02/26/2016

With just months left in the school year, GEAR UP (an acronym for Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Program) has been assisting high school student in both Carbon and Emery counties this year with several of the services their program offers.

The grant based program is structured to assist low-income students to enter and succeed in postsecondary education. Kris Alley, GEAR UP Advisor at USU Eastern said, “We are a government program and how we are funded is by the amount of enrollees, so if you know we want to make a strong viable program to get the youth of Carbon and Emery counties educated.” The process to get into GEAR UP is a quick application and the benefits of the program are worth it for the student, as well as for parent to be able to be involved and well informed of their education.

Students involvement in the program will help them to aim high, stay in school, study hard and develop the skills needed to prepare them for college. GEAR UP helps navigate the student into the college application and enrollment process. “What we do is try to encourage three college submissions; we will walk you through the process make sure you have everything ready, especially your FAFSA for the Federal Government to achieve a student loan and a Pell Grant,” said Alley.

Other services offered are preparation for high school graduation, academic tutoring and mentoring services, academic support, test preparation, career/study skills workshops, family support and college campus tours. Alley added, “We are headed down to Cedar City to SUU it’s a great, great school, surprisingly one of the bigger schools in Utah, a lot of great programs.” Two other campus visits are planned in April, Dixie State in St. George and Mesa State in Grand Junction.

Parents should not feel discouraged about trying to figure out how to send their child to college. “There is a lot of money. You have to go through the application process and yes it is a lot of paper work, but if you are diligent there is a lot of free money for you out there you just have to take the time and initiative.  We can help you with that process, so please use us, we’re valuable resource and we want to see you and your child succeed,” said Alley.

For more information on GEAR UP you can visit their website at http://usueastern.edu/gearup/index.html or join their Facebook page USU-Eastern GEAR UP or call 613-5648

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