A Carnegie Mellon University project won a $2.5 million grant Thursday from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation because of its potential to curb dropout rates at community colleges.
The money given to Carnegie Mellon's Community College Open Learning initiative is one of four grants made by the foundation. All are related to community college curriculum and aim to improve graduation rates at such institutions.
The CMU project attracted the attention of the Gates Foundation because of its strong potential to reverse high dropout rates, said Marie Groark, a foundation spokeswoman.
"We want to strengthen community colleges. Community colleges are the gateway to college education and jobs for millions people. And only about 20 percent of the people who start community college graduate," she said.
The Pittsburgh initiative, which has developed Web-based learning environments since 2002, is expanding its offerings and plans to reach more students. In addition to the Gates money, it received grants of $750,000 each from Lumina Foundation for Education in Indianapolis and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation in Menlo Park, Calif.
"The grants are a great help," said Candace Thille, the initiative's director. "We are reconfiguring our offerings with help from faculty from a variety of community colleges across the country. This will help us reach more students."
The initiative offers instruction in 12 areas -- everything from two semesters of French to chemistry and logic. It plans to add two courses, Thille said. The classes are developed by CMU's computer interaction experts, software engineers and faculty from 40 community colleges.
The Gates grant follows a $40 million award to Pittsburgh Public Schools last month.
"We are particular in who we give grants to. We look for leadership, and there are institutions in Pittsburgh like the schools and CMU that are showing real leadership," Groark said.
