Fresno State’s Foundation is one of seven national winners of grants totaling $41.3 million from the U.S. Department of Education to boost retention and graduation rates for underserved students.

The grants were announced Wednesday morning.

The Fresno State Foundation’s grant is $7,959,963 and will be used to develop an “enhanced advising project” to improve retention and completion rates.

Fresno State officials did not immediately comment Wednesday morning.

Later Wednesday Dr. Gillisann Haroutunian, executive director of university initiatives, said in an email that the “Strengthening Advising, Strengthening Results (START)” program will focus on sustained, personalized relationships between coach-advisors and individual students throughout their time at Fresno State.

It will include a randomized controlled trial of 8,500 students to assess the program’s effectiveness as well as technology enhancements to improve the advising, Haroutunian said. If successful, the program may be shared with the CSU’s other 22 campuses.

The goal is to reduce the CSU’s graduation rate, which currently is six years for freshmen, to five and then four years. The result will be “enormous savings for both the student and the State of California,” Haroutunian said.

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The foundation is the only grant awardee in California. Of the seven grants awarded, two are in New York, two in Texas, one in Massachusetts, and one in Oregon. The Fresno State Foundation grant is the second-largest of the seven.

According to the Education Department, three of the grant awardees are in the early phases and the other four are in the mid-phase to expansion phase of their projects, based on research evaluating their effectiveness in improving student outcomes.

The grants are being provided under the Postsecondary Student Success Grant program, which aims to improve college student outcomes including keeping students in college and on track to graduate, and to evaluate programs that are successful.

Improving Graduation Rates

Only 62% of students graduate within six years nationally, including fewer than half of Black students, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, the Education Department said. But the national rate has grown by 7 percentage points over the past 10 years, signaling that new approaches are helping hundreds of thousands more students earn their degrees, the department said.

“Across the country, colleges and universities are rejecting the old idea that weeding out students was a sign of quality, and instead they are taking responsibility for all of their students’ success,” U.S. Under Secretary of Education James Kvaal said in a news release. “These awards will not only help find new ways to help students graduate; they will help change expectations.”

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The grant awardees will be required to submit an independent evaluation of the effectiveness of their project. The program targets funds to the most under-resourced institutions by focusing on Title III and V institutions, or nonprofits or states that partner with such institutions.

Fresno State’s designation as a minority-service institution under Titles III and V of the Higher Education Act of 1965 was approved by the Education Department in 2018. Fresno State’s enrollment in the fall of 2023 was 59% Hispanic, 12% Asian, 16% white, and 3% Black.

The grant was awarded to the Fresno State Foundation, which provides fiscal management of and accounting services for such grants, Haroutunian said. The program is delivered by university faculty, staff, and administration.