About

San José State University was granted $3 million through the First in the World (FITW) grant program. SJSU was one of 17 Colleges, Universities, and Organizations selected from more than 300 submitted applications.

Under President Obama’s administration, the Department of Education awarded $60 million in grants to fund improvement of postsecondary education. The FITW grant program was designed to support the development, replication, and dissemination of innovative solutions to encourage students to continue with postsecondary programs.

This is the third year that this program has been in effect. With more than 300 applicants, there were 17 different recipients in 14 different states--two being in the state of California. Provost Andy Feinstein is the Principal Investigator (PI) of SJSU’s proposal.

Civil and Environmental Engineering Department Associate Professor Laura Sullivan-Green and Electrical Engineering Professor David Parent were also involved as Co-Pi and Co-I.

As part of SJSU’s Four Pillars of Student Success, university leaders are focused on clearing course bottlenecks. Surveys of students revealed that a major challenge to success is course bottlenecks – impasses where they cannot enroll in a course they need to make progress toward their degrees, or when they cannot successfully complete a course and move forward. The university will offer up to 500 additional course sections in 2016-17 to clear bottlenecks. The CSU Chancellor’s Office Proven Course Redesign and Promising Practices grants along with the First in the World grant are targeted at improving successful completion of general education courses that are needed for students to move on to upper division work.