Keeping students focused on college

Daisha Tankins returned to the St. Louis Graduates High School to College Center, at 618 N. Skinker Blvd. in the Delmar Loop. More than a year has passed since Tankins crossed the threshold of the pop-up retail space to receive free college counseling and financial aid assistance offered at the center.

The space was provided by Washington University in St. Louis – one of several partners that include College Bound, Deaconess Foundation, the Scholarship Foundation of St. Louis and the United Way of Greater St. Louis.

Then, Tankins had just graduated from McCluer High School and that fall the first-generation college student was headed to Spelman College in Atlanta to study psychology. On Thursday, she said she never made it to Spelman.

“I was sure that I was ready to go out of town to be hours away from my parents,” she said. “Sometimes you have to have a setback to gain something.”

She realized that her financial aid package would not cover the full cost of her out-of-state tuition. Her financial situation is the main reason that first brought her to the center, she said.

After Spelman did not pan out, she thought about taking a year-long break from her studies – until her parents intervened and encouraged her to enroll at Harris-Stowe State University. She gained security in knowing that she could always rely on her family and close friends when facing “complications” in life.

Now, a year older and wiser, she wants to help other students make easier transitions to college by sharing her story.

“I just want to be a part of the support system that helped me,” she said. “I know that a lot of people are actually going to show up in the fall for college because of this.”

She now works at the center as an intern. The center served 214 students last year, according to St. Louis Graduates Project Manager Laura Winter. It is a number Winter hopes will increase over the summer.

“Last year was a pilot effort,” Winter said. “We wanted to address ‘Summer Melt’ with a good team in place to create a community response to a community problem.”

“Summer melt,” Winter says, refers to the estimated 10 to 40 percent of students nationwide who do not follow through with their plans to attend the college of their choice in the fall. She said the reasons vary from incomplete financial aid packages to students missing important deadlines.

St. Louis Graduates is a collaborative network of youth-serving college access provider organizations, K-12 education, philanthropic funders and businesses focused on increasing degree completion among low-income and first-generation students. The center opened in June 2013 and is the first of its kind in the St. Louis region.

The Missouri College Advising Corps has taken notice and is opening a similar center, called College Connections Center, to serve students in the metropolitan Kansas City area. Student success is key to the state’s goal of having 60 percent of working-age Missourians with a postsecondary credential by the year 2025, said David Russell, commissioner of higher education for Missouri.

Michael Walker is well on his way to earning an undergraduate degree. He graduated from Soldan International Studies High School in the St. Louis Public School System. He strolled into the center wearing a blue short-sleeved Webster University T-shirt that advertised his college choice.

He had recently met with Heather Sadi, a Webster University representative, to discuss on-campus housing at the center. Posted behind him on a partition was a hand-written list of upcoming college representative visits.

Durant Conley sat with his son, David, who also recently graduated from Clyde C. Miller Career Academy and will attend St. Louis Community College at Meramec.

“I wanted to go to a community college first just to knock off my core classes for cheap,” David said. “Money doesn’t grow on trees.”

His father was pleased with the center and he is surprised that more people are not aware of the community resource.

“They were very efficient,” he said. “The process was very streamlined. It really helped us and resolved a lot of our concerns about my son’s future career.”

After Meramec, David plans to attend the Parks College of Engineering, Aviation and Technology at Saint Louis University to study aerospace engineering.

St. Louis Graduates High School to College Center is open now until August 1. Hours are Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., and Saturday 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. It’s closed Sundays and July 4 and 5, Learn more at stlouisgraduates.org or call 314-932-6956.

Follow this reporter on Twitter: @BridjesONeil.