PRESQUE ISLE – High-schoolers in northern Maine may have a better shot at making it to college and sticking with their undergraduate goals because of a $150,000 renewable grant from the Nellie Mae Education Foundation.

Officials recently selected the University of Maine at Presque Isle and Caribou High School to participate in the foundation’s grant program, “Transitions: A Partnership for College Success.”

The Aroostook County alliance is one of four university-high school partnerships in New England and the only one in Maine participating in the program.

The five-year grant program, under the foundation’s College Prep initiative, focuses on strengthening collaborations between universities and high schools to better prepare students for college and increase the likelihood of their success there.

Program goals include expanding the educational aspirations of students and their families, preparing students for post-secondary education, increasing the number of students making the transition to college, and establishing a dialogue between faculty and staff at the institutions.

The university and high school applied for the grant in March, but did not receive confirmation of the grant award until recently. Project officials will receive $150,000 for the first year of the program and have the opportunity to renew the grant for the next four years. Both institutions became invested in the project last year after Rod Doody of the Central Aroostook Council on Education found out about the program and brought it to the attention of local officials. Doody now serves as the UMPI-CHS project director.

Officials see the selection as giving northern Maine an important step up, educationally speaking.

“For this to be the only partnership in Maine is very exciting,” project coordinator Mike McCormack said Monday.

“It’s cutting-edge work, especially for this area,” he said. “And it’s an opportunity to work with two of the leading educational foundations in the country: Nellie Mae and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation. They’re at the top [in education] in terms of research and best practices. We’re going to learn from them and apply these new learnings to help our own kids.”

The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation will provide technical assistance as the intermediary for the Maine project.

Officials will spend most of their time during the first year of the program planning, conducting research and analysis, and increasing the collaboration between the two institutions. Faculty and staff from UMPI and CHS met this fall and plan to meet again in January to discuss curriculum and assessment systems, compare student work and adapt syllabi.

Project officials also will establish a transitions center at Caribou High School this school year so students can receive tutoring, mentoring and academic support services. They will set up a similar center for all students at the university next year.

Farther down the road, officials plan to offer dual credit courses – classes that would give students simultaneous high school and college credit – and establish an Early College Experience Program, which would provide students with courses of interest to them that are delivered by university faculty.

They also have plans to bring CHS students to the UMPI campus for cultural, social and sports events so they can become comfortable with college campus life. Officials expect such offerings will help not only in getting students interested in college, but also in keeping them there.

“That way, when students arrive at college, they already will have had a start, which can do a whole lot in terms of helping with retention,” McCormack said.

Ultimately, officials hope to develop a model to be used at other school districts in the county and state.

“Our goal is to increase opportunities for college access for all students,” McCormack said. “[In five years] we want to see students at the secondary level experiencing greater academic success, more students applying to and receiving acceptances into colleges and universities, and a larger percentage of those students graduating from programs and better prepared to enter the work force.”