Help for the ‘college capable’

Anthony Rosado was in the National Honor Society when he graduated from the Rochester City School District. Now a freshman at Monroe Community College, Rosado, a young Latino male, says he knows he’s bucking the odds.

“I was seeing others around me – my friends – and they made some bad decisions,” he says. “Most of them aren’t here today. I learned from that.”

Rosado, who is planning a career in broadcasting, enrolled in “Doorway to Success,” a program that MCC offers to incoming African American and Hispanic male students. It begins with an orientation to college life, but the meat of the program is an ongoing peer-based support system intended to prevent the young men from either dropping out or flunking out in their first year.

There are dozens of theories about why colleges have difficulty attracting and retaining minority students, especially young males – everything from the students not wanting to be perceived as “acting white,” to campus culture shock. But college admissions counselors have found that many of these students have something in common. Sometimes referred to as “underserved” students, they’re capable of college-level work even though they didn’t perform well in high school. And a support system helps them adjust and to stay in college.

For example, African American and Hispanic males frequently face a challenging first year in college. Anywhere from 30 to 40 percent won’t return for their sophomore year, compared to the national average of 15 to 17 percent for the general population, according to a number of different studies.

MCC’s Doorway to Success program provides career guidance, counseling, financial aid assistance, and assists in setting goals. Adult males of color provide much of the support in group and individual settings.

“I am the male of my household, and I am going to be the first person in my family to graduate from college,” Rosado, 18, says. “It just didn’t work out for the others who have been here before me.”

Rosado wants to set an example, he says, for his younger brothers. He knows the temptations and risks they face, he says, and he wants them to have opportunities for success.

“I have to set the bar high,” he says. “I have to do this for them.”

Albert Simmons readily admits that he was one of those kids that his friend Anthony Rosado describes.

“I dropped out of high school,” Simmons, 37, says. “It wasn’t that I couldn’t learn; I just didn’t apply myself. I was one of those kids who made those bad decisions.”

At least one of those decisions was so bad it landed Simmons in prison, he says. But the MCC sophomore is now planning to finish his education at SUNY Brockport and to pursue a career in social work.

Rosado and Simmons are Doorway to Success peer leaders. They assist other students in the program with everything from finding their way around campus to helping them change classes. They appreciate the emphasis the program places on supporting male students because, they say, it helps to keep them focused. And they can speak more freely among their male peers, they say, about common life experiences and challenges.

“We all support each other,” Simmons says. “We want the same success for each other that we want for ourselves. And we want it to go beyond here and into our futures, so we can continue to help each other out.”

In its second year, Doorway to Success, which was modeled after a similar program at New York’s City College, is still a work in progress. It may be too soon to say how much of an impact the program is having, says Ann Topping, MCC‘s dean of students.

MCC data shows, however, that six percent more students from the Doorway to Success program – compared to those who didn’t enroll – returned in the 2009 fall semester from the prior spring semester. Topping expects that number to increase as the program is refined and becomes better known. Offering programs like Doorway to Success, she says, is another way to attract students to the college. It says to students that the college is relevant, she says, and recognizes their needs.

Keilah Roberts, a graduate of East High School, is a political science major in her freshman year at Nazareth College. She was accepted to Nazareth under the Higher Education Opportunity Program (HEOP), which provides college opportunities for students who might not qualify using traditional admissions criteria. The program, and a host of others like it in higher ed., is intended to break the cycle of poverty by making a college education more accessible to largely minority students from poor households.

State Senator Toby Ann Stavisky recently announced increased funding for these types of programs. Similar to Doorway to Success, many use some form of mentoring to improve retention rates for minority students at risk of not making it through their first year.

Roberts, who wants to become a lawyer, says her transcripts weren’t perfect. But she knew she could do college-level work.

“I think it’s very important for students who come from situations like I do to have this kind of opportunity,” she says. “I worked all throughout high school. That wasn’t an option because my family needed my help. But my grades suffered a little.”

Roberts has never considered dropping out of college. But she says she understands why college is challenging for so many of her African American and Hispanic male peers.

Some of the challenges are more easily addressed than others, says Sean Bennett, director of RIT’s North Star Center for Academic Success and Cultural Affairs.

“Sometimes they may be in the top of their class, but they may not be at the same level as their college peers because they weren’t exposed to the same resources,” he says.

Minority male students are less likely to know how to work together in teams, Bennett says.

“They are slow to get engaged and they tend to sit on the sidelines too long,” he says.

Students in community colleges face an even tougher challenge. Since most of those students do not live on campus, many young African American and Hispanic males find themselves torn between two worlds. In one instance, says MCC’s Topping, a Doorway to Success peer leader saw one of his students on a neighborhood street corner. Concerned, the peer leader approached him.

“The student wouldn’t even acknowledge him,” Topping says. “He just didn’t feel like he could.”