ALBANY, N.Y. – The State of University (SUNY) recently announced more than $4.6 million in Investment and Performance Fund awards for SUNY campuses across the state, including $2 million to help students completing their online courses and programs through Open SUNY.
The Investment and Performance Fund is an endowment for campus practices that are designed to increase student access, completion, and success rates, SUNY said in a news release. Open SUNY is an online degree system that offers courses from all 64 SUNY campuses.
Fewer than half of all New Yorkers currently hold a college degree, and by 2020, nearly 70 percent of jobs in the state will require one, SUNY noted in its release. To fill this gap, the state established the SUNY Investment and Performance Fund last year. The fund supports SUNY’s “Completion Agenda,” which aims to increase the number of degrees awarded annually from 93,000 to 150,000.
The Investment and Performance Fund awards include the following:
The University at Albany, Binghamton University, University at Buffalo, and Stony Brook University will receive $1 million ($250,000 each) to build common student learning outcomes and assessments to increase completion in “high demand/high impact gateway undergraduate courses” offered online.
SUNY Morrisville and Mohawk Valley Community College (MVCC) will receive $241,000 to provide help to students in completing an information technology-related associate degree at MVCC, and a bachelor’s degree in information technology at SUNY Morrisville, according to the release.
SUNY Potsdam will receive $368,000 to offer an online master’s degree program in music and online degree program offerings by providing more Open SUNY+ courses and increasing degree and certificate enrollment and completion, according to the release.
SUNY also announced that MVCC will receive $370,000 to develop a career and transfer student-transition lab, and add a student-transition specialist to its career and transfer team. Potential collaborators on the effort include SUNY Delhi, SUNY Polytechnic, Morrisville State College, Empire State College, and SUNY Oneonta, the release stated.
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