TCC Achieves Its Scholarship Goal With Initial Sign-Ups: Top 2008 High Schools

By April Marciszewski, Tulsa World, Okla.

May 21–Initial sign-up for Tulsa Community College’s Tulsa Achieves scholarship program increased 17 percent over last year to 1,898 students, exceeding the one-year goal and putting the college in line to achieve its expected program enrollment in fall 2009.

Last year, 1,621 high school seniors who lived in Tulsa County signed up to be in the first class of Tulsa Achieves students. TCC announced the program in March 2007.

TCC is using about 2 percent of its budget to pay for the program in hopes of raising the number of Tulsa County residents who are college-educated. The scholarship pays up to 100 percent of tuition and fees for students who live in Tulsa County and who start college right after high school.

Students still have to turn in their final high school transcripts and ACT or College Placement Test scores and enroll in TCC classes by July 1 to be considered Tulsa Achieves students.

Program Director Tim Fernandez said he expects 99 percent of those who signed up to meet the minimum 2.0 grade-point average by the time they graduate from high school this spring, although some undoubtedly have signed up for the program as a backup plan in case their first-choice college falls through.

TCC expects about 3,000 students to be in the program by fall 2009, when the last of the first-year students will be wrapping up their TCC classes and the second- and third-year students will be going strong, Fernandez said. He expects the number of high school seniors coming into the program to eventually top out at about 2,000.

His sign-up goal for this year was 1,750 students, which he considered aggressive but attainable.

“I think we were extremely successful,” he said.

Fernandez also wanted to recruit more minority students, who were underrepresented in the first Tulsa Achieves class, and he thinks TCC succeeded.

This year, Rogers High School junior and senior counselor Glenda Ireton helped seniors fill out and turn in their Tulsa Achieves forms daily from February until the April 30 deadline.

“I got 102. Isn’t that fantastic?” she said. That is about 60 percent of Rogers’ graduating class.

“I just wanted to make sure that they had a chance in life — give them that opportunity, and then they take it from there,” Ireton said.

She helped seniors decide careers and then plot the paths to get there. Many chose majors at TCC that will let them start their careers after earning associate degrees from TCC.

Fernandez thinks just about every high school student who wanted to sign up found out about Tulsa Achieves. After the sign-up deadline this year, he received five or six calls from people who had never heard of the program, whereas last year, he received hundreds of calls nonstop from people who wanted to sign up after the deadline.

This year, the sign-up process was better-defined, and students had four months, instead of 1?, to turn in their paperwork.

“I think TCC is building momentum, and not just attracting students into higher education but providing the structure to make sure they’re successful,” Fernandez said.

www.tulsaworld.com/achieves

April Marciszewski 581-8475 april.marciszewski@tulsaworld.com

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