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Program A Bridge To College Success
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Published: July 8, 2008
TAMPA - Each one has a story.
For some, their childhoods were marked by foster homes and food stamps. Others dodged the drugs and guns that permeated Miami's housing projects. Many were raised in one-parent households where their part-time work helped pay the bills.
Last week, they represented the first generation of their families to embark on a higher education.
The University of South Florida is giving them a head start on their freshman year. For decades, USF, with some help from the federal government, has set aside money, faculty and space in its residence halls each summer for students from low-income families who are the first in their families to go to college.
The efforts from these "bridge" programs, university leaders say, provide these students with the college role model that most of them lack.
"Most of us are overcoming statistics," said Natalie Concepcion, 19, who completed the freshman program last year and returned this summer to counsel new students. "A lot of doors have been shut throughout our lives."
USF opened its doors this summer to 250 students and provided them with three freshman-level classes and the support they need to complete them successfully.
The aid is not without results.
About 90 percent of those who participate in these summer programs successfully finish their freshman year and return for their sophomore year. The overall student retention rate from freshman to sophomore year at USF is 81 percent.
The success is borne out in sophomores such as Francina Davis, 19, who after completing the Freshman Summer Institute last year called the experience "one of the best opportunities of my life."
Opportunities didn't come often. When Davis' mother was 21, bills went unpaid and the family moved in with Francina's grandmother.
The family eventually lived in a Miami housing project, where two years ago a 9-year-old girl was killed by an errant bullet while playing with her doll.
Francina got to a point, she said, when she didn't want to come home from school.
Years passed, and she was bound for college. In calls to home from USF orientation, Francina's mother would close their conversations with a plea, "Make your mom proud."
On the first day of school, Francina told herself, "I'm here." She now works as a peer counselor for students new to the program.
The History
USF and other state universities launched programs like these in the 1960s when Florida's Board of Regents gave them more money to encourage schools to open their doors to minority students.
The programs evolved to include students from low-income families who are the first generation in their families to go to college, and the efforts took on various names. Currently, USF admits students in two programs: Student Support Services, a program that receives federal funding and guides participants through their first two years at the university; and the Freshman Summer Institute, which USF created because of the success of the first.
Each program enrolls students in the summer before their first fall semester. A head start in an English composition class and two general education classes eases these students into a busy fall schedule.
The key is to house them on campus. The students come from low-income families, and nearly all work part-time jobs. Life at home often brings the temptation to put off school for work, administrators say.
In the programs, the students don't have to worry about money. They receive financial aid, laptops and free tutoring. Advisers oversee their college choices.
The payoff comes in a diploma. Leaders at USF say the bridge programs contributed strongly to the graduation rate for black students in 2006, which at 52 percent was 3 percentage points higher than that for white students. The reverse is true at most universities. A recent report by the nonpartisan think tank Education Sector found that fewer than half of black college students graduate within six years.
"In the end, we're trying to help these students graduate," said Mack Davis, the director of USF's First Generation Access Programs.
An 'Energized' Group
Several staffers in the programs were once participants. Marcus Glover, 26, now works as a counselor and teacher in the Student Support Services program. A graduate of Bartow Senior High School, Glover came to USF after participating in Upward Bound, a program that guides students from low-income families into college.
On his first day as a freshman in summer 2000, he remembers asking the bridge program's counselors if they needed any help. "I've never seen so many people so energized," he said.
Glover said that if it weren't for the chance to go to college, "I'd probably be in the military."
Instead, he graduated from USF, got his master's degree in higher education administration from Ball State University in Muncie, Ind., and returned to USF to get his doctorate.
When he talks to his mother now, he says she tells him, "I don't see you in the military now."
Many of the freshmen enrolled in the programs this summer say they were pleased with the push they have gotten so far.
Some were surprised, though. When they were admitted, many thought they were being directed to a remedial program because they didn't have the grades for regular admission to fall semester.
That impression changed during the first week of school. Their schedule is no different from any other freshman's. They have a jump that others don't.
"You're pretty much ahead of everybody else," said Sheera Brandon, a 17-year-old from Fort Myers.
Some see their admission as proof that they knew they were ready for college.
Richelle Henry, 18, of Inverness, was in foster care until she was 3, the age at which her grandmother adopted her. School officials and psychologists tested and retested her reading levels and learning capabilities. She always knew, though, that she was smart.
Her grandmother, she said, "always taught me about education. She always told me, 'Just because you grow up a certain way, you try to break the mold. Keep education and God first.'"
Last spring, she graduated cum laude from Citrus High School. She started at USF last week.
"There'd be times when I doubted myself, but I always kept faith," said Henry, who's enrolled in the Freshman Summer Institute. "I knew I lived for a reason. When I get in a rough situation and I doubt myself, I'll look back on this."
Reporter Adam Emerson can be reached at (813) 259-8285 or aemerson@tampatrib.com.
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