A decade ago, Marion Technical College did not have the means to pursue meaningful grants. The two-year institution, which shares a campus with Ohio State University, lacked a dedicated grant office as well as a staffer to spearhead large-scale funding proposals.
All told, a bad memory that Marion Tech President Ryan McCall would prefer to forget.
“It was a haphazard system,” McCall said. “People would randomly write a $20,000 grant, or get $100,000 on the federal level with another institution. There was nothing coordinated. When we tried to hire a grant writer, it was people who had written $50,000 grants. I’m like, that’s great, but we need more than that.”
That unfortunate dynamic changed in 2019, when Columbus State Community College began sharing a grant writer with Marion Tech. Through this collaboration, the rural college has secured millions in funding that would be impossible to access independently – from National Science Foundation (NSF) grants to Title III recognition.
Since its inception, the partnership has increased Marion Tech’s annual grant funding from an average of $500,000 to more than $2 million. National recognition has followed, in the form of a 2026 Bellwether Award under the Planning, Governance and Finance category.
“This makes a tangible difference in the ways we can serve our students, who are largely from rural areas and have higher needs,” McCall said in a press release last month. “Many of them are working adults navigating complex challenges. By working together and strategically pursuing grant opportunities, we are expanding access, strengthening programs and creating new pathways for students to succeed.”
Much-needed upgrades and more
The funding influx has powered a campus-wide upgrade of facilities, equipment and professional staff. Meanwhile, five-figure grants have given way to multi-million-dollar opportunities now having a real-world impact on students’ lives, McCall said.
“When I got here (in 2016), I said that our job was to change family trees,” he said. “I see it here every day, in terms of what these grants are doing for our students. I love that we get to do this, and how this work has helped us impact more of those family trees.”
What it takes
Geography proved a major barrier before the collaboration, as the college could not find an experienced grant writer interested in relocating to rural Marion County. A touch of pride further hampered Marion Tech’s grant efforts, McCall said.
“I’ve worked at a lot of other rurals, and we don’t do a good enough job telling our story,” he said. “We’re afraid to talk about how rough things are, because we already face a lot of challenges, and have a hard time admitting that.”
The partnership came to be after McCall, himself a native of Appalachian Ohio, learned that Columbus State President David Harrison had been raised in similar circumstances. Leveraging the experience of Columbus State’s grants department – a team that consistently secures tens of millions in annual funding – seemed a natural fit, he said.
After launching in 2019, the alliance immediately secured a Title III grant focused on student pathways. Marion Tech used the funds to create the MTC Connections Center, complete with a food pantry and counseling services. Since then, the partnering colleges have procured six NSF awards in workforce areas such as cybersecurity and artificial intelligence.
Lacking an internal grants office, McCall’s team identifies potential funding opportunities before coordinating with Columbus State on a formal proposal.
“If there’s a match, let’s find data to back this up,” McCall said. “We do the writing, and they help us edit. Or we’ll provide data and they do the writing, and the proposal goes back and forth. I see Columbus State as an extension of our staff. It’s a very collaborative relationship.”
Though based off-site, grant writer Alex Vereb has spent six years mastering the institutional needs of Marion Tech.
“The first large grants I ever wrote were for Marion Tech,” said Vereb, a member of the Columbus State staff since 2021. “Having institutional knowledge is a strong foundation for creating a proposal. Our partnership now has this (great) reputation, and people are excited to work with us because of the success we’ve had.”
A matter of trust
Rural institutions often face struggles that extend even beyond the hardships of traditional community colleges. In her work with Marion Tech, Vereb has addressed regional obstacles such as geographic isolation and a limited pool of specialized staff, she said.
“Every college will have problems with basic needs, but with rural colleges, you have to consider things like transportation and access to the physical location,” Vereb said. “So, I’ll be writing a grant on how to literally connect with these rural populations.”
Although she works remotely, Vereb leads the majority of grant requests for Marion Tech. A nearly $1 million S-STEM award is her proudest accomplishment, thanks to its potential life-changing impact on recipients.
“When you talk to people in higher education, it’s refreshing how many of them just want to support students,” Vereb said. “This grant model can benefit so many people.”
Another POV
Benefits extend to residents accessing Ohio Means Jobs (OMJ), a workforce development hub with centers in all 88 Ohio counties. With a poverty rate of 16% – per figures from the 2020 U.S. Census – Marion County desperately needs a dedicated jobs pipeline, said Roxane Somerlot, director of OMJ for Marion County.
Somerlot’s office acts as a data hub for neighboring grant partners, offering insights into regional high-growth sectors such as nursing, industrial maintenance and logistics. Beyond initial data, the agency provides labor market statistics along with post-award administrative guidance.
In recent years, OMJ has prioritized grants for “AI-proof” trades, including plumbing and electrical work. Even with these new parameters, the language of grants has not changed much, Somerlot added.
“There is always ‘grant-speak,’ like employer-led, business-led and forward-thinking skill building,” said Somerlot, also a member of the Marion Tech board. “Financial literacy is another buzzword.”
Somerlot is heartened by an alliance that combines the resources of Columbus State with the robust jobs programming of Marion Tech. The partnership – which increased grant-funding personnel at Marion Tech from three positions in 2017 to 12 last year – also has potential to be replicated elsewhere, she noted.
“The resources at Columbus State are invaluable and couldn’t be replicated at a rural school,” Somerlot said. “But the concept of shared resources could be copied by schools with large footprints or specialized services like grant writing. This collaboration shows it’s possible to tie those things together. It’s about mutual understanding and trust, so relationships still matter at the end of the day.”
