Grant Connects Community to Emerging Technology and Skills

By Luciana Chavez

The lack of internet access leads to a lack of corresponding technical skills, and that factor alone has perpetuated disparities in education, health care and economic opportunities.

In October 2022, Merced College received a federal grant that challenged educational institutions to remove any barriers that prevented underserved students and K-12 families from having reliable, high-speed internet access.

In November 2025, the college successfully completed the $2.6-million grant from the Connecting Minority Communities (CMC) Pilot Program with the National Telecommunications and Information Administration that addressed that gap. It donated computers and iPads to local people without them, connected hundreds to broadband, and educated over 1,000 people in digital skills and artificial intelligence.

Merced College was one of 93 institutions—including Hispanic-Serving Institutions like itself, Minority-Serving Institutions, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and Tribal Colleges and Universities—selected to lead the effort to make the power of the internet more accessible to all.

Digital Skills Training

Dondi Lawrence, now Director of Rising Scholars at Merced College, led this effort starting in February 2023. By August 2023, she had an instructional design team in place to construct the Digital Skills Training curriculum by gleaning best practices from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and consulting regularly with the California Emerging Technology Fund (CTEF), which works to bring broadband to unserved and underserved communities.

By September 2023, the grant staff included three part-time academic counselors, two UC Merced students who manned the help desk, and a group of student digital navigators who were trained by Lawrence and others to teach those digital skills.

The student navigators fanned out across Merced County to get K-12 students and families connected to affordable internet service and then deliver DST, which covered topics like the internet, security basics, social media, Google and Microsoft basics, educational pathways, banking and employment resources.

“We were working to reach individuals who were not already in the digital space or had only minimal access to it,” Lawrence said. “You can’t advertise to those people online.”

Lawrence and a student support coordinator recruited school site liaisons to push the program on site, and proceeded to learn a valuable lesson that could inform any future outreach by the college.

“We figured out that we needed to develop the mindset of our audience to reach them,” Lawrence said. “If the parent liaisons at a particular school were engaged with us, the community showed up for training. And if the liaison wasn’t engaged, far fewer people came.”

The initial success with DST led the college to then use grant funds to offer STEM Coding Summer Camps, where three part-time teacher hires taught 96 total students how to code drones for flight in the college’s College for Kids program.

The grant has been completed, but Merced College still offers no-cost, noncredit DST in English and Spanish both online and at the Business Resource Center in downtown Merced. Lawrence said the DST team was also able to meet with the BRC and AgTEC teams on campus to share best practices for teaching digital skills.

The grant could change lives for years, and anecdotally, its impact showed up almost immediately.

One parent reached out to site instructors to share that, using her new digital knowledge, she had identified some concerning behavior in her child’s search history. Site instructors were able to immediately help the parent address it.

Between October 2024 and November 2025, 1,445 people completed digital skills training online or in-person in one of five languages: English, Spanish, Chinese, Hmong or Punjabi.

Ninety-five percent of all people who started any of the eight DST workshops completed the entire training, and 83% of participants said they could use computing devices more safely and effectively.

Grant money also went to give or loan people equipment. It paid for 342 iPads and 150 hotspots that were loaned to K-12 families and students who were doing the DST. The college also donated iPads and hotspots to 112 AgTEC students and Rising Scholars (formerly incarcerated) students who couldn’t afford their own. Student navigators helped them find affordable internet service.

The grant also paid for Starlink internet service used by the Merced College Experiential Vehicle. The college’s outreach and recruitment teams use the vehicle wherever they need stable internet service, like when executing remote outreach events and Extreme Registration.

Grant money also purchased 325 laptops that were distributed to community organizations that service K-12 families like NAACP Merced County, the LifeLine Community Development Corporation, the Boys & Girls Club of Merced County, and the Merced Adult School through the Merced Union High School District.

Foundations of AI

Something interesting was also happening globally during the timeframe of the CMC grant. Regular folks’ access to artificial intelligence (AI) was rapidly expanding through apps like ChatGPT, Siri, Alexa, Gemini and others.

District leaders began seriously ruminating about what AI could do, and what it shouldn’t do. With roughly a year left on the grant, the college decided to use remaining CMC funds to empower the campus community to effectively and creatively use AI.

Dean of Innovation and Institutional Effectiveness Kody Stimpson said he and his team wanted to approach the topic in as thoughtful a way as possible. That was the genesis of the college’s AI foundations course.

“We were determined to maximize the impact of the remaining resources, prioritizing programs that would open new opportunities for learners and help bridge the region’s skills gap,” Stimpson said.

Pamela Huntington, Professor of Instructional Design, put in roughly 160 hours during the summer of 2025 to design the AI foundations course and construct a shell on Canvas to deliver it to the campus.

“AI with Purpose: A Human-Centered Guide for Education Work and Life” launched in August 2025. The goal was to empower Merced College students and employees by demystifying AI and showing them how to responsibly use the technology.

“Users were able to leave feedback right away, and it was all very positive,” Huntington said. “I think we are very hopeful about what executing the course means for this campus. It really helps people understand AI as a tool to help us and not replace us.”

Experts say AI is expanding exponentially. Changes surrounding AI are happening so quickly that the foundation course served as a primer.

“There is just so much for everyone to learn,” Stimpson said. “Almost immediately upon finishing the class, people were asking for additional training that built on the first. Our takeaway was that people need to be able to devote time to consistently learning about AI in the context of their work and goals.”

To facilitate ongoing learning, the college established several groups to lead the way.

Several individuals were selected to serve on the campus AI Taskforce. The group members all have advanced knowledge to execute critical projects and develop board and administrative policies for AI use.

Additionally, the AI Champions Network is a group of 32 AI liaisons from the college’s academic and administrative departments who can model diverse approaches to exploring this technology.

And the AI Innovation Challenge exists for faculty and staff to propose AI-driven solutions for their work and get support from the Innovation team. The goals are to help accelerate their ideas to solve problems, improve processes and enhance the student experience.

All told, the college now has a robust foundation in place to help keep the future centered on the impact AI can have on student learning and success.

“President Chris Vitelli’s theme for 2025-26 was ‘Change is greater than me,’” Stimpson said. “We’re embracing that mindset with AI. The answer to uncertainty or fear isn’t to turn away from AI, it’s to lean in and learn. AI is everywhere, shaping industries and communities, and those who invest the time to understand its potential will be those shaping its future.

“If you don’t engage, you won’t have a seat at the table when it comes to ethical conversations that matter. At a recent AI forum, we asked everyone to consider how they could harness AI to amplify their own values, mission and goals. That’s the opportunity before us.”