September Member Spotlight: Chicago Scholars
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September Member Spotlight: Chicago Scholars
Interview with: Karen Foley, President, Chicago Scholars
Interviewed by: Carrie Tate, NPEA Member Services Associate
Contact Karen Foley for more information.
Total number of students served: 800 in the academic year 2010-2011
Number of Chicago neighborhoods represented in CS: 69 of 77
Number of staff: We have a full time staff of 12 (including a fellow) and 5 part-time staff. We have over 200 volunteers ages 23-63 representing over 50 different industries, and we have 80 Scholars peer-mentoring.
Q: What is Chicago Scholars?
A: Chicago Scholars is a five-year mentoring program helping high-potential, low-income, underserved, and inner-city youth navigate critical transitions from high school to college and college to career. We are anchored by a three-tiered mentoring program. In the first tier, adult mentors and college experts work with cohorts of high school students to assist them in preparing their college applications. In the second tier, rising college freshman are matched with peer mentors. Finally, the third tier consists of career mentoring for rising sophomores, juniors, and seniors.
The mission of Chicago Scholars is to create a public/private partnership to mentor a college-educated workforce of 10,000 high-potential, low income and broadly diverse Scholars over the next decade who will be drawn from every high school and every neighborhood in the city. Our goal is to recruit 75% or more of them back to Chicago as future leaders who will drive exciting advancements throughout our city for decades to come.
Ultimately, the goal of Chicago Scholars is to make Chicago a better place to live, learn, work, and raise a family by unleashing the talent in overlooked neighborhoods and schools. 
Q: How did the Chicago Scholars program evolve?
A: CS began in 1996 as a onetime scholarship organization. About seven years ago the Board decided to revisit its strategy and launched an aggressive search for the best practices of college access and success.
Initially, we talked to students in existing college access programs and looked at the educational access landscape to identify what needs were unaddressed. We researched local, statewide, and national best practices. During our second year, we merged with another organization and began to reassess our goals, structure, and brand. We were joined by new staff members that helped us shape and improve our programming.
We brought together over a dozen local organizations and more than 70 colleges and universities as key partners who share best practices about college access and success. We also "share" students so it makes it much more efficient and cost effective when we work together. Some of these organizations included The Chicago Urban League, 100 Black Men, Pilson Community Council Neighborhoods, the Chicago Public Schools and representatives from private and catholic high schools, as well as others. We also brought in a mentoring expert and an admissions dean to offer perspective from the university level. The team's charge was to find the best practice to college access. We spent six months evaluating the landscape and came back with recommendations and innovative ideas. One thing we discovered was that nobody had a comprehensive best practice for college access curriculum and programming. We expanded our searches nationally and were still left without answers. So, we decided to develop a logic model with a set of very specific recommendations, turned it into curriculum, and had it peer-reviewed by high school and college admissions counselors. The first year we implemented the new curriculum, we had 20 students, and six years later, we now have 800 students in the program. What I am especially pleased about is that we continue to collaborate with our original partners.
Q: How do you and your staff approach the college prep process with your Scholars?
A: The college prep business is a $360 million business in the United States. Unfortunately, access to personalized expert college counseling is a privilege for those who can pay. Our families cannot afford to hire outside experts. So, to level the playing field for our Scholars, we give them the equipment in the form of workshops, teach them to play the game in terms of how to navigate the college admissions process, let them practice before hitting the competition with mentors, and give them ongoing coaching and support they need once they get on the campus.
Mentoring is a cornerstone of everything we do. At one time, we had a one-on-one mentoring program, but with the help of the Polk Brothers Foundation, we transformed it into a three-tiered mentoring program to be pre-responsive to the needs of our Scholars at different points in their high school and college careers. Along the way, we met Marybeth Kravets. Marybeth served as the president of NACAC and was the counselor for 31 years at Deerfield Academy, a phenomenal high school on the North Shore of Chicago. Having visited over 3,000 colleges, she is steeped in the field and she is one of the nation's experts on working with students with disabilities.
As part of the mentoring process, we focus on the mechanics of college access but we also deliberately talk with our Scholars about social capital, the power of networking, the importance of giving back through reciprocal relationships, strategies for college, and strategies for accessing the resources that will help them be successful and fulfill their goals. We also try to encourage our students to have the confidence to ask for help when they need it, to ensure they know how to find the support they may need during their college experience. 
Q: What is the Chicago Scholars Onsite College Admissions Forum?
A: Getting an early start on identifying and applying to a good set of colleges is just one of the advantages our Scholars receive. Five years ago, we also created an innovative way to jumpstart the acceptance process by creating an Onsite Admissions Forum. In order to participate, students are required to prepare a minimum of five college applications. Mentors and our staff then review the applications for quality, and we send them directly to our college partners all around the nation. Colleges come to Chicago in October having reviewed the applications in advance of meeting our kids. The majority of our college partners are selective and highly selective institutions that can offer exceptional educational opportunities backed by solid financial aid packages. During the forum, their admissions directors conduct interviews with our Scholars, and two thirds will offer admission that same day. Last year, we raised over $3.5 million in a single day for our Scholars.
