degrees at UC Merced

UC Merced's Degree Completion Program has received a grant of more than half a million dollars to energize efforts to expand opportunities for adult learners to return to academics and earn a meaningful degree.

The Degree Completion Program received a two-year, $550,000 grant from the College Futures Foundation in February. UC Merced was one of eight California-based organizations to receive the grant, which College Futures calls its Unlocking Economic Mobility for Adults Learners initiative.

The program is a partnership between the university's Division of Professional and Continuing Education and the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts (SSHA).

College Futures is investing in learner-centered innovations designed to improve how postsecondary institutions support working adult learners in completing credentials that lead to economic opportunity.

The centerpiece of UC Merced's efforts with adult learners is the new liberal studies bachelor's degree, which will begin next fall.

The major, offered by the SSHA, has a flexible curriculum to which a returning student can apply a range of previously earned credits. Coursework can be customized to a student's needs and interests, drawing from disciplines ranging from psychology and history to cognitive science and global arts.

There is a close collaboration with CalTeach, which prepares students for careers as school teachers. A liberal studies degree can provide a path to earning a multiple-subject teaching credential.

Until now, the Degree Completion Program focused primarily on students who withdraw from UC Merced but intend to return. The College Futures grant will allow the program to serve regional students with some college education, providing paths to a UC degree. This includes streamlining transfer processes, developing advising models that are responsive to adult learners, and creating more accessible paths to teacher preparation.

"This support from the College Futures Foundation will allow us to explore and model ways to make the UC more accessible for adult learners while also strengthening our readiness to serve them well," said Catherine Koehler, Degree Completion Program executive director and the grant's principal investigator "We hope to expand opportunities for economic mobility by helping adult learners translate prior experience and academic progress into degree completion, career advancement and access to high-demand fields that offer long-term stability and opportunity."

Oakland-based College Futures was established in 2005. It uses a wide variety of human and financial resources and tools, including an average endowment of over $500 million and about $20 million in grants annually, to carry out a mission to foster equity, upward mobility and post-secondary completion, particularly for learners from underserved communities.