College access

Upward Bound

Exposes students to STEM and creative-industry careers. Students create a song or music video that most directors like to use as a recruiting tool, and the program also serves as a yearly team-building enrichment that increases engagement, attendance, enrollment and retention.

We support music-industry and STEM career exploration, outreach and recruiting, participant retention, and college and career readiness with the SEL books, keynotes, and the recording and music video program.

FAQs

Straight answers.

Yes. Upward Bound is measured on graduation and postsecondary enrollment, and attendance is the earliest visible indicator of trouble with both. Advisors looking at attendance interventions for high school students or strategies to improve attendance generally have accurate data and no lever. Student engagement strategies for high school that students opt into are the lever. Most directors use our music recording program to create a music video they can use to increase enrollment and retention.
Yes. The Psychological Effects of Music interactive Workshop works for a summer residential kickoff, a Saturday academy opener, End of Year Gala Keynote, or a cohort event at the partner high school. Programs also book it as a recruitment event at target schools, since it draws students who would not attend an information session.
Audio engineering, acoustics, signal processing, and music technology — all of which are engineering careers students reach through music. For a UBMS cohort that is a career exploration route that connects their existing interest to a STEM pathway rather than asking them to choose between the two. It also surfaces majors students may not know exist: audio engineering, music technology, acoustical engineering. Most directors use our music recording program to create a music video they can use to increase enrollment and retention. Content creation is a new Career that require videographers and editors. Students are exposed to film technology and social media careers.
The same indicators drive both. Attendance, behavior, and course performance predict high school completion, and ninth-grade course performance correlates especially strongly with eventual graduation — which makes the transition into high school the highest-leverage point for a program serving grades nine through twelve. Advisors searching for high school dropout prevention programs or dropout prevention strategies are working the same population Upward Bound serves. The What Works Clearinghouse practice guide on preventing dropout recommends engaging students with curricula that connect schoolwork to college and career success and that improve their capacity to manage challenges in and out of school — both halves of that describe what our material is built to do.
Our Music Recording & Music Video program is incentive for students to attend and enroll. We have helped many locations (including rural locations increase enrollment after students in that area work together to record and film the music video which also doubles as a team building activity and creates bonds and a sense of belonging. Upward Bound's outcomes measures are postsecondary enrollment and completion, and the non-cognitive factors are where programs have the least leverage and the most attrition. Persistence, help-seeking, and managing setbacks are what our material addresses. It is one component. Enrollment and retention respond to advising, financial aid, and academic preparation as much as anything else, and we are not going to claim a book moves your APR numbers.
The non-cognitive skills it builds — persistence, help-seeking, managing setbacks — are the same ones that determine whether a student stays enrolled once they arrive. Programs coordinating with college persistence programs at receiving institutions often find the handoff is where students are lost. Anything that travels with the student helps; the Psychological Effects of Music Supplemental Instructional Books are consumable, so they do.
Federal awards follow the Uniform Guidance cost principles — costs must be necessary, reasonable, and allocable to the approved project. Materials supporting an activity described in your approved application are generally allowable. Your program officer is the right check on any specific item. Keep the quote and invoice tied to the activity in your narrative that the purchase supports.
TRIO budget periods vary by award and often do not align with the October-to-September federal fiscal year — many run September 1 to August 31. Check your Grant Award Notification rather than assuming the federal year-end date. This matters if you are trying to obligate remaining funds.
The teen advanced edition addresses self-management, persistence, and managing setbacks — the non-cognitive factors that determine whether a first-generation student stays enrolled. It uses music as the vehicle rather than as the subject. Programs searching for culturally relevant social emotional learning or social emotional learning for black students are often looking for material where students see themselves in the content. Ask us for a sample so you can evaluate that directly rather than taking our word for it.
Yes. The format works in short sessions, which suits Saturday academies, sessions during the weekday, after-school and the summer residential component is where most programs use it most heavily.
Yes, on the Psychological Effects of Music Supplemental Instructional Books specifically. Professional development for advisors and tutors is available on site or virtually, covering learning with music and how to lead the book with students who resist traditional academic framing. That is the only thing we train staff on. The recording and production programming is delivered by our staff.
Yes. Recording and video production programming connects to identifiable careers and gives students a technical skill, which is the college-and-career side of the What Works Clearinghouse engagement recommendation. It also works as team building for a cohort — recording forces students to coordinate, listen, and accept critique, which is most of what a summer residential component is trying to build socially.
Yes, through the recording and video production programming. Audio engineering, live sound, studio production, and media are real career paths with defined entry points and credentials that do not always require a four-year degree — useful information for a student weighing options. For students who will go the degree route, it opens music business, audio engineering, and media programs as majors they may not have known existed.
That is much of the underlying method. Melody and rhythm aid recall — it is one of the better-documented findings in the research on music and learning — which is why the material uses song structure to carry the concepts rather than presenting them as a list to study. Students retain a chorus longer than a bullet point. Applied to soft skills, that means the vocabulary is available later, in the moment it is needed, rather than only during the session.
Yes, though not as a resume workshop — We can help them create a song on resume building to help them remember what's needed when building a resume. We want to be precise about that. The material builds the self- assessment and articulation skills resume building depends on: being able to name what you did and what you are capable of. For career prep more broadly, the recording programming is where students encounter an actual professional workflow: deadlines, revision, collaboration, and a client standard.
No. We send our own staff to run the programming. We do not train your staff to run it. Recording and production is a skill set, not a procedure. Trying to hand it off in a few hours would be like teaching a doctor to perform surgery in an afternoon — you would get a session that technically happened and a result nobody wants to hear. This is separate from the advisor professional development we offer on using the books, which is a real service. The recording programming is delivered by our staff.
No. We are supplemental. We do not replace your SEL curriculum, your trauma-informed practice, or any program you already have in place. If you run a core SEL program, keep it — ours adds a music-based component alongside it. If you have trauma-informed protocols, training, and referral pathways, those stay in force exactly as they are. Nothing in our material substitutes for them, and our facilitators are not a substitute for your clinical, counseling, or behavioral staff. Your approved project activities stay as written. This is an addition inside them, not a scope change requiring an amendment.
45 minutes to 2 hours. Most schools book a class period or 90 minutes. The 90-minute format is the one we recommend when you have the room. 45 minutes works for a single class period or a tight bell schedule, and 2 hours suits a half-day event, a grade-level rally, or a Black History Month or Red Ribbon Week program. Tell us your bell schedule and we will fit the session to it rather than asking you to build around us.
Yes. The Psychological Effects of Music interactive Saturday Session is built for exactly this — a family engagement event where parents and children participate together rather than sitting through a presentation. That is the difference that matters for attendance. Families come to an event where something happens; they skip an information night. The session is music-driven and participatory, so a parent who speaks little English and a fourth grader are in it on the same terms. Family involvement is part of most approved Upward Bound project narratives, and parents of first- generation students are the hardest group to reach through conventional formats.
Quote, W-9, and invoice. We are registered in SAM.gov and accept purchase orders and card payment.

How this program runs

Same SIWM work. Built for Upward Bound.

Start with the social emotional learning books. Add a keynote. Bring a recording program when you want participants writing and performing — we produce the song and video.

Aligned with Upward Bound goals for academic preparation, personal development, college readiness, and postsecondary success. Strengthens writing, public speaking, teamwork, self-expression, resilience, and goal setting. CASEL 5 SEL competencies; National Core Arts (Music/Media Arts); Common Core ELA writing & public speaking; CTE Arts/A-V & career-readiness pathways; STEM/STEAM.

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The Psychological Effects of Music