As Housatonic Community College closed its spring 2021 semester, it checked off the conclusion of the first half of the pilot phase of its Equity Project, a program designed to help students from under-represented communities achieve and maintain access to higher education.
The pilot is a one-year endeavor that began in January with a cohort of 10 male and 10 female students. The students will return in the fall semester to complete their studies.
According to Kristy Jelenik, executive director of the Housatonic Community College Foundation, the school was focused on ensuring participation from low-income students who represent demographics that are often overlooked by higher education recruitment, including first-generation college students and those who identify as LGBTQ.
“The point of the program is to provide wraparound support to help these students persist,” Jelenik said. “Since they are historically underrepresented and marginalized, the persistence rates (the percentage of students who return to college at any institution for their second year) traditionally aren”™t high because they have so many other challenges in their life ”” they might have children and they work one or two jobs and they have a lot of other things going on.
“What we want our students to do at Housatonic is for them to be successful,” she said. “We want them to continue on consistently, so that that they earn their degree or certificate and then move on into a career or a four-year school.”
A review committee selected the applicants, who work with “achievement coaches” who provide academic support and guidance during their studies. The students of the first cohort run the gamut in academic focus from engineering science and computer science to criminal justice and theater arts.
The Equity Project matches each student with a coaching model. The school”™s Men”™s Center and Women”™s Center offer resources designed to encourage support, growth and success in the classroom and in the students”™ off-campus endeavors. Participants were also provided with financial literacy training and special presentations by guest speakers designed to help them anchor their education within their wider lives. At the end of the spring semester, the students met with Natalie Pryce, owner of Bridgeport-based Pryceless Consulting and a former winner of Westfair Communications”™ 40 Under Forty honors.
The college also offered financial awards and incentives and opportunities to keep students engaged. College CEO Dwayne Smith voiced his support of the program and pledged $10,000 of his own funds to the effort. This inspired additional philanthropic outreach from sources including the Ernest and Joan Trefz Foundation, Elizabeth M. Pfriem Foundation, R.C. Bigelow and M&T Bank.
Although the program is designed to run for one year, Jelenik envisioned it as building the foundation for students who might have otherwise been discouraged in pursuing their education.
“We want students to stay invested in the community and what”™s happening on campus, because all of that contributes to their persistence,” she said. “And so, through the program, they learn about all the supports provided in the Men”™s Center and the Women”™s Center so that when they leave the program, they stay connected.”
Jelenik said the school is ready to transition the program from a pilot test to an annual program.
“The second cohort begins in January 2022 and the application process will open in the fall,” she said. “We”™re looking at doubling the number of students that will start in the second cohort and we encourage faculty to encourage their own students to apply to be a part of the program.”
