As current students brace themselves for end-of-semester exams, Hannah Lewis '07 is dealing with college applications all over again.
She and six other college guides have spent the past two months guiding underprivileged Rhode Island high school students through the arduous college admission process as the debut class of Brown's College Advising Corps.
"I was so grateful for my college experience," Lewis said. "I realize I am lucky to have had it, and I realize that a college experience should be available to everyone regardless of socioeconomic class."
Initiated last spring thanks to a $1-million grant from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, the College Advising Corps began this fall, placing Lewis and the six other full-time guides in high schools in Providence, Central Falls and West Warwick.
The guides commit to work 35 hours per week for one year after their graduation and are employed by the AmeriCorps Foundation, though the program is administrated by the Swearer Center for Public Service and supported by the Cooke gift. Five of the seven guides are Brown alums - two graduated from the University of Rhode Island.
The program focuses on low-income, first-generation high school students who are "college qualified," said Roger Nozaki MAT'89, director of the Swearer Center and associate dean of the College. The biggest problem is getting these students to consider college in the first place and then motivating them to actively pursue higher education, he added.
"Part of the challenge is the balance between being aggressive and respectful," Nozaki said.
Already this year, the seven volunteers have conducted approximately 295 one-on-one meetings, helped work on 125 college essays and registered 215 students for the SATs, said program coordinator Rosanna Castro '05. The guides have also taken high school students on visits to nine colleges in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York.
But the College Advising Corps does not seek to replace or overshadow the work done by existing guidance counselors, Castro said.
Instead, Nozaki said, the guides are intended to supplement the overworked guidance counselors in these low-income schools.
"The last thing that I want to imply is that anyone is not doing their job," Nozaki said. "Everyone is trying hard. It's just that the resources aren't there."
The average student-to-guidance counselor ratio is 250-to-1 in Providence schools, Castro said.
Before school started, the college guides received two weeks of training at the Swearer Center. To help the guides fully understand the needs of the communities they would be serving, they met with students and teachers from their future schools during training and created a strategic plan, Castro said.
Collaboration with the community was a priority, Nozaki said. Since the College Advising Corps has no set curriculum, none of the guides are working with the exact same program and work closely with their assigned school and community.
Lewis said the hardest part of the advising role has been working with students who have taken English as a Second Language classes throughout high school and haven't been able to take the courses necessary to get into college.
"There's so much to be done. It's difficult being just one person," Lewis said.
Jesse Cohen '07, another College Guide, said working for a brand new program has also been a challenge. "The Swearer Center has experience with college guidance work, but nothing on this scale," he said. "We're learning as we go."
Though the program is new to Brown, it's among ten College Advising Corps programs nationwide funded last spring by the Cooke Foundation and modeled after a two-year-old program at the University of Virginia. The Swearer Center hopes to expand next year to include 13 to 16 full-time College Guides in current schools as well as schools in other Providence neighborhoods, Woonsocket and Pawtucket. The Center is currently accepting help from undergraduate volunteers willing to donate two or three hours a week, Castro said.
Executive Director of the National College Advising Corps Nicole Hurd, with whom Nozaki said Brown's College Advising Corps communicates daily, said the program's success is measured not simply by the number of students who enter college, but also by how many are able to stay enrolled and ultimately graduate. The college guides emphasize the importance of finding the perfect match for each student, she said.
"We're not just hoping people will go to college, but we're hoping they will go to college and finish," Hurd said. "It's not just access, but success."
