Schools around Wyoming get federal funding through the TRIO Student Support Services (TRIO-SSS) grant to help low-income, first generation and disabled students navigate the twists and turns of college. But TRIO is one of many programs up for debate as Congress hashes out the federal budget this fall.
TRIO, which got its name from three programs that started in the 1960s, now refers to an umbrella of eight initiatives run by the U.S. Department of Education that specifically target students with disadvantaged backgrounds.
That umbrella includes Upward Bound and Talent Search, which work with middle school and high school students to prepare them for college, as well as the college-specific Student Support Services program.
The University of Wyoming, Sheridan College, Northwest College in Powell and Central Wyoming College (CWC) in Riverton all receive TRIO-SSS funding to give young adults extra guidance on things like applying for financial aid and figuring out which classes to take.
“ One of the ways that I like to describe what we do is when you don't know who to ask, you ask us,” said Jeffery Sandlian, who manages the program at CWC.
TRIO-SSS has been active at the college since the late 1980s and serves 375 students every year.
“ There's very few grants across the country that are that big,” said Sandlian. “That's because of the need in our community.”
According to Sandlian, many of the students he supports are working part-time and are juggling getting a degree with the demands of a family and a job.
“ We help them get through as effectively and efficiently as possible,” he said. “We try to help advise them to make sure that they're not making choices that harm them financially or are going to make them have to take another semester of college because they took the wrong course.”
Coralina Daly is the vice president of student affairs at CWC. She said that because many TRIO students already have deep roots in the area, their education has a direct impact on the local community and the state’s economy.
“ When we affect one student, you're more likely to have a horizontal impact on cousins, sisters, aunties, whomever might also come back to school,” she said. “We're also trying to improve the overall outlook for the state by having a more educated workforce.”
According to Daly, 83% of TRIO-SSS students at CWC are in good academic standing, which also means they are still eligible for federal financial aid. She said maintaining that good standing is crucial for students to keep working toward a degree.
“Not only is it providing the opportunity for them to be in school, it's also about that incremental daily decision to keep going, [and] providing confidence and encouragement and just the logistical support in navigating college systems that makes [TRIO-SSS] such a valuable program,” Daly said.
CWC receives $468,638 a year for the TRIO-SSS program, a budget that program director Sandlian calls “well-monitored.”
“ We submit budget narratives and ideas to the Department of Education every year,” he said. “That money is being watched. It's being made sure that it's supporting students.”
The Department of Education renewed CWC’s five-year TRIO grant this August, but the grant itself still needs to be funded. That funding hinges on the upcoming appropriations bill that Congress will need to pass by the end of September to avoid a government shutdown.
Whether or not that funding will be approved is up in the air, although TRIO has bipartisan support in Congress. But an earlier Trump administration budget proposal called TRIO programs “a relic of the past” and advocated to cut their funding.
“A renewed focus on academics and scholastic accomplishment by [Institutes of Higher Education], rather than engaging in woke ideology with Federal taxpayer subsidies, would be a welcome change for students and the future of the Nation,” states the budget proposal.
U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon defended the intention to defund TRIO at a Senate subcommittee hearing in June.
“The Department of Education has no ability to go in and look at the accountability of TRIO programs … I just think that we aren't able to see the effectiveness across the board that we would normally look to see with our federal spending,” she said.
But for CWC TRIO-SSS program director Sandlian, those claims about a lack of accountability and effectiveness are based in misinformation.
“ Yes, there's the idea of, let's not waste money in places, but wasting money on helping people earn a way to a better living and a better opportunity for themselves and their community isn't a waste of money,” he said.
