Appalachian GEAR UP (Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs) provides college-going programming to students and families, academic support in schools, professional development for teachers and administrators, and more in order to improve college access in rural Western North Carolina.
GEAR UP Student Support and Programs
GEAR UP is a federally funded college access program designed to increase the number of students who are prepared to enter and succeed in postsecondary education immediately after high school. Learn more about the services and programming available to GEAR UP students.
A collection of resources to inform, guide, and empower your local GEAR UP program.
The Coordinator's Guide to Successful GEAR UP College Visits for Middle and High School Students and Families provides resources and planning tips to help design and implement an intentional, informative, inspirational, and interactive campus visit.
Exploring the Global Impact of Innovation Outside Our Own Walls
On June 12, 2023, ten cohort LEA districts, eleven third-party organizations, and cohort higher education partners sent over one hundred representatives to the Academic Innovation Conference (AIC) 2023 held in Asheville, NC. The ultimate outcome resulted in illuminating western NC's accomplishments of scholars and communities in academics through the lens of global innovative strategies, experiences, and cultures.
Academic Innovation Mini (AIM) Grants are designed to support individual and school passion projects aimed at improving academic performance through innovative classroom experiences that engage, inspire, enhance, and motivate student learning.
The Education Policy Fellowship Program (EPFP) is a national program that engages a diverse and collaborative community of strategic leaders to promote equitable education policy. Participants from Appalachian GEAR UP districts receive funding to cover the cost of participation.
Project IMPACT
Project IMPACT is a research effort geared towards improving ACT scores across the GEAR UP districts. Beginning with the class of 2025, the ACT will again be required for admission to 4-year public universities. Also, scoring a 22 in Reading or Math helps incoming students clear an academic hurdle by helping them place out of remedial Math and English courses at 4-year and 2-year colleges.
Schools will employ the Project IMPACT intervention sequence during English 3 and Math 3 courses. Teachers will receive training and support in the execution of the intervention. GEAR UP hopes that the results of the intervention will be an improvement in student proficiency in Reading and Math in the 2025 standard state administration of the ACT.
Counselor Network
Counselors at rural secondary schools are often faced with a limited, and sometimes non-existent, peer group. They also struggle to find high-quality professional development due to geographic isolation and tiny budgets for professional counselor development in districts with a single, small high school. GEAR UP’s Counselor Network endeavors to connect isolated counselors across our ten districts with resources normally out of reach for single high-school districts. We have contracted with the American School Counselor Association (ASCA) to provide training on the ASCA National Model for school counselors, and more importantly, connect counselors so they have a network of peers to collaborate with and lean on.
Rural Teacher Leadership Network
GEAR UP in conjunction with the Public School Forum and Leading Edge Learning host the Rural Teacher Leader Network. RTLN is a year-long professional learning cohort of educators from western North Carolina, that focuses on equity, trauma-informed practices, global learning, policy and teacher leadership.
MATH I RipTide
Math 1 Research Innovation Program Tied to Innovative Design in Education (RIPTIDE) is a research study evaluating the impact of using instructional strategies such as station-based learning to address low-performing student outcomes in Mathematics. In partnership with Emerald Education, ninth grade teachers participate in a cohort experience that brings together face to face professional development, virtual coaching and asynchronous course structures that focus on the development of data-driven decision making, the exploration of learning modalities, blended learning models, as well as formal and informal assessment structures.
Global Leaders
An initiative through our Participate Learning partnership, teachers or schools participate in modules focused on identifying global issues and tackling them through the context of the classroom and community.