Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education
U.S. Department of Education

Purpose:
The program supports and disseminates innovative reform projects that promise to be models for improving the quality of postsecondary education and increasing student access. Awards are made in a number of areas including: postsecondary education access; retention and completion; student preparation for college; cost-effectiveness; and curricula reform.

What makes a successful FIPSE Comprehensive Project?
1. Projects are innovative in goal, method, scope, target population, cost, or efficiency.

2. Projects possess clear and specific goals that relate to student learning, faculty development, or institutional change.

3. Projects articulate specific objectives that can be assessed for success, partial success, or failure in a manner that an educated non-specialist would find convincing.

4. A successful application should have a clear statement about how the proposed project is expected to impact the campus and/or the field five years after it has been completed.

5. Projects, if demonstrated to be successful, have game-changing implications for how some aspect of postsecondary education is done on a regional or a national level.

6. Projects are well-managed and meet all specific grant requirements.

Project directors demonstrate that they have made efforts to summarize activities, procedures, and results and then disseminate them to the target audience within the postsecondary education community either through presentations, publications, Web sites, or training workshops.

Awards: $20.3 million for about 28 awards, each ranging from $500,000-$750,000 for a three-year project.

For additional information: http://www2.ed.gov/programs/fipsecomp/index.html

*****FIPSE Comprehensive Web Conference*****

Program officer Claire Cornell has agreed to present at a web conference on Thursday, April 21, 2011 at 2 pm Eastern. Interested stakeholders, particularly those unfamiliar with the Comprehensive Program, all are encouraged to register at http://www.aascu.org/grcinfo/webcon/2011/0421FIPSEwebconRegform.pdf  soon.

Cornell plans to review the current solicitation’s selection criteria and priorities. She stresses that applicants should begin writing now and then use the web conference information to tweak proposals as needed before the May 23, 2011 deadline.