Orangeburg-Calhoun Technical College has been designated as the Lead Institution for a Consortium comprised of three majority minority serving technical colleges located in under-served and under-resourced rural communities of lower South Carolina. The three partnering institutions have a common mission to provide quality education and promote economic development. This mission has been severely interrupted by the challenges of COVID-19. Therefore, the Consortium is seeking funding for a $1,767,896.00 grant through Institutional Resilience and Expanded Postsecondary Opportunity grants program to address these challenges. Denmark Technical College, a Historically Black College or University, and Williamsburg Technical College are the other partners in the Consortium. The three colleges serve a rural six county area. Each county contains Qualified Opportunity Zones. The proposed innovative and crucial project is called South Carolina Pathways for Rural Innovation and Dual Credit Expansion, or SC-PRIDE. All area school districts, the SC Technical College System, and the SC Department of Education are grant partners. SC-PRIDE meets the ABSOLUTE PRIORITY of the solicitation by providing infrastructure and resources for each college to ensure the resilient curriculum delivery models and online support services necessary to train a future workforce during a global pandemic.
The project’s stated goal is: To provide an innovative K-14 program of Dual Credit Pathways using resilient curriculum delivery models and online support services to introduce and transition under-represented and rural students to college and to the workforce during the continuing challenges of COVID-19. The objectives stated below will help this rural region to regain lost momentum caused by COVID-19 disruptions.
Additionally, the new tools and software for resilient services may be leveraged to support more than 3600 technical college students annually from this FIPSE grant funding.