Title V HSI Grant

Wharton County Junior College was awarded a Title V HSI Grant in 2020.  The project began October 1, 2020, and will continue through September 30, 2025.

The Grant's focus is to create a Career and Transfer Center with the primary goal of improving retention and graduation for WCJC’s Hispanic and First-time-in-college (FTIC) students.

WCJC’s Title V project emphasizes the importance of integrating career and transfer planning into a more holistic advising experience for students. We’re focusing on introducing information about careers early, and helping students set career and transfer goals while developing plans to reach them. This approach is designed to improve outcomes for our Hispanic and FTIC students since college success is strongly linked with developing and working toward meaningful career and transfer goals.

Our Title V project is committed to helping students develop the skills they need to be successful here in their educational programs and in their future careers. Through one-on-one career and transfer meetings, the Pioneer Career Summer Bridge Program, and providing internship/experiential learning opportunities for students.

Since paying for college is often a major concern, we offer scholarship opportunities for students participating in our unpaid internships as well as financial literacy support focused on helping students develop their financial skills while better understanding and utilizing the resources available to them to pay for college.

The first stage of our grant project focused on building the Career and Transfer Center on the Wharton Campus and developing our services. We will continue to work on integrating our focus on career and transfer planning into the fabric of our student’s experience.

Projects Goals 

Goal 1: WCJC will increase fall to fall persistence rates for Hispanic and FTIC students.

Goal 2: WCJC will increase three year graduation rates for Hispanic and FTIC students.

Goal 3: WCJC will increase transfer rates within three years for Hispanic and FTIC students.

WCJC received $600,000 in grant funds for the first year of the project which started in October 2020 and anticipates it will receive $3,000,000 over the five year life of the grant to continue developing the project and serving the Hispanic and FTIC students of Wharton County and our surrounding service region.

Project Highlights

Through the grant, the staff have hosted Job Fairs and career and transfer focused workshops, as well as financial literacy workshops.  They have also organized a number of university visits and a Transfer Fair to aid students in the transfer process. 

To date, the project has also awarded over 100 scholarships to students participating in unpaid internships.  To learn more about this scholarship opportunity, email Advising@wcjc.edu. 

The grant staff hosted a Pioneer Career Summer Bridge program in July 2022, for incoming students to WCJC.  The program focused on career and transfer planning for future academic and career success and was free to student participants.  In addition to earning college credit for the Psychology 1300 course, the participants visited the University of Houston-Victoria campus, traveled to NASA to learn about the multitude of careers in such an organization and participated in a site visit to LyondellBasell where they toured the facility and learned about careers in the industry.  The program also focused on topics including financial literacy, college majors, college resources, and other information aiding in college success and included tours of WCJC programs and facilities.  

If you have a high school senior who may be interested in the 2023 program, please email Advising@wcjc.edu for more information.  Spaces are limited.