The Academic Institutions for Military Students (AIMS) Network, headquartered at The University of Texas at El Paso, has received a second grant from The Kresge Foundation to continue working on better serving military-affiliated students throughout their pursuit of degree completion.
The Kresge Foundation awarded the AIMS Network $740,000 to continue developing the network’s programs, polices and procedures to better serve military-affiliated students.
The military-affiliated student population is comprised of active duty U.S. military service members and their dependents, and U.S. military veterans.
Donna E. Ekal, Ph.D., associate provost in the Office for Undergraduate Studies, is the primary investigator of the AIMS Network, which consists of nine public academic institutions of higher education near seven military installations in five states. Together, the network has the potential to serve more than 400,000 military-affiliated students.
The AIMS Network supports military-affiliated students by encouraging partnership among public colleges and universities to facilitate ease of transfer among participating academic institutions, leading to increased degree completion and student engagement through the creation and sharing of successful policies, programs and procedures.
“The Kresge Foundation’s continued support for AIMS allows us to implement what we have been working toward over the past two years,” Ekal said. “Faculty and staff at the AIMS institutions want to do much more to support our shared military affiliated student population and, through the network, infrastructure and opportunities we will be developing, can work together to make a significant impact on our collective ability to move these students through to degree completion.”
Network member institutions work together to help military-affiliated students transfer between schools as they move with their careers in the pursuit of degree completion. Efforts include transferring the academic education among member institutions, campus engagement initiatives, and cross-institutional research.
The new grant will cover the two-year period from Jan. 1, 2015 through Dec. 31, 2016.
For more information, please visit academics.utep.edu/aims or contact Anna M. Burns, AIMS Network director, at 915-747-7386.