Making the Difference
Jack Kent Cooke Foundation
Teaming Up with Carolina to Increase College Applications Nationwide
By Claire Cusick
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The first members of the Carolina College Advising Corps were 2007 Carolina graduates (from left): Meghan Bridges, Camille Cates, Dexter Robinson and Ebonie Leonard. Getting a C-Step Up The Carolina College Advising Corps isn’t the only UNC initiative benefiting from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation. Carolina also is among eight colleges and universities to join the foundation in a $27 million partnership aimed at enabling more community college students to earn bachelor’s degrees from selective four-year institutions. UNC is getting almost $900,000 and contributing $2.3 million in the partnership, which created the Carolina Student Transfer Excellence Program (CSTEP). C-STEP identifies talented low- to moderateincome students while they are still in high school or early in their community college careers and guarantees their eventual transfer admission to UNC if they earn an associate degree and complete the C-STEP program at Durham Technical Community College in Durham, Alamance Community College in Burlington or Wake Technical Community College in Raleigh. By the end of the fouryear pilot in academic year 2009–2010, at least 225 students will be participating at UNC and at the three partner colleges. The program aims not just to admit these students to UNC, but to provide the transition and support services that will help them graduate and on time. |
The top recommendation of the 2006 Commission on the Future of Higher Education was 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.
In fall 2007, four of the North Carolina advisers were 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.”
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