Rochester area colleges partnering to create scholarship program

The 'Legacy Scholars Program' is a partnership between RCTC, Winona State-University Rochester and Project Legacy.

Skies new on daybreak... extra help is on the way for some students of color enrolled at rochester area colleges.

It's all coming from a new grant program.

Kimt news 3's madelyne watkins joins us live this morning to tells us who's eligible to apply and how to do so.

Brooke and tyler.

This new initiative is called the "legacy scholars program" and it'll be housed right here on rctc's campus.

Students here and winona state university will get the help they need both with school and outside of school.

In a partnership between rctc, winona state university?

"* rochester and project legacy... they received 120 thousand dollars from the minnesota state system to begin the "legacy scholars program."

Just a reminder... project legacy serves at?

"*risk young people.

The interim vice president of student affairs, teresa brown, tells me this program is designed to help students through obstacles in their everyday life, while also helping them through school.

She explains they've wanted to start something like this for awhile, but following the death of george floyd and the shooting of jacob blake... it really pushed the process along quicker.

Brown says as a college, they know they've struggled to have black students meet the same outcomes as white "the opportunity to really make a change to our system, our processes, right?

The services we provide to close that gap.

That's hugely important and we need to do it.

We need to figure out how to do it.

We've tried for years and clearly what we've done in the past hasn't worked.

So this partnership is crucial to us."

The partners are meeting today to finalize the last details of when the applications are due... but brown says reach out to her if you're interested.

We'll have her information on our website kimt dot com.

Live in rochester.

Madelyne thank you madelyne.

Students of color who are enrolled in at least 6 credits and are between the ages 18 at 24 can apply.

They're