Nevada First-Gen Network students and staff with Senator Heidi Seevers Gansert
Courtesy
RENO — The Nevada First-Gen Network (NFGN) micro-grant program, which strives to improve educational outcomes and alleviate the effects of COVID-19 on prospective first-generation college students, will disperse $2.5 million to programs and initiatives throughout the state of Nevada.
Organizations can apply for up to $150,000.
Through Nevada Senate Bill No. 461, sponsored by Senator Heidi Seevers Gansert, the NFGN team conducted a statewide needs assessment that identified more than 80 existing programs and initiatives throughout urban and rural Nevada that address and reduce learning loss as well as promote critical support services that are centered on mentorship, tutoring and access to food and technology.
The term “first-generation college student” has varying definitions within different settings.
The NFGN team is working to bring awareness to this important student population and to promote a definition commonly used in higher education, which identifies first-generation college students as individuals where neither parent or guardian has received a bachelor’s degree from an institution in the U.S.
“Nevada is in need of support for our first-generation college students, particularly those who come from families with limited opportunities,” Donald Easton-Brooks, dean of the College of Education and Human Development, said. “Our Dean’s Future Scholars program and its vast success in Northern Nevada is a phenomenal model that simply cannot be replicated, which is why Senator Heidi Seevers Gansert’s support means so much to our college and the future of Nevada’s first-generation college students.”
The micro-grants will support prospective or current first-generation college students, who are in sixth grade through post-secondary education and have been negatively or disparately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic in Nevada.
Funds will be used for mentoring, tutoring, access to technology and access to food as well as activities and programming to reduce learning loss caused or exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The NFGN micro-grant program has dedicated 62% of the overall budget to disperse funds to target the highest areas of need throughout the state and allow prospective first-generation college students to directly benefit from the existing programs in their own neighborhoods.
Ultimately, the infusion of dollars back into the communities hardest hit by COVID-19 will promote educational opportunities and upward social mobility for Nevada families.
“The goal of the NFGN micro-grant program is not only to make a large-scale investment in supporting first-generation college students but to help break down the silos that often exist between higher education, the K-12 system and non-profit organizations in efforts to improve the overall quality of life for all Nevadans,” Mariluz Garcia, Ph.D., the creator of the NFGN program, said.
Interested organizations can learn more and apply for the micro-grant program at www.unr.edu/first-gen-network/micro-grants.