Photo by Matt Kelly

Matthew J. Quinn, executive director of the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation

December 13, 2004

The University will receive $623,000, part of nearly $1 million in grants given out by the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, to encourage and assist high school students in Virginia to attend college.

The Guide Program, officially announced Dec. 9 in the Rotunda, will begin in September 2005. It will feature 20 recent U.Va. graduates — called guides — who will work with guidance counselors in 12 school districts, many of whom also will receive Cooke Foundation grants. The guides will assist students with college admission forms, financial aid and scholarship applications.

“This program is a perfect fit for the University of Virginia,” said Gene D. Block, vice president and provost. “As a public school, it is our charge to reach out to the young people of the commonwealth and empower them with the knowledge about the benefits of all forms of higher education. This program matches our democratic principles, our vision of excellence and our belief in the power of education.”

After reviewing proposals from across Virginia, the foundation is awarding $90,000 apiece to organizations in Fairfax, Rappahannock and Warren counties to start college access programs, and approximately $25,000 each to college access programs now operating in the Tidewater region, Patrick County and the City of Alexandria. In their roles as higher education ambassadors, the guides will present the idea of college as possible to young people who consider it out of their grasp, or have not considered it at all.

“The success of the program will be in the students coming to college who would not have ordinarily,” said Nicole F. Hurd, assistant dean and director of the Guide Program.

Guides will receive a $10,000 service stipend, a $10,000 housing allowance and $5,000 toward either future education or to pay for existing educational debts.
Samuel E. White, a second-year student from Castlewood, Va., in Russell County, endorsed the Guide Program. White said he is the first student from his high school to attend U.Va. in 20 years. Guides will be a great benefit to students, encouraging them to prepare for the SAT exams, for example, he said. But the greatest benefit will be that they will “help the students to go on and reach their full potential,” he said.

A member of Student Council, White sponsored a resolution supporting the Guide Program, which was approved unanimously.

During the Dec. 9 ceremony, Cooke Foundation and University representatives explained the importance of the program.

“Hundreds of thousands of students across America from low-income backgrounds who have the academic wherewithal to go into postsecondary education never do,” said Matthew J. Quinn, executive director of the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation. “College access programs can be a major part of the solution.”

Quinn said 79 percent of Virginians between the ages of 18 and 24 have high school diplomas, but only 53 percent attend college directly out of high school. He hopes the foundation’s $966,613 in grants will help change these numbers.
Edward L. Ayers, dean of the College of Arts & Sciences, said the program demonstrates the public university’s role in community service.

“The guides, by their examples and their words, will show the advantage of college,” Ayers said. “Not just [the advantages of] U.Va., but the community college down the road.”

Teaming with local guidance counselors, the guides will bring fresh perspectives to the college application process.

“Every high school student gets about 20 minutes of guidance counseling time in his or her senior year,” Hurd said. “We are trying to help the overworked guidance counselors in the local schools.”

Students selected as guides will go through an intensive eight-week training session, which is designed and taught by U.Va. faculty, high school administrators, and staff and access program coordinators. Upon training completion, the students relocate and integrate in the community in which they are working. Volunteers must commit to at least a year, and preferably two years, to the program, Hurd said.

She emphasized that this is not a recruiting program. “This is to present college to students who don’t think college is an option,” she said.

Hurd developed the Guide Program after listening to a presentation on the Cooke Foundation’s efforts to encourage students to attend college. A few other programs exist which use undergraduates in a limited way, but the U.Va. guide model is the only one that uses graduates working full-time. Other states have shown interest, she said, and U.Va.’s program could become a national model.