College counselors fill role of parent

Help to keep students on graduation track

Sarah Hedges (right), a counselor at The Bottom Line, a nonprofit, helped Francisca Mendes with her college search. (Globe Staff Photo / Suzanne Kreiter)

Since 19-year-old Roberto Green started his first semester of college in September, the calls and e-mails have come almost weekly. Just checking in to see how he's doing, how classes are going, whether he's running into any roadblocks.

One week, he received a care package filled with candy bars, Pop-Tarts, and other treats. Another time, there was a face-to-face visit, and questions about grades, tuition payments, and spending habits.

This attention has not come from one of those "helicopter" parents, who hover over their college-aged children much like they did when their offspring were in kindergarten, but from a 20-something counselor who graduated from college not long ago herself. She is among a cadre of workers at The Bottom Line, a nonprofit agency in Jamaica Plain that works with hundreds of Boston teenagers and young adults to not just get them into college, but see them through to a degree.

"They are like your parents," explained Green, a Hyde Park resident who graduated from the O'Bryant School of Math and Science last spring and is now at the University of Massachusetts at Boston. "They are always on top of you. Calling you to make sure you do what you should do."

As part of a bold effort to boost dismal college graduation rates for Boston public school alumni, city leaders and philanthropists are banking on a heavy expansion of Bottom Line and other nonprofits to get more college degrees into the hands of city residents.

Many of the nonprofits cater to low-income students who often are the first members of their family to attend college. While a few programs are devoted to the city's elite college preparatory exam schools, Bottom Line and others also serve a large number of students from the city's less prestigious high schools, where many graduates enter college ill-prepared.

In a way, the counselors in these groups equip Boston students with a powerful force taken for granted by many of their affluent peers: They fill the role of parents who closely monitor their children's progress in college and have the knowhow or the connections to cut through bureaucratic red tape when problems arise.

Sometimes they help floundering students secure academic tutoring. Other times, they accompany students to the bursar's office to resolve tuition bill disputes, assist them in finding a job, or advise them on remedying roommate conflicts, often suggesting they write a contract that dictates rules for everything from food to bedtime hours.

"First-generation college students may not know how to advocate for themselves on campus," said Elizabeth Pauley, a senior program officer at the Boston Foundation, which is providing $1 million to help boost the city's college graduation rates. "Part of the solution is helping the students understand that the problems they are facing are surmountable."

Programs, such as Bottom Line, she said, can be a lifeline.

Other programs that could be expanded include the Steppingstone Foundation, which works with students to get them into the city's elite exam schools; the Posse Foundation, which sends top-notch students in groups to four-year colleges; and ACCESS, a program that places counselors in dozens of Boston high schools to help 12th-graders apply to college. ACCESS is putting together plans to work with ninth-graders next year so students are better prepared for college.

Last month, a report by the Boston Private Industry Council and the city's school department revealed just how much hand-holding Boston school graduates may require. Only 35.5 percent of those who enrolled in college after graduating in 2000 received degrees within seven years - well below national averages.

The findings prompted Mayor Thomas M. Menino of Boston to call for doubling the college graduation rate for the city's high school sophomores, while increasing it by 50 percent for this year's high school seniors.

Education advocates consider the goal ambitious. While the nonprofits can provide students with support, the counselors can do nothing about making up for the lack of academic preparation many students received in Boston schools. To that end, Boston officials are overhauling academic programs, including offering more college level courses.

Another challenge, advocates say, is that some colleges accept underqualified Boston graduates but fail to create programs to help them succeed.

"Ultimately they succeed because of their own hard work and drive," said David Borgal, a former high school guidance counselor who founded Bottom Line a decade ago, after he was troubled by the difficulty students encountered getting through college.

Many of the 1,100 high school and college students that Bottom Line works with in a given year are driven. About 74 percent of students earn college degrees, although their road to success is frequently bumpy.

Last Tuesday afternoon in a Jamaica Plain office decorated with handmade college pennants, a a few students finished putting together their college applications under the watchful eyes of a few counselors. They submitted applications over the Internet and stuffed envelopes with transcripts, teacher recommendations, and other supplemental materials.

At one computer station, counselor Claudine Johnson took the computer mouse from 17-year-old Greta Dyshniku, an Albanian immigrant who was so excited and terrified that her hand trembled too much to operate the device. Johnson had become increasingly aware that with each click she was closer to realizing her dream of becoming a doctor.

"I've never seen you this nervous," said Johnson, who started working with Dyshniku a few months ago.

Johnson could relate to Dyshniku, a senior at O'Bryant. She, too, attended O'Bryant, went through Bottom Line, and initially studied premedicine. But Johnson said she soon realized during her first semester at Bryn Mawr College that she was not academically prepared for the math and science classes. She switched her major to urban studies, which still enabled her to find a career to help people.

Johnson oversees about 100 students, traveling once a month to Smith College in western Massachusetts. She also visits students at Northeastern University and Bridgewater State College.

"A lot of it is helping students get over that first hurdle of adjusting to college," Johnson said.

Bottom Line offers summer seminars to prepare students for college life, but many Boston graduates - a high percentage of whom are from lower-income families - still experience culture shock. Suddenly they are thrown in with wealthy students, who may not understand what it is like to be poor.

And some Boston graduates who live at home after starting college often find themselves straddling a new world of opportunity while still coping with chaotic home lives.

That culture clash emerged one morning at the UMass campus center when Roberto Green peppered his counselor with questions about transferring to a college where he could live on campus. Although Green said he appreciated his parents and liked the UMass classes, he craved greater independence and felt he was missing out on a critical college experience.

His counselor, Amy Markarian, initially suggested that he could stay and rent an apartment with friends in Jamaica Plain. That's what some of her college friends in Boston did, said Markarian, who grew up in the suburbs and attended Northeastern.

But Green was unconvinced.

"JP is hot," said Green, using police lingo for a violent neighborhood. Two of his friends were killed there in recent weeks, he said.

Taken aback, Markarian replied, "Maybe it would be good for you to get away from the city."

She then clicked away on her laptop, searching the Internet for the websites of various public colleges, such as Salem State. Tuition, fees, room, and board would run nearly $15,000 a year, compared with about $10,000 in tuition and fees at UMass.

"How do they expect people to pay for this stuff?" asked Green, who takes classes full time while working about 30 hours a week as a supermarket cashier.