NEWS - Education & Colleges

SBJ Staff Report

Jan 9, 2012 - Savannah State University’s (SSU) Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs (GEAR UP) initiative has been approved for $2.8 million in grant funding from the U.S. Department of Education for a seven-year period from 2011-2018.

The GEAR UP program is a unit of ACCESS Programs (Assuring Commitment, Continuity and Excellence for Students’ Success) at SSU and aims to increase the number of low-income students prepared to enter and succeed in post-secondary education.  The grant money will support the GEAR UP initiative already in place at DeRenne Middle School in Savannah, where services such as academic instruction and advisement, educational field trips, mentoring, job shadowing and financial literacy sessions are provided to approximately 500 students in the sixth and seventh grades.  GEAR UP will transition with these students as they successfully progress from DeRenne Middle School to Beach High School.

A separate, $3.16 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education is currently funding the GEAR UP program at Groves High School and the School of Liberal Studies at Savannah High School, which serves more than 900 students in the 11th and 12th grades.  In addition to SSU, the program is supported through primary partners that include Savannah-Chatham County Public School System; Parent University; Queensborough National Bank & Trust; the Savannah chapter of the American Association of Blacks in Energy (AABE); St. Joseph’s/Candler Hospital and others.

Established in 1890, Savannah State University is the oldest public historically black college or university in Georgia and the oldest institution of higher learning in the city of Savannah.  The university’s 4,500 students select majors from 25 undergraduate and five graduate programs in the School of Teacher Education and three colleges: Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, Business Administration and Sciences and Technology.