In 2019, the Office of Outreach and Engagement awarded seven incentive grants to connect NCSU faculty to applied scholarship opportunities in communities. The Outreach and Engagement Incentive Grants Program serves to address significant community challenges by aligning interdisciplinary faculty, their expertise, their students, and their research. Here, we profile one of the 2019 Incentive Grant Awardees.
Last year, Dr. Kimberly Allen listed four objectives she wanted to accomplish within the Wake County Middle Class Express program. Not even a full year later, all of the objectives are already complete. With a tight timeline and a passion for helping families, Allen set forth to make a difference and put her grant to good use.
Created by the Wake County Human Capital Development in 2008, the Middle Class Express (MCE) is a community development program that utilizes coaching to help participants reach economic and social goals. The client sets the goals and works with a coach to create a plan to achieve those goals. In addition, participants learn about motivation, financial management, and more components.
Allen accomplished all of her initial objectives for the program. She reviewed the curriculum and created a new module focused on adverse childhood experiences, resilience, and the best family science practices. She also conducted training for the MCE coaches and created a social media messaging campaign to promote MCE.
Allen is now focused on finding funding to either grow the program or do some evaluation. “We’d love to partner again to organize the curriculum for replication and fully test the efficacy of the program,” Allen shared. The early results show that MCE is a major success, so being able to measure it with more precision could lead to MCE becoming a state or national program.
Allen admitted that receiving the grant was a dream come true. “The existing program had a strong foundation with a focus on financial management; however, their team was eager to collaborate to see how to include family science,” Allen shared. She worked alongside two graduate students, Amber Harkey and Niambi Ivery. Harkey has decided to do further research on MCE for her master’s thesis, so although the funding has ended, the project is still being worked on.
The best outcomes are the new relationships made and a new partnership between the MCE, Cooperative Extension, and the Youth, Family, and Community Sciences programs, Allen shared. “It’s exciting to think about all the potential here—all good stuff!”