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Project Discovery earns $175K grant to help expand resources

Dec 3, 2024

2 min

JennieV. Sorrells


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Project Discovery director JennieV. Sorrells has seen her program impact the lives of tons of students. The project, hosted by Western Carolina University, has given secondary students the opportunity to explore careers and colleges and partake in adventure-based learning.


And thanks to a six-figure grant, Project Discovery’s reach to students will be expanded.


Sorrells and co-principal investigator Eric Klein of the University of North Carolina Asheville received a $175,000 grant from the Dogwood Health Trust.


“I love working for talent search, but there are certain limitations to it and what we’re able to do, what services that we’re able to provide, just based on the structure from the Department of Education, but we knew that there were other means there,” Sorrells said.

“We’ve seen these things through our practice. We know it’s an area of need, so when I saw the opportunity, it made sense to pursue it as a way to continue to build our body of work.”


Project Discovery is an educational talent search program funded by the U.S. Department of Education that assists students in 15 schools in Western North Carolina.


The program encourages students, who are primarily income limited and potential first-generation, college-bound students, to complete their secondary education and pursue a college one.


With the grant from the Asheville nonprofit, Project Discovery will start a bridge program to support former participants in their transition into college and through their postsecondary studies.


“A lot of times, we find that that’s where students can struggle and are trying to get to know new systems, new folks, build new relationships, so I like to think of this as the idea of the ‘warm handoff,’” Sorrells said.


Project Discovery also hopes it can assist in reenrolling students who stopped their education, and it will aim to build the Higher Education Access and Success collaborative.


HEAS, which started last year, includes several organizations across Western North Carolina.


“(HEAS) is really kind of the idea of building upon the depth of knowledge that we already have in our region,” Sorrells said. “We have incredible college access programs and folks doing this kind of work, but a lot of times, we work in really siloed environments,


“This is going to give us an opportunity to come together, build a community of practice and kind of learn from each other because there are a lot of things specific to our region and population.”



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