A $1 million private donation to Georgia Perimeter College will fund projects targeting the institution’s most underserved students and help meet goals for the Complete College Georgia higher education and workforce initiative.

The donation from the Betty and Davis Fitzgerald Foundation is aimed at improving access and increasing retention, transfer and graduation rates among those students. The grant will immediately fund a remedial math instruction initiative and help expand services at a tutoring center on GPC’s Clarkston campus.

GPC will receive $250,000 a year for four years to fund programs likely to directly affect 8,000 students and benefit the college’s entire 21,000-student population.

The grant will also be used to provide scholarships for disadvantaged students, to increase partnerships with k-12 schools to improve college readiness and access for underserved students, and to revise remediation and instruction activities at the college. Those measures dovetail with the goals of the Compete College Georgia initiative, which aims to improve graduation rates and better prepare students for college-level work.

The $1 million gift will be presented Wednesday afternoon on the college’s Clarkston campus.

Georgia Perimeter College operates five locations in metro Atlanta and is the largest associates-degree-granting institution in the University System of Georgia.

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