Fall 2007
Carolina and Jack Kent Cooke Foundation team up to increase college applications nationwide
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The first members of the Carolina College Advising Corps (CCAC) are 2007 Carolina graduates (from left): Meghan Bridges, Camille Cates, Dexter Robinson and Ebonie Leonard. They will be joined by five more advisers in 2008, to serve schools from Ahoskie to Charlotte. |
The top recommendation of the 2006 Commission on the Future of Higher Education is to expand college access. To boost the number of low-income and first-generation college students enrolling in college, UNC has entered a $10 million partnership with the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation.
The grant establishes the Carolina College Advising Corps (CCAC) to place recent Carolina graduates as advisers in 18 schools throughout North Carolina. Led by Wendy Jebens in the Office of Undergraduate Admissions, CCAC is modeled on the College Guide Program at the University of Virginia.
That program’s founding director, Dr. Nicole Hurd, began work at UNC to implement a second part of the grant: the establishment of a national corps, also housed in the Office of Undergraduate Admissions at UNC. Both the national and individual programs target high-performing, lower-income high school students.
The College Guide Program at the University of Virginia, which was also made possible by a grant from Jack Kent Cooke, resulted in increases of 5 to 29 percentage points in college-going rates in its 14 partner schools. Carolina hopes to build on that success, meeting or exceeding those increases.
This fall, four of the North Carolina advisers are already in place, serving eight schools in four counties. By August 2008, a total of nine Carolina advisers will serve 18 schools from Ahoskie to Charlotte. The program provides them training and full compensation.
Ebonie Leonard ’07 is one of those advisers. She is now helping demystify the college application process for students at Southern and Hillside high schools in Durham. Her work supplements, but doesn’t compete with, the work of guidance counselors.
“There are a lot of misconceptions in this college process,” Leonard said. “But you don’t have to be in the top 10 percent of your class to go to college.”
A sociology major, Leonard heard about the program through various sources and attended an information session hosted by UNC’s Office of Undergraduate Admissions. At the session, she learned that one of the targeted high schools in North Carolina would be her very own alma mater, Dudley High School in Greensboro.
“I just thought it was the perfect position for me,” she said. “I like that it’s a corps and that you’re not just thrown out there by yourself. There’s so much support.”
Leonard tells her students to focus on getting to college. “It doesn’t matter where you come from and it doesn’t matter how you get there,” she said. “It just matters that you go.”
By Claire Cusick
