By Joseph Slacian
jslacian@thepaperofwabash.com
WABASH COUNTY, Ind. – Indiana University Kokomo is teaming with Wabash County Promise to provide scholarships for Wabash County students who participate in the local program.
IUK Chancellor Susan Siame-Giesecke pledged $1,000 scholarships to all current eighth grade students who meet program requirements and enroll at IU Kokomo.
The scholarships were announced during a brief ceremony Monday, Nov. 7, in the Wabash County YMCA lobby. IUK and Wabash County Promise officials were on hand, as were representatives from the Community Foundation of Wabash County and the three local school districts.
Siame-Giesecke, during brief remarks, said it was the job of a chancellor of a regional campus to help lift up the region it serves. Wabash is one of about 14 communities in the region served by IUK.
“We can lift the region up by helping more and more young people, helping them realize the potential of going to college,” she said. “It was just natural when we heard about what Wabash was doing, and how impressive it was, and what it was doing to help their young people rise to college.”
She said thousands of young people come through the IUK campus each year.
“What we want them to do is to see college, to feel college, to see themselves in college,” Siame-Giesecke said. “Hopefully they will look around and see the hundreds of young people from Wabash who are attending IU Kokomo. Hopefully they look up and say, ‘Hey, that’s Joey’s brother or that’s Mary’s sister, and I could go there, too.’”
IUK officials, she said, will continue to encourage area principals to bring their students to the campus to realize the experience.
“We really don’t care where the students go to college,” Siame-Giesecke said. “We’d like for them to come to IU Kokomo. But if they choose to go to Ball State or Purdue or wherever they choose to go, we planted the seed to help raise the region up in an educational way.”
She noted that the $1,000 can be combined with many other scholarships available to the students.
“You think about that, with a tuition of $7,500, and college becomes very real,” Siame-Giesecke said. “It’s not this outrageous number that you hear in the press, that college is too expensive and that you just can’t do it. With $7,5000, and you already have a $1,000 scholarship, and think about what’s in that savings account … and the child is off to college.”
Promise Indiana Vice President Phil Maurizi called the partnership between the program and IUK “an opportunity for the campus to become another champion in these children’s lives.”
“The scholarship is the first from a university saying that we believe in this process of starting to prepare for college at a young age, and that we want these kids to be dreaming about going to college,” he continued. “It’s more realistic that they can go if there is money available.”
Julie Garber, program director for the Community Foundation of Wabash County, said the agency oversees 70 scholarships for high school seniors.
“What we learned in that process is that we were not reaching the students we need to reach,” she said. “Traditional scholarships captured the usual suspects – those kids who have had support in their upbringing to believe they were going to college, and knowing all along they were going to college. Then, as they were coming up through the pipeline they learned about Community Foundation scholarships. They apply and have all the letters of recommendation, the grade point average and all the accoutrements for a scholarship.
“But there’s that group of kids we were missing – those in the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth grades – who were already opted out because college didn’t seem like a future for them. Maybe their parents didn’t go to college. Maybe they didn’t have kind of income that looked very helpful for college. Maybe they had ambitions about a certification or some kind of professional training that didn’t require a two- or four-year professional degree.”
Now youngsters as early as the fourth grade are learning skills that will help them later in college, such as persistence and earning their own money to use for college, she said.
The Promise program begins in kindergarten, with streamlining the process for parents to open a CollegeChoice 529 savings plan, and starting college visits during primary grades.
One of the first components is having children and their families open a college savings plan, with program donors giving the first $25. The children are then asked to find champions, or supporters, to help them raise $25 to deposit in the account, which the community then matches.
As the children grown older, the program focus shifts to college preparation, providing resources to consider what classes to take in high school and how to apply for programs such as 21st Century Scholars, which removes some of the burdens of paying for college.
The program began as the vision as YMCA CEO Clint Kugler and other local school leaders. Now in its fourth year, the Promise program has grown to 14 counties, with 25 others exploring a pilot program for 2017.
Kugler said later this week, officials from the Community Foundation and the Promise program will be at the University of Kansas for the National CSA symposium.
“Folks from all over the country will be gathered and we will be able to share stories of what’s going on in Indiana,” he said. “That we’re tackling complex issues with partnerships and collaborations from a community driven perspective.
“Indiana is the leader and Indiana is inspiring others.”