A $300,000 grant from Bank One, Michigan, will allow Wayne State University to expand a retention program aimed at increasing graduation rates for students in the College of Lifelong Learning's Division of Community Education (DCE).

DCE students do not meet traditional admission requirements for Wayne State and frequently can benefit from additional support to stay in college and succeed.

Students enrolled in the DCE program receive supplemental instruction and counseling, academic advising, tutoring and financial aid counseling. These services help students improve their academic skill levels and give them the confidence to continue their pursuit of higher education.

Students currently in the program receive supplemental services until they have completed 30 credit hours of "C" grade work or 24 credit hours of "B" grade work. Then they transfer to one of the university's other schools or colleges.

Once in these other colleges the students may avail themselves of the services available to all students, but they no longer receive the specialized attention they got in DCE.

Bank One's grant will help change all that. The Bank One donation, spread over three years, will help the College of Lifelong Learning expand the program to track former DCE students and support their progress through graduation.

The Bank One grant will help fund the hiring of a transition advisor for the students and four peer advisors/tutors; a secretary; office supplies; and training and support sessions for the students.

The expansion of the program could not have been launched without Bank One's cooperation and contribution, according to Robert Carter, dean of the College of Lifelong Learning.

"This grant will allow us to give students an avenue to turn their lives around," he said. "The key thing is that it will help us to have an increasingly larger number of students walking across the stage at graduation . . .we will advise them and try to help them navigate their way through a Carnegie I research institution, where often they get lost. Right now the program focuses on persistence, but expanding and strengthening it will allow us to focus on the prize, which is graduation."

Laura Trudeau, vice president of contributions and memberships for Bank One, Michigan, agrees.

"Graduation is the compelling goal of this program and that's why we want to be part of it," she said. "This grant will help to create more educational and economic opportunities for people in metro Detroit."