UC Merced gets funding to give help to undeclared

A new grant from the U.S. Department of Education will help UC Merced establish support services for first-generation and low-income students who have yet to declare a major, the university announced.

The more than $1 million grant will be used to launch the Strengthening Talents and Exploring Pathways program, according to a news release. It is set to be part of the Calvin E. Bright Success Center’s Fiat Lux program, which serves underrepresented students at UC Merced.

Elizabeth Boretz, the Bright Success Center’s director, said the funding will be used to address the needs of students in their second year. Nationwide, two-thirds of students who drop out do so in their second year, the release stated, and 75 percent of those who drop out in that year never complete their degrees.

The center focuses on helping students finish their degrees in a timely manner. “(The grant) is a way of taking what we are already doing and building another arm out from there just for the undeclared,” Boretz said in the release.

The goals for the new program include increasing the retention rate by 5 percent and increasing the four-year graduation rate from 37.6 percent to 50 percent among students eligible for the program, the release stated. The program also aims to get every student to declare a major by junior year.

UC Merced campus data show that undeclared students face academic dismissal at two to three times the rate of their peers who have declared a major.

The university looks to begin the program with the start of school this week, but the program should be in full swing by the end of the fall semester after a coordinator and a counselor for the program are hired.

Boretz said the campus’s underrepresented students can get special attention through the Fiat Lux Scholars program, which focuses mainly on first-year students.

This story was originally published August 24, 2015 at 12:44 PM with the headline "UC Merced gets funding to give help to undeclared."