MARCH 2, 2021 — UTSA is one of 190 institutions selected by the U.S. Department of Education to participate in a new program that allows them to pay work-study–eligible students for off-campus work experience.
The program advances the university’s Classroom to Career Initiative by allowing UTSA students to seek a broader range of employment opportunities that better align with their academic goals and career aspirations and ultimately providing them with a greater understanding of marketable skills needed in the workplace.
The Federal Work-Study Experimental Sites program is awarding UTSA an additional $700,000 annually in federal funding to support at least 100 students over the next three years.
Through this new initiative, participating institutions are granted waivers, which allow the use of federal work-study funds to support more students working off-campus, and for the first time allow them to pay students for work experiences required by their academic programs, such as apprenticeships, internships, externships and clinical rotations.
Student teaching is one example. “We are excited about this work-study off-campus opportunity and the support it will provide for our teacher candidates,” said Belinda Bustos Flores, associate dean of professional preparation and partnerships in the College of Education and Human Development. “Specifically, this funding will provide our teacher candidates’ financial support while they are engaged in yearlong clinical teaching, which is very demanding, and will offset the need to attain outside work.”
The program helps to further UTSA’s Career FUEL Quality Enhancement Plan, which focuses on developing students’ marketable skills and career readiness through experiential learning. It will also benefit employers, since they will be able to engage with future graduates, have the ability to teach workplace competencies, and be able to offset the cost of hiring student employees.
“We are looking forward to increased partnerships with business leaders and the real-world experience they can bring to our students,” said Ginnifer Cie Gee, associate vice provost for career-engaged learning and director of the QEP. “We are also excited about the opportunities this will open for our students to gain career readiness experience while being supported financially.”
To be selected for the experiment, schools needed to show a strong record in Title IV administration and evidence that demonstrates strong standards of financial responsibility.
This program is designed to help the Department of Education assess the benefits to students when they are paid for off-campus work study employment aligned with their program, as measured by student retention, graduation rates and improved employment opportunities. The experiment will provide important data to inform future policy proposals on Federal Work-Study reform.
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The Racial Justice Book Club was established at UTSA by members of the campus community to explore social justice following acts of racial violence across the nation over the last few years. We are reading The Injustice Never Leaves You: Anti-Mexican Violence in Texas by Monica Muñoz Martinez. We will meet every Wednesday in September and October at 2 pm on Zoom.
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Virtual EventThe University of Texas at San Antonio is dedicated to the advancement of knowledge through research and discovery, teaching and learning, community engagement and public service. As an institution of access and excellence, UTSA embraces multicultural traditions and serves as a center for intellectual and creative resources as well as a catalyst for socioeconomic development and the commercialization of intellectual property - for Texas, the nation and the world.
To be a premier public research university, providing access to educational excellence and preparing citizen leaders for the global environment.
We encourage an environment of dialogue and discovery, where integrity, excellence, inclusiveness, respect, collaboration and innovation are fostered.
UTSA is a proud Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) as designated by the U.S. Department of Education.
The University of Texas at San Antonio, a Hispanic Serving Institution situated in a global city that has been a crossroads of peoples and cultures for centuries, values diversity and inclusion in all aspects of university life. As an institution expressly founded to advance the education of Mexican Americans and other underserved communities, our university is committed to ending generations of discrimination and inequity. UTSA, a premier public research university, fosters academic excellence through a community of dialogue, discovery and innovation that embraces the uniqueness of each voice.
