The Alamo Colleges Foundation is committed to encouraging innovation in support of improving student success on each of the five Alamo Colleges.  As such, the Foundation provided each of the colleges with $10,000 in grants to be competitively awarded.     

Northwest Vista College President Dr. Ric Baser says the Alamo Colleges Foundation Innovation Grants Program is a two-year pilot project that has the potential to solidify and strengthen the culture of innovation that already exists among college employees. He added this is the first time these awards have been created on a college-wide and district-wide level.   

All of the awarded projects have met the criteria to align with the Northwest Vista College and Alamo College strategic priorities and goals. The results of these programs will be shared with college leadership and Alamo Colleges Foundation representatives as the basis for continuing the funding for a second year.    

“These grants are meant to encourage faculty and staff to create new and innovative models for instruction and student support programs to continue improving student success, persistence and completion,” Dr. Baser said.    

From the six grant proposals received, a screening committee recommended that four Northwest Vista College teams of faculty and staff be awarded grant funding as part of an innovation pilot program. The following projects will each receive awards of up to $2,500:   

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Academia & Community Partnership  program spearheaded by Rudy De la Cruz, government faculty. The $2,500 grant will support the purchase of a high-quality scanning machine to digitize a collection of primary documents and artifacts relevant to early history of San Antonio from the 1500’s through the 1800’s. The collection will have a portal access and will also be available within two affiliated Centers for Cultural Research located at the Land Heritage Institute and Northwest Vista College. The partnership will also include the American Indians in Texas at the Spanish Colonial Missions. Northwest Vista College faculty and the Tap Pilam Coahuiltecan Nation will collaborate on all document/artifact identification, digitization, portal development and cultural research facilities development activities. This project will provide unique opportunities for NVC students from a wide variety of academic disciplines to perform undergraduate research in collaboration with faculty from NVC and its partners. 

Anyone Can! spearheaded by Viviane Marioneaux, assistant professor and coordinator of Digital Media, New Media Arts & New Media Communications   programs.The $2,200 grant will provide funding for audio and video recording equipment to enable anyone to take the Digital Media course and be part of the class regardless of where they are physically located. If a student needs to miss class due to illness, work schedule, military leave, etc., they will still be able to participate in the course work by attending virtually. Students will receive instruction/lectures and have the ability to watch and interact in a synchronous manner or view a prerecorded class session asynchronously.   

Project Based Learning in an Introductory Chemistry Course spearheaded by Roopa Prasad, assistant professor of chemistry and Jacob Crandall, chemistry faculty. The $2,500 grant will pay for chemistry manuals and model kits, video editing software and conference expenses. The purpose of this project is to increase student participation, engagement, and enjoyment of learning chemistry. Students will be expected to complete reading assignments and other materials prior to class to reduce or eliminate the time spent on lectures and replace them with collaborative work and projects based on building models, experiments and presentations. Students will be able to absorb difficult concepts by applying their learning in a creative way and through storytelling. Their final projects will be presented during the annual science conference held every spring at Northwest Vista College.     

Information Literacy and Student Success: Finding a Relationship Between Information Literacy and Key Process Indicators, spearheaded by the Assessment In Action Team : Kristin Johnson, Erin Sherman, Kelly Blanco, Barbara Griest-Devora, Eliza Hernadez, Michael Lee Gardin, Denise Tolan, Linda Reeves, Judy McMilan and Norma Velez-Vendrell.    

The $2,500 grant will pay for software license renewal, faculty development and incentives for students and faculty. The purpose of this project is to conduct research of the relationship between information literacy and various indicators including student success, retention, graduation, and grade point average. The purpose of this study is to help fill the gap in existing information literacy and library research as well as strengthen to assist future students in achieving their goals. Results of this research will be shared with other higher education institutions that are struggling with the same problems.