Grants

The Office of Grants Management (OGM) supports the mission and strategic goals of San Jacinto College by providing accessible, affordable, high-quality basic skills training, academic support, and post-secondary educational programs. These activities are targeted to prepare students to enter a dynamic job market, to transfer to senior institutions of higher education, to achieve their personal and professional goals, and to assume leadership roles in a culturally and ethnically diverse global community. The office, in conjunction with 50 plus grant project directors, cultivate partnerships with local, state, and federal, public, private, and nonprofit entities to secure the funding required for a wide variety of academic and workforce development programs.

OGM provides pre-award grant proposal application development and administration support and guidance to SJC faculty and staff applying for external and internal program funding initiatives. It coordinates post-award grant accounting, reporting, and auditing activities as required by awarding agencies. Its organizational knowledge of the grant market and institutional needs enables OGM to leverage College strengths and faculty expertise to provide the District and its students with the highest quality financial support possible.

Befitting the diversity of its academic and workforce development programs, SJC competes for funding from a wide variety of sources. OGM is currently administering almost $35 million in grant funding, and has another $17.4 million pending or under development. Of its current grant portfolio, approximately 60% is derived from federal sources (e.g., the Department of Education, the Department of Labor, and the National Science Foundation), 32% from Texas state agencies, 7.5% from local nonprofit organizations, and the remainder from locally represented private industries. Many of the grant funded programs would not exist without this financial support.

Consistent with SJC mission and priorities, OGM administers grant and scholarship support in a variety of areas. Particularly successful examples include programs strengthening the academic pipeline for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics graduates (NSF, NASA, TWC), improving teacher training (THECB), and providing support for at-risk students (Department of Education, TRIO).

In spite of its success in attracting and administering grant funding over the past several years, OGM recognizes that challenges to continued success exist. The grant environment is becoming much more competitive at both federal and local levels with a higher demand for accountability and performance measurables. For example, the NSF has begun to favor a strategy that emphasizes awards for fewer, larger grants that more easily meet these measureables. This directly affects the competitiveness of small colleges vis-à-vis larger institutions. In addition to making federal funding awards more difficult to win, widespread federal budget retrenchment is placing a greater burden on nonprofit organizations, private donors, and foundations. Grants from these sources are becoming much more competitive as well.

In response, OGM is vigorously pursuing a number of strategies to increase its competitiveness. Through internal training and outreach programs, it is providing enhanced informational and collateral support to SJC faculty and staff. It is actively pursuing partnerships with other institutions of higher learning (two-year and four-year institutions), and regional industries to enhance the scope, impact, and attractiveness of its programs. OGM’s organizational structure has also been modified to better serve the needs of its constituencies, and to reflect the challenges it faces in the grant market.