Press Release

Bunker Hill Community College Earns Grant to Expand Higher Education Access for Latinos

Thursday, December 3, 2015

Bunker Hill Community College (BHCC) has received a $200,000 Vision Project Performance Incentive Fund grant from the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education for a project designed to help greater numbers of underserved Latino students attend college and complete their degrees. Latinos comprise 23 percent of the BHCC student population.

Chelsea high students“This project, Latino Student Success: Building Pathways from High School to Baccalaureate, will help us develop a more coherent higher education pathway for our Latino students. We are excited to begin this work,” said BHCC President Pam Eddinger.

The grant brings together BHCC, Chelsea High School, UMass Boston and local community-based organizations to collaborate on greater engagement of Latino students and their families, career and educational planning, community-based and experiential learning and aligned and accelerated curricular pathways. In addition, Latino Studies Program faculty at UMass Boston will work with BHCC faculty to integrate Latino studies into the College’s curricula.

Director of Learning Communities Liya Escalera will serve as team leader for BHCC; Lorna Rivera, associate professor of Women's and Gender Studies and director of Latino Studies, will serve as UMass Boston’s team leader for the project. “We’re eager to increase the number of Latino students from Chelsea who successfully complete college degrees,” said Mary M. Bourque, Ed.D., Superintendent of Chelsea Public Schools.

The Vision Project is a Massachusetts Department of Higher Education initiative. Its goal is to help create the best educated citizenry and workforce in the nation. Funded in FY 2012, the Vision Project Performance Incentive Fund is a competitive grant program that supports public campuses in creating or strengthening programs intended to advance Vision Project goals, including college participation, college completion, student learning, workforce alignment, preparing citizens and eliminating disparities among students from different ethnic, racial, gender and income groups.

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About Bunker Hill Community College
Bunker Hill Community College is the largest community college in Massachusetts, enrolling approximately 18,000 students annually. BHCC has two campuses in Charlestown and Chelsea, and a number of other locations throughout the Greater Boston area. BHCC is one of the most diverse institutions of higher education in Massachusetts. Sixty-five percent of the students are people of color and more than half of BHCC's students are women. The College also enrolls nearly 600 international students who come from 94 countries and speak more than 75 languages.