Four alums will receive federal funding to advise low-income Rhode Island high school students in the college advising process thanks to a recent grant to the National College Advising Corps.
The organization, which recruits recent graduates to advise prospective college students in poor communities, recently received a $1.5 million Social Innovation Fund grant through the Pathways Fund of New Profit Inc.
Part of that grant will go toward funding the four new positions for Brown alums. The new positions will allow the program — which already employs 12 alums in the state — to reach an estimated 1,200 additional high school students.
Roger Nozaki MAT '89, director of the Swearer Center for Public Service and associate dean of the College for community and global engagement, said Brown was included because of the success the organization has had partnering alums with Rhode Island schools. Students at Rhode Island schools participating in the program in were 14 percent more likely to go to college than students at similar schools without the program, Nozaki said. Students do not directly enroll in a program, but have a guide stationed at the school on a full-time basis as a resource throughout the college preparation process, from choosing the right school to filling out financial aid forms, he said.
"It's exciting work for all of us," Ashley Greene '09, who works for the program at Dr. Jorge Alvarez High School in Providence, told The Herald last semester. "With a little bit of a push, these kids reach a height of potential that you didn't realize they had."
Nicole Farmer Hurd, executive director of the National College Advising Corps, said the $1.5 million would enable the organization to add 50 advisers to the program nationwide, allowing it to reach an additional 15,000 students. The expansion will include preexisting programs in Rhode Island, North Carolina, Missouri, Illinois and at the University of California at Berkeley, and the creation of new programs in New York and California, she said.
The funding will become available April 1 and is meant to last a year, but Hurd said since the grant is renewable, she hopes her organization will receive funding again.
The National College Advising Corps became a national program in 2007 and received its initial funding from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, Hurd said. The initial gift was for $12 million, to be spent over four years in 10 states.
