Career Campaign: Ready To Launch

January 9, 2016January 10, 2016 / Promise / Leave a comment

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It’s by no means easy, but it was both important and inspiring. “It” was the third-annual New Haven Promise Internship Fair, co-hosted by the Yale Community Hiring Initiative.

On Thursday night more than 130 New Haven Promise Scholars gathered at Yale’s Payne Whitney Gym. With basketballs bouncing 20 feet below, the Scholars met with hiring managers from more than two dozen agencies in the first step toward landing a paid summer internship in their field of study.

More than half of the Scholars in attendance will land one of those coveted positions.

“Not only will this provide Promise Scholars about a quarter-million dollars to help cover college-going expenses,” said Executive Director Patricia Melton. “They will also gain valuable career experience and networking opportunities that will help them return to New Haven after they graduate from college. And we are extremely pleased to have new agencies, like Yale-New Haven Health, Centerplan Development, Marcum and the City of New Haven jumping in.”

The program has already launched one full-time career and will ultimately do the same for many more as Promise begins to build its alumni base.

The first full-time job that was a result of the Fair came to Teodoro Garcia, a 2015 graduate of the University of Connecticut. After serving an extended internship at the Yale School of Management, he landed a finance post at the School of Medicine last fall.

Both of those departments participated in the Fair along with a number of other Yale departments, such as the Art Gallery, the Center for British Art, Information Technology Services, Human Resources, Graduate Housing, Finance and the Police Department.

Another Promise graduate — Erving Xochipiltecatl (pictured) — was handling a new role at the Fair, working the table as a full-time employee of New Haven Public Schools, which plans to employ current Scholars this summer. Like Garcia, he was among New Haven Promise’s first class of graduates, earning his diploma from Quinnipiac University in the spring.

In addition to the school district and New Haven Promise, several other businesses and organizations were looking to hire, including Teach For America, Southern Connecticut State University, Berchem Moses & Devlin Law, and the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven.

Melton and Yale’s Community Hiring Director Chris Brown (pictured) talked to the hiring managers after the event and they showed great enthusiasm for the Scholars they met and many discussed recruiting additional departments, businesses and organizations in the future.

A number of other agencies are expected to open positions in the coming months and the hope is to have more than 100 internships this summer.

UConn Commits To New Haven Promise Scholars

December 1, 2015December 2, 2015 / Promise / Leave a comment

Yale University President Peter Salovey, New Haven Mayor Toni N. Harp, University of Connecticut President Susan Herbst, New Haven Promise Executive Director Patricia Melton, New Haven Schools Superintendent Garth Harries.

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Officials at the University of Connecticut are convinced. So convinced that school administrators want more than the 132 New Haven Promise scholars that are on campus. Even to the point that UConn has put money on the table — $5,000 per scholar per year — to help ensure that college is affordable and accessible to them.

UConn President Susan Herbst announced Tuesday that UConn is committing $5,000 in scholarship money to each New Haven Promise scholar attending UConn, starting in fall 2016. It will supplement the scholarship that New Haven Promise provides to those who remain continuously enrolled in city public and charter schools, maintain satisfactory grades, contribute service to the city, and enroll in UConn following their graduation.

Herbst announced the additional financial commitment Tuesday at New Haven’s Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School. She was joined by Yale President Peter Salovey, who is New Haven Promise’s board chair; Mayor Toni N. Harp; Superintendent of Schools Garth Harries; and many other supporters of the program.

Yale funds New Haven Promise’s scholarships, while the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven provides administrative support and Promise’s Partnership program is funded by Yale-New Haven Hospital, Wells Fargo and others.

“It is wonderful to see our investment in New Haven Promise embraced and augmented by a fellow university that, like Yale, is deeply committed to serving its home state,” Salovey said of UConn’s commitment. “I am also delighted that so many students from New Haven earn their degrees from the University of Connecticut and then return here to live, work, and contribute their perspectives to our community.”

Since 2010, nearly 1,000 New Haven public school graduates have qualified for the Promise program, including 132 currently attending UConn.

Fourteen Promise Scholars graduated from the University of Connecticut last spring and more than 20 are expected to join them in 2016. In addition, 22 UConn students gained real-world experience in a paid summer internship through the New Haven Promise-Yale Community Hiring Initiative program last summer.

The additional $5,000 that UConn is committing for enrolled students will be awarded on top of the Promise benefit, and can be used for whatever costs remain – uncovered tuition, room and board, fees, books and other related education expenses while at UConn.

“This generous financial commitment to New Haven students who choose to attend the state’s flagship university will make college even more accessible to our city students,” said Patricia Melton, executive director of New Haven Promise.

“As legislators discuss ways to make college affordable for families, UConn and our funders — Yale University, the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven and Yale-New Haven Health — are doing it,” she said. “Between this unique commitment, Promise dollars and federal aid, our future UConn scholars will have the majority of their total cost of attendance covered.”

New Haven Promise Scholars reflect the student body in New Haven’s schools, with large populations of students of color, first-generation students and those from households with incomes of less than $60,000. Superintendent Harries called the Commitment “not only a wonderful opportunity, but also a wonderful challenge” to supply the state’s flagship school with more New Haven student leaders.

“This commitment from the University of Connecticut is a powerful testimony about the success of the New Haven students at the school,” Mayor Harp said. “UConn has its greatest presence ever in New Haven and I would expect to see an invigorated alumni chapter making new commitments to the city and both current and future Huskies.”

