The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has selected 15 community colleges and five states as the focus of the grant maker’s new program to increase graduation rates for disadvantaged and minority students and to improve remedial instruction for college students, according to The Seattle Times.

The Gates foundation, in Seattle, said today it will spend nearly $16.5-million in the program’s first round of grants. The program is operated in conjunction with MDC, a nonprofit group in Chapel Hill, N.C., and the Lumina Foundation for Education, in Indianapolis, which has committed $1.5-million to the effort.

(See the Chronicle’s article explaining how the foundation has reshaped its education grant making.)

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