{"id":18854,"date":"2011-09-24T08:36:37","date_gmt":"2011-09-24T08:36:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newspaper.ctsi-logistics.com\/?p=18854"},"modified":"2011-09-24T08:36:37","modified_gmt":"2011-09-24T08:36:37","slug":"nmc-increases-grant-awards-doubles-recipients-of-cacg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/nmc-increases-grant-awards-doubles-recipients-of-cacg\/","title":{"rendered":"NMC increases grant awards; doubles recipients of CACG"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>By Moneth Deposa<br \/>\nReporter<\/div>\n<p>The Northern Marianas College has increased the grant awards and doubled the number of students receiving financial aid from the federally funded College Access Challenge Grant.<\/p>\n<p>Leo Pangelinan, dean of Student Services, said the college made the move because of dwindling financial assistance received by students from the local government.<\/p>\n<p>Pangelinan is alluding to both the Saipan Higher Education Financial Assistance and the CNMI Scholarship Office scholarship programs, which are suffering from delayed disbursement of checks.<\/p>\n<p>NMC is a recipient of the U.S. Department of Education&#8217;s College Access Challenge Grant Program that provides $1.5 million yearly for four years. It is a community collaborative effort aimed at helping students who are Native Pacific Islanders and come from low-income families in the Commonwealth to enroll, remain, and succeed in college.<\/p>\n<p>According to Pangelinan, 2011 marks the fourth year of the grant cycle and he anticipates a decision for a new grant for school year 2011-2012, amounting to $1.5 million yearly.<\/p>\n<p>In the past four years, NMC committed about $240,000 from the grant for scholarships while the rest of the fund went to programs such as Smart Seminars and Cash for College workshops, Pangelinan said. The $240,000 was availed of by about 190 students, each receiving $1,200 per semester.<\/p>\n<p>Starting this year, he said NMC will commit $500,000 from the expected $1.5 million for the scholarship program of students.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBecause we will commit one-third of the grant funding for students&#8217; scholarship, this means that each student will also receive a higher award from $1,200 per semester to $1,500 per semester. An estimated over 300 students will benefit from this grant.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>SHEFA cut all financial award amounts starting in the spring semester. The CNMI Scholarship Office is also evaluating its programs and policies.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBecause of the situation of the locally funded scholarship programs for our students, NMC felt that it&#8217;s prudent to increase the federal support to offset the decrease in local support,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Eligibility for the College Access Challenge Project is determined through the free application for federal student aid, FAFSA.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Moneth Deposa Reporter The Northern Marianas College has increased the grant awards and doubled&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18854\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}