As part of the new commitment, the UConn Foundation has established a fund directly to support the New Haven Promise partnership, Herbst said. That means donors can specifically designate Promise program students to benefit from their generosity.

“The groundwork for this partnership was laid by the remarkable successes of New Haven students at UConn,” Herbst said. “None of this would be possible without the track record they established, so they really deserve the lion’s share of our gratitude.”

Should ESPN Fund A Bristol Promise?

April 17, 2015April 17, 2015 / Promise / Leave a comment

By Brett Hoover

When former New England Patriot Aaron Hernandez was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison this week, it was another blow to Bristol, Conn., a city of about 60,000 which sits about 20 miles west of the state capitol, Hartford.

Hernandez is not just a son of Bristol, he was both a prep star and honor student at Bristol Central High. Two years ago — just three weeks before the murder of which he would be convicted — he was given a Pop Warner Inspiration to Youth Award.

“He was Bristol’s golden boy. People had a lot of hopes and dreams on his shoulders,” J.R. Rusgrove, owner of the city’s Parkside Cafe, told Don Stacom of the Hartford Courant. “Some people are shocked. I think everybody is really sad.”

While the outside world has come to know Bristol as the home of ESPN, the self-appointed “World Wide Leader in Sports,” insiders must recognize that — despite the massive infusion of tax dollars from the network and its countless spinoffs — the former factory town is struggling with little sign of a turnaround.

While its minority and low-income student populations nearly tripled in the last 15 to 20 years, the school district’s workforce lacks the diversity of its learners. And in just the last seven years the district has experienced a double-digit percentage decrease in enrollment.

What does that mean for the next decade? Researchers from the University of Connecticut and officials from the school district disagree. Both recognize that enrollment will continue a downward trend, but the debate is simply its rapidity.

While ESPN’s sprawling campus with more than 4,000 employees has been a tremendous asset, not all of the attention has been positive. Some of ESPN’s best-known figures have been sarcastically critical of the city and the perception is that a significant number of employees swing through the empire’s gates to and from work, never stopping to support Bristol.

This is not to say that the corporate executives have not helped city officials improve the community. Not long ago, ESPN donated $1 million to the Bristol Boys & Girls Club and many employees do volunteer their time. Yet the question remains — is it enough?

Is it ESPN’s responsibility to make a real commitment to Bristol in the form of a Promise program which makes college affordable for those who achieve? Probably not. Would it be wise for ESPN to make that commitment to the place where it has continuously constructed its campus for more than three decades now? Surely.

Within the last year Forbes reported that ESPN’s value had eclipsed $50 billion. Located within a school district of fewer than 8,000 students, ESPN could easily fund a $1 million-a-year program similar to the one in nearby New Haven and another starting in Hartford in 2016.

After all, a $1 million gift from ESPN is equivalent to a man with $500 sparing a penny.

ADDENDUM (10:50 AM): A December 2013 New York Times story about ESPN indicated that the company has received more than a quarter-billion dollars in state tax breaks and credits little more than a decade, including “savings of about $15 million a year since the network successfully lobbied the state for a tax code change in 2000.”

Brett Hoover — who formerly served as the Associate Director of the Ivy League — convinced ESPN to bring its live College GameDay Show to an Ivy League venue, Harvard at Penn, in 2002. That show — which drew a record audience — opened the GameDay tour to the full spectrum of college football.

U.S. News Focuses On New Haven, Promise Movement

February 2, 2015February 2, 2015 / Promise / Leave a comment

U.S. News & World Report is featuring the growth of the Promise movement — and we are happy to report the first national shout-out to Cities of Promise.

The introduction to the piece told the tale of a young woman from a Colorado charter school who found out that the difference between her financial aid package and the price tag at her college would be more than $10,000 — a figure her parents simply couldn’t cover.

But her high school — Peak to Peak Charter School in Lafayette, about a half-hour north of Denver — announced a pilot program intended to ensure that college remain an option for their graduates, regardless of individual financial situations.

While it is unusual for a high school to do this, more and more colleges are following the lead of the nation’s Cities of Promise, where student success has met with opportunity. New Haven Promise Executive Director Patricia Melton — a co-founder of Cities of Promise — was a source for the story.

She said that the Promise movement has led the way for innovative and entrepreneurial thinking. In this case, the grass-roots initiatives have “influenced bolder thinking at the policy level, which tends to take more time,” said Melton. New Haven Promise is currently funding nearly 500 students with more than 100 each at the state’s flagship institution, the University of Connecticut, and New Haven’s Southern Connecticut State University.

Author Allie Bidwell wrote:

Over the last decade, however, more outside foundations have been partnering with cities and school districts to get into the scholarship game, says Carrie Warick, director of partnerships and policy for the National College Access Network.

“I do see an expansion happening at the local level,” Warick says. “I think you will see it through these collective impact initiatives or other collaborations of local, business and nonprofit entities, where the school district will be very involved.”

One of the reasons school districts should be involved, perhaps even in supplying financial support, is that Promise programs help generate significant dollars for them. In New Haven, for example, public school enrollment decreased five straight years before Yale University (ranked third nationally by U.S. News), the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven and Yale New Haven Hospital (ranked among the nation’s top 20 in six categories by U.S. News) established the Promise in 2010.

Since then city-wide public enrollment has jumped each year and is up 10 percent in total, which brings tens of millions of dollars annually to the district and infuses economic development — short term and long term — to the region.