By encouraging our students to focus on their college preparations during the summer before their senior year, they have more time to think about their decisions and put more focused energy into their applications. It can be difficult for students to devote time and energy to the college process while they are juggling school and various activities during the academic year. We challenge students to think about their learning styles, determine what is important to them, and research different colleges.
Q: Can you tell me about some of your upcoming plans and goals for Chicago Scholars?
A: In 2013, we plan to hold our first Career Onsite, with a goal of recruiting well-educated college talent back into the city. The Career Onsite serves two distinct purposes. First, it fulfills the goal of attending college by allowing our Scholars the opportunity to compete for great careers, and it demonstrates that the investment we have made in the Scholars is returned as businesses are actively seeking a broadly diverse workforce.
It is a perfect win-win and it gives a hands-down advantage to Chicago over any other city in America. In partnership with our key partners, including the Chicago Urban League, IIT - Boeing Scholars Program, Kappa Institute, Hispanic Alliance for Career Advancement, the IB program, the Archdiocese, and more, we are drawing the best talent in Chicago and bringing them to the business community. These are academically ambitious kids who have demonstrated a high level of discipline and focus about what they want to achieve, who have demonstrated leadership and resilience, and who are willing to work hard and overcome obstacles. Our Scholars are transitioning into every professional industry/sector you imagine. They are working and interning at Deloitte, McDonald's, Northwestern Hospital, Harris Bank, Chapman and Cutler, Kirkland and Ellis, PNC Bank, and more, while others are pursuing specialized graduate degrees. These students represent every gender, ethnicity, religion, and neighborhood in Chicago, coming from public, private, charter, and parochial schools throughout the city.
While we are very proud of our Scholars and of the donors and businesses that invest in them, we know that boosting the college graduation rates for low income students is complex, and we feel fortunate to collaborate with so many fine individuals and organizations to accomplish a 95% college graduation rate launching thousands of exceptional students into their careers. 
Q: Who does Chicago Scholars serve? How are students selected for the program?
A: We work closely with a roster of community organizations, every high school in Chicago and we recruit using our existing class of high school seniors who get the word out to their younger peers who are high school juniors. This past year, our Scholars got creative and used tangible marketing tactics like t-shirts, pens, flyers - even temporary tattoos - to help draw in interested candidates. They had a great year with more than 1151 applications for 300 spots.
Q: Do you have any partnerships with college access programs that serve students in middle and/or high school, before they would be eligible to participate in Chicago Scholars?
A: We have successfully forged relationships with organizations including High Sight, Daniel Murphy Scholarship Fund, The Chicago Urban League, Kappa Institute, LINK Unlimited, CircEsteem, AVID, the IB program, the Archdiocese, as well as principals and counselors throughout the city. There are so many great organizations that work with youth earlier in the pipeline, so we are glad to partner with them and we are looking to expand our collaboration model.
Q: Why is this work important for Chicago?
A: Chicago is the third largest public school district in the nation, the second largest Hispanic community in the United States, and the number one place in the country for black entrepreneurship. Still, out of the top 100 U.S. cities, Chicago only ranks at #58 for the percent of population holding a college degree. There are almost as many college dropouts as there are college graduates in Chicago. We have great culture and so many fantastic institutions, but half of our students drop out of high school and we are still working on developing a world-class educational system. Meanwhile, there are thousands of kids who stick with it and want to attend college. If we can help them succeed, they become role models for their younger peers in their local Chicago communities. Success breeds success. That is why we will continue to work as furiously and diligently as possible to attract high-potential kids, improve our city's ranking, and narrow the gap between those with college degrees and those without.
Q: For the mentoring component of the Chicago Scholars program, who serves as your mentors?
A: Many of our mentors are drawn from our High Five partners. High Five partners make commitments to funding a class of Chicago Scholars for the full five years of our program. What is so great about our High Five partners is they want to do more than give money. High Five partners sit on our Board, serve as mentors and help us recruit new Scholars. It is wonderful when our Scholars go on to serve as interns and employees. We are all learning about the power of relationship building.
Q: What is the Chicago Scholars Life Line Fund?
A: Given their backgrounds and all the demands placed on our Scholars, many of them are just one crisis away from dropping out of college, for so many reasons that are not always academically related. With our lifeline fund, we are able to help students who have to care for a sick parent by helping them rent an apartment closer to home instead of living in the dorm, or helping them fill the gap in their package so they can buy health insurance or by supplementing a semester of work study so they can completely focus on their academics. The Life Line Fund is another way we help our Scholars pull themselves forward no matter what crisis they may be facing.
Q: Can you share a few examples of Chicago Scholars success stories?
A: We have a 95% college graduation rate for students who complete the five year Chicago Scholars program. We are always eager to celebrate the successes of our Scholars.
Sonam Velani, a Chicago Scholar graduate, recently visited me. The first person in her family to attend college, Sonam graduated from Harvard and now works at Goldman Sachs. Chicago is part of her territory. Now she is introducing me to opportunities!
One of our Scholars, "the Million Dollar Scholar", received $1,000,000 in scholarships. Darrius Quarrels proves that he is not one in a million that made it, but rather one in a million that CAN make it if we work together.
Read more about our Scholars and their successes on the Chicago Scholars website HERE.