Clark is the recipient of a $70,000 grant to fund the national Plus 50 Initiative. According to a news release from Barbara Kerr, executive director of communications and marketing, Clark was chosen to be one of five "mentor" colleges assisting 10 "demonstration" colleges. According to the press release, Clark was picked, “because of its expertise in reaching out to students over age 50.”
    Clark President Bob Knight said, "Being selected as a mentor college is especially gratifying because it recognizes the great work that our faculty and staff have done over the years, and it complements our goals as a teaching and learning center."
    Clark’s Executive Director of Corporate and Continuing Education Todd Oldham submitted the funding request, which was co-written by Tracy Reilly-Kelly, mature learning and travel studies program manager at Clark. The request was submitted in late February with support from Clark’s previous Director of Grants Development Katharine Brokaw.
    “We have one of the larger mature learning programs in the state,” Oldham said. He said that Clark’s success with older students inspired the grant request.
    Oldham said the money should break down to $35,000 going toward operations, such as advertising and promotional work and half for active programming.
    Oldman said that much of the focus will be on post-retirement life, and that Clark has been trying to pull in “hobbyist businesses,” or businesses that a student has always had an interest in, but never the time to explore while working full time. “We’ll be taking some of these and adapting them for the senior program,” he said. “We will explore what are good businesses for them to go into.”
    According to the press release, the Clark site at Columbia Tech Center, which will open in the fall of 2009, will host leisure and enrichment classes. Incorporated into the center will be a kitchen classroom, which will cater to the wine hobbyist business classes, and cooking classes that combine nutrition, cooking and agricultural education.
    According to Civic Ventures Web site, four out of five people over 50 say they plan to work at least part-time after retirement.
    "This grant will allow us to address an area of particular need within the 50-plus population, which is training and state licensing for healthcare workers that are in short supply across the Pacific Northwest region,” Reilly-Kelly said. “We will be expanding our Nursing Assistant Certification and Fundamentals of Caregiving programs."
    According to the American Association of Community Colleges Web site, 59 percent of new nurses are educated at community colleges. The site reads that community colleges are best matched for 50 plus students. According to the Web site, the average age of the community college student is 29, with 16 percent of students over age 40.
    The $70,000 grant will be spent over the course of three years, Oldham said. He said that he thinks it will be evenly distributed each year. This summer, Oldham and Reilly-Kelly will travel to Washington D.C. On June 26, and 27. they will meet with officials in the American Association of Community Colleges to finalize the terms of the grant.