Blog

How can a student juggle family/household responsibilities, work sufficient hours for a sustaining wage, and still fulfill the unpaid clinical practicum hours needed to earn a nursing degree?  This pain point led Trellis Foundation to launch the Streamlining Success in Nursing Programs initiative in Texas. The answer may lie in apprenticeship designations, work-based learning for upskilling paraprofessionals, tuition cost-sharing with employers, or [...]

As a proud graduate of Prairie View A&M University, I’m thrilled to return to my “home away from home” in Texas to begin my role as Grants and Operations Assistant with the Trellis Foundation. Returning to Texas is an opportunity to be closer to family and to give back to a state and community that [...]

The image many of us have in our heads of the typical college student—someone straight out of high school focused exclusively on their postsecondary studies—is wildly outdated. Today’s students are increasingly juggling work, family, and school while navigating a higher education system that was not designed for them. To explore how institutions can better [...]

At the start of the 2023 academic year, we welcomed Shamecca Perkins (Mecca) to the Foundation as our new Graduate Fellow. A former student advisor pursuing her doctoral degree in Educational Psychology at The University of Texas at Austin, Mecca brought extensive experience and a strong dedication to education accessibility and equity. As her [...]

I am thrilled to be joining the Trellis Foundation team as a Graduate Fellow! As a first-generation college student, post-secondary education access, opportunity, and success are subjects that hit close to home. Navigating higher education without a clear guide required me to rely heavily on support resources throughout my university tenure. That experience instilled [...]

Robert Frost’s poem Nothing Gold Can Stay communicates something beyond impermanence; it speaks to the importance of preservation. Furthermore, in my interpretation, it speaks to the endurance of marginalized communities, those vulnerable to systemic neglect. I am honored to join the Trellis Foundation—an organization committed to building a higher education system that serves everyone—as [...]

In my previous blog, I shared my experiences as a nontraditional student trying to complete the hidden graduate school curriculum - those unspoken expectations and necessities for successful degree completion - while finding employment that aligns with my education and skills. This challenge is not unique to graduate students. In 2020, 19% of full-time [...]

As we close the values blog series sharing Trellis Foundation staff reflections on our values, it’s fitting that we end where our social sector begins: collaboration. In Kristin’s introductory post, she pointed to the etymology of the word “philanthropy: love of humanity,” and in this blog, we’d like to elevate the origin of collaboration, [...]

In highlighting data-informed decisions as a core value, the Trellis Foundation is elevating just one element of our greater commitment as a learning organization. For over a decade, the philanthropic sector has explored “What is a Learning Organization?” And in my year with the Foundation, I have seen us explore this idea deeply and [...]

It’s never easy to say “no.” There are power dynamics in philanthropy that need to shift, and processes that favor funders and waste applicants' time need to be changed. There are myriad examples of needed reflection points and systems change in philanthropy. But at the end of the day, foundation program officers are generally [...]