Last summer, Arizona Western College’s TRIO KEYS program was waiting for news of its grant renewal. The last day of its program cycle had come and gone, but there was no word from the federal government on their application status.
Known as KEYS at AWC, the program is nationally recognized as Student Support Services, and it’s part of the federal TRIO programs. While two of the original programs focus on helping people go to college, Student Support Services specifically focuses on helping them stay in college through wraparound support.
These services often benefit students who need extra support, such as first generation and low-income students.
Since it’s a federal grant, the program runs on five year cycles. August 2025 marked the end of the most recent cycle at AWC. Typically, they would’ve had notice by that point on renewal or non-renewal.
But despite the delay, AWC TRIO Director Michelle Thomas has a positive update.
“Well, the happy news is that the AWC Student Support Services, which we affectionately call Keep Envisioning Your Success – the KEYS program – did receive in the end of September notification from the U.S. Department of Education that we were funded for the next grant cycle from 2025 to 2030,” she said. “And we're excited that we did receive that notification and excited to still be continuing to provide service here at AWC for how long ever that will be!”
Thomas explained that the future of the program is about as secure as it can be for an Education Department grant. While some questions remain, it’s not unusual given the nature of federal funding.
“Our funding is based off of what Congress does as far as and how it allocates funds, so we are on a year-by-year notice because we need to make sure that we're meeting what we're funded to serve,” she said. “It's just not like, ‘Oh, you get money for five years, but you haven't done anything with this money.’ So it is that check and balance has always been in place with the reporting to make sure that we are using the money appropriately and for what it's for.”
The renewal notification shifted the program start date by almost a month, but this didn’t have an impact on students.
“There's been no lapse of service for our students and our delivery of service, nothing of that nature. Actually, we had received even at the end of August – which is when the, the prior grant expired was initially was the 31st of August – but we had received an extension from the Department of Ed through the end of September,” Thomas said. “So if there were any funds that were still available– it was no cost extension so there wasn't any additional monies given to it – but if you had monies left, you could still use them through that time as they were still working through the funding down the slate, and all that wonderful stuff they were doing.”
She noted that TRIO at AWC was very grateful that no staff had to be laid off and no services were closed down.
“Cristina Gonzalez, who I report directly to, [was] very supportive of what we were doing and didn’t say, “Okay, Michelle, you know. you got to start packing up!” No, so there wasn’t any of that discussion. It was just that hope, that silent hope and that this was all going to work out as it did,” Thomas commented.
As to why there was a delay in the first place, Thomas couldn’t say with certainty, but she suspected that it was due to changing dynamics in the government.
“It’s just that it was a lot that has been going on since the transition from one administration to the other that we got caught in that; I think that is really what happened with us,” she said. “Personally, just my opinion … is it was just with a lot of the individuals that, how they’ve been downsizing the size of the workforce for the federal government, there were just a lot of people that were leaving, and that left some, I think, some gaps before this even shut down.
“This was prior to the shutdown so with those individuals who maybe took early retirement and some of the different offerings they had made, I think it just left them short-handed and it just really kind of interrupted the whole process.”
While KEYS’ future now stands on more solid ground, it’s only one third of TRIO at AWC. There’s also Upward Bound and Talent Search, which are more outreach-focused.
Thomas told KAWC that it’s a grant writing year for Talent Search and there’s still some annual reporting pending.
“There's still a lot of unknowns and navigating and that is what's going on across the country right now, but our TRIO colleagues across the country, the initiative to continue to go forward and serve the students that our programs serve across the 50 states and territories, you know, that hasn't waned,” she said. “... I wouldn't say no clouds, you know, in the sky. There's still some clouds out there that could still fester into some storms, but that's okay. We're going to ride the waves.”
Right now, however, things are going pretty well for KEYS.
“We've had a really strong recruiting, you know, our intake this year with our incoming freshmen students, and they're responding very well to the services and engagement with us,” Thomas said. “So I'm glad that we're not going to have to stop that. We can continue to serve from sixth grade through the time students are here and then helping them to transfer on.”
This reporting is supported by a grant from the Arizona Local News Foundation.
