The University of Notre Dame has received a $640,000 grant from AmeriCorps that will allow it to continue serving children in the South Bend area and in schools working with the Alliance for Catholic Education.

The award will be used to recruit, train and support 500 volunteers, who will use Cognition Connection, a comprehensive and flexible learning design hub that connects tutors with the cognitive science of learning.

The outcomes so far have been promising. All South Bend elementary students who worked with a tutor in TutorND’s full support program demonstrated growth in oral reading fluency from pre- to post-test, and they nearly doubled the average growth rate expected based on national metrics. Each child in Head Start who worked with a tutor in the full support program improved in school readiness skills. Notably, those receiving the full course of pre-kindergarten tutoring sessions experienced a fourfold growth in print awareness.