Excelencia in Education Receives Grant from Wal-Mart

A $1.49 million grant from the Wal-Mart Foundation is providing the seed money for Excelencia in Education's new national initiative-- Growing What Works--designed to increase the higher education success rate of Latinos in the United States.

With funding supplied by the Wal-Mart Foundation, Excelencia in Education will catalog powerful institutional practices and strategies to improve educational outcomes for Latinos throughout the country. Beginning in the first quarter of 2009, eligible colleges and universities will be able to apply for competitive "Wal-Mart SEMILLAS" grants to replicate these proven programs on their campuses. The acronym SEMILLAS (Spanish for "seeds") stands for Seeding Educational Models that Impact and Leverage Latino Academic Success.