The following advice is offered to new Veterans Upward Bound projects and to institutions who hope to run a new project in the near future.

You should have copies of the regulations and the law ( http://www.ed.gov/programs/trioupbound/legislation.html ) and people who will be directly involved in your program must be familiar with them within the first couple of weeks after you are awarded a project.  Proposal writers should be familiar with them even before submitting a proposal.  You must abide by these requirements or your project will not survive.

Once funded, a Director or Acting Director must be hired or appointed as soon as possible, preferably within a month.  If a search is done for a director, do a search for other staff at the same time.  Then, if you want the director to do the hiring, a pool of candidates will be available as soon as the director is in place and you will not lose valuable months of time looking for staff.

While advertising for a Director the institution should take the initiative to provide office space and furniture and appliances so staff can begin work quickly. There is no time to lose because you must serve participants as soon as you can get the project rolling.  If you are not serving students in the first three months of the funding announcement you are already behind schedule.

Even before staff is hired someone at the institution should start publicity by announcing the funding of the project, telling the public about eligibility requirements and start collecting contact information so staff can start accepting participants as soon as the program is ready.

With all this started staff also need to prepare to provide instruction and services.  They must quickly order materials and support resources.  They must develop files systems and procedures.   Determine what standardized testing will be used and then build your curriculum around it.  

Staff must start actively recruiting veterans as soon as they are hired and are organized enough to start admitting participants.  Recruiting is slow work and yet you need to serve a significant number of participants before the program's first six months are over.

Document all your actions and provided services so that when the US Department of Education asks about your progress you can tell them where you stand, what you have done, and what still needs to be done for the first year.

If you do not have a good database program, contact a VUB project for guidelines on the parameters for all reporting fields in the US Department of Education's annual performance report (APR). Develop your database as quickly as possible so you can enter data as you go rather than letting it backlog until near the end of the year when the APER is due to the Government.

Immediately order what materials you will need for at least three months such as textbooks and classroom materials since these items can sometimes be slow in arrival.

Through your first year you should make a point of having frequent contacts with your Program Specialist.  Ask questions and LISTEN to advice. You should also seek out, or accept, mentorship from established VUB projects similar to your own.  If you are a rural program accept a mentor from a rural project, but if you are urban program you should seek a mentor from an urban program.

Make a point of meeting people on your campus that you will have to interact with such as the Financial Aid Office, the Payroll Office, Admissions and Registrar, and others who will provide support activities to your project.

Frequently other TRIO programs exist within your area. If there are, immediately work out referral procedures with these TRIO programs.  For Educational Opportunity Centers (EOC) you can refer applicants who do not qualify for your program and they can refer veterans they identify when they recruit for their program.  For Student Support Services (SSS) you can refer people who graduated from your program and enroll in postsecondary school.  If there are Upward Bound (UB) or Educational Talent Search Programs (ETS) in the area that serves target areas similar to yours you can also refer participants in your program to them if they have children  who might be eligible for their programs.   In turn, UB and ETS can refer parents to your project. 

Join the NAVUBPP organization as soon as possible and attend the first conference so you can establish a strong network to reach out to as you continue your first cycle of funding.   If at all possible, send more than the director to the conference.  The project counselor and academic coordinator will benefit greatly from the conference as well.   For institutions who hope to run a new project in the near future, send the TRIO Director to a NAVUBPP conference during the writing/funding phase.  This will help the project get off to a quick start when funded. 

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