A $5 million co-operative grant awarded to Zane State College and Muskingum University

ZANESVILLE, Ohio – Zane State College and Muskingum University have received a cooperative grant to boost enrollment, simplify the student transfer process, and integrate AI.

The Title III grant, worth nearly $5 million, will be spread out over the next 5 years starting this October. Part of the federal grant will pay the salaries for four new positions at Muskingum and for seven new positions at Zane State, according to the press release.

Two of those positions will be onboarding coaches to help new students come into Zane State and two will be transfer navigators who will help students understand and plan for transferring to four-year programs.

“Approximately 39% of the students coming into an institution like ours and others around the world here are first-generation students,” said Joseph Keating, president of Zane State. “They don’t understand the jargon that maybe higher ed speaks in. They don’t understand the resources that are available, whether it’s scholarships here at Zane State College or whether it’s the financial aid through Pell [Grants]. So, they’re not aware of that and that’s what these coaches and navigation coaches are here to help with.”

The other three positions will include a project director overseeing the other six positions and a work-based learning experience coordinator. The work-based learning experience coordinator will help Zane State comply with Ohio Revised Code Section 3345.83 and implement a co-op internship program that aligns with JobsOhio’s target economic sectors.

“This particular position will go out and it will engage in business with businesses, and it will actually work towards building out internships, whether they’re paid or unpaid, so students have the opportunity to engage in a real workforce setting. So when they do come out of college, they have some basic background and knowledge and those soft skills that they need to develop to make sure that they fit in and feel comfortable in the work environment.”

That last position created by this grant at Zane State is the instructional designer to help faculty embed artificial intelligence competencies into their coursework.

“As you can imagine, everyone from, you know, students to faculty to business owners are trying to navigate this in the best way that they can. There will be mistakes made, but we can learn from those mistakes and try to improve it. That’s, that’s really what I would see is the challenges moving forward. How do we make sure that students are using it responsible and how do we make sure that the industry is leveraging the resource to make them more efficient and using it responsible,” Keating said.

Zane State College and Muskingum University will be utilizing HumanSkills.ai to strengthen the staff and faculty’s AI proficiencies. According to the press release, 20 faculty members per campus per year will receive additional stipends in support of AI integration. The press release also says that these efforts are in alignment with the U.S. Department of Labor’s Artificial Intelligence Literacy Framework.

“So it’s important to understand that we need to provide resources and training opportunities for faculty to get upskilled into that new technology and that’s why this piece is important,” Keating said. “And it will help our employees here. It will help them learn how to use AI to make their jobs more efficient so they can serve the students more effectively and that’s really the underlying premise of AI.”

Zane State College hopes to have these job openings posted online by mid-October. An article on the Title III grant’s impact on Muskingum University will be published on Wednesday. You can also read the press release from Zane State University through the link below.