Sponsored Projects and Initiatives

Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs

GEAR UP is a federal program designed to decrease the dropout rate while increasing the college-going rate of middle and high school students. Through a six-year partnership funded by the Department of Education, LSU collaborates with the East Baton Rouge Parish and City of Baker School Systems and a number of community and internal partners to provide various services to students, families and teachers of the GEAR UP cohort.

LSU GEAR UP provides a number of research-based, best practice strategies through a case-managed approach. These services are aimed at ensuring academic success for the students by focusing on the student as a whole providing tutoring, mentoring, counseling, postsecondary education and financial aid information and other services. Through this approach, students receive consistent interventions, which lessen the need for remediation throughout the students’ academic career ensuring that more students graduate and succeed in postsecondary education and careers.

Through a $5.4 million grant from the U. S. Department of Education, the LSU College of Education is leading a proactive partnership of school systems and community organizations in addressing the issues of middle and high school retention, graduation and success in postsecondary education and careers. The GEAR UP partnership works with a cohort of about 1,200 students from five academically challenged schools in both the East Baton Rouge Parish School System and City of Baker School Systems. The program is designed to ensure that the students, their families and their teachers receive the services provided by GEAR UP. Five full-time GEAR UP advisors and five part-time parent liaisons work together with a number of community organizations to meet the individual needs of each GEAR UP student and family through a case-managed approach. The advisors and parent liaisons remain with the cohort of students from grade 7 – 12 providing services to the students, their families and their teachers.

• Baton Rouge Area Chamber
• Big Buddy
• City of Baker School System
• East Baton Rouge Parish School System
• Teach For America
• Volunteers In Public Schools
• YWCA Parent University

The LSU GEAR UP partnership integrates a broad range of unique strategies to ensure the success of students in the program:

• Case Managed Advising
• Professional Development (pictured right)
• Tutoring
• Personal Counseling
• Leadership Training
• Character Education
• Service Learning
• Family Activities
• Financial Assistance
• Seminars
  

• College Tours (pictured above)
• Career Development
• Field Trips/Shadowing
• Mentoring (pictured on previous page)
• Saturday Academies
• Summer Institutes
• Summer School and Independent Study
• Incentive Programs
• Twenty-first Century Scholars Certificates
• Support Services