Officials at Northern Oklahoma College are excited to announce that NOC was awarded a $1.75 million federal grant from the United States Department of Education, Office of Legislation and Congressional Affairs, to improve technology and extend educational access. The grant will be awarded over a five-year period beginning with the Oct. 1, 2016 – Sept. 30, 2017 budget period.
The Native American-Serving Nontribal Institutions (NASNTI) program grant and related assistance awarded to NOC is for the purpose of improving academic programs and fiscal support for student services.
“NOC is thrilled to be awarded this federal funding to help Native American students by enhancing academic services to assist them in achieving their academic goals,” said Dr. Cheryl Evans, NOC president. “I’m proud of our grants staff and committee members along with other employees who have worked so hard to help bring these new resources to our students. We look forward to working with the tribal governments of our students as we develop new ways to help more individuals have the life changing experience of completing a college education at NOC.”
To better serve Native American students, NOC formulated a project entitled, “Merging Tradition and Technology: Engaging Native American and Low Income Students to Complete College.”
The project includes three related initiatives. Number one is to expand access to high demand, high quality courses by redesigning 30 online courses to meet “Quality Matters” certification standards, adding interactive television (ITV) classroom and computer lab access sites at six area tribal centers to promote Native American student enrollment utilizing ITV and online courses. The second initiative is to develop and improve online services to update static online services to be interactive and data-driven to promote student success. The third is to support Native American student success by developing culturally-aligned tutoring and mentoring, cultural and language preservation activities both on campus and online, professional development for faculty and staff on strategies to support Native American student success and establish a new Cultural Engagement Center to house new support services and resources.