It’s not enough to for high schools to send first-generation students to college or even to provide counselors to help them get to a college a degree. Many students from lower-income families have trouble going from college to a professional career that will use their degree. They have no professional network.
Eastside Prep graduate Corine Forward, who earned a Georgetown degree in May, will study at Columbia Law School in the fall. She posed with her parents, Kenneth T. Forward Jr. and Mary Forward. Photo: Georgetown
Eastside College Preparatory School is a tuition-free private school in East Palo Alto, California. Nearly all students will be the first in their families to go to college.
The curriculum is rigorous: For the last 20 years, all Eastside graduates have been accepted to four-year colleges and universities. Seventy-six percent complete a bachelor’s degree within six years, compared to an 11 percent completion rate nationwide for first-generation college students.
Alumni mentoring is helping Eastside graduates launch their post-college careers, writes Sharon Noguchi in the San Jose Mercury News.
Eastside pledges 10 years of support to ninth graders, said founder and Principal Chris Bischof said. That starts with financial counseling in high school, so students can make a college plan that won’t leave them deeply in debt, and extends through post-college career counseling.
Eastside assigns each of its graduates two coaches. A college coach may check on academics, social life, or homesickness, helping cushion what can be a hard landing on unfamiliar campuses of privilege. A career coach helps arrange paid summer internships, discern career goals, and map out a path to reach them.
“ Our goal is to develop proactive and resilient jobseekers,” Bischof said.
Eastside has built a network of Bay Area employers offering internships to its alums, many of whom have spun those into jobs, including at Hewlett-Packard, Google, and in nonprofits, education and government.
“Students lacked the social capital and network to transition to a career,” Bischof told Noguchi.
Helping underemployed first-generation college graduates break into tech jobs is the mission of a New York and Bay Area-based nonprofit COOP, writes Julia Freeland Fisher of the Christensen Institute.
Again, the focus is on building students’ social capital as well as skills in data analytics or digital marketing.
Kateryn Raymundo, a San Francisco State graduate, parlayed an internship at SalesForce into a marketing career. Photo: Pedro Raymundo
I wrote a story last year on connecting first-generation students to Silicon Valley careers.
“In the last five years, San Francisco Unified, Oakland Unified, East Side, San Jose Unified, plus smaller districts and charters, have partnered with the nonprofit Genesys Works to place 12th-graders in nine-month internships at high-tech and other companies,” I wrote for KQED’s MindShift.
During the summer before the students’ senior year, Genesys Works trains them in technical skills, such as information technology, as well as soft skills, like writing professional e-mails, handling feedback and networking. Once school starts, students spend their mornings in class and their afternoons at work, averaging 20 hours a week at $13 to $15 an hour. Nearly all enroll in college, says Peter Katz, executive director of Genesys Works – Bay Area.
Edgar Chavez, college success director for San Jose’s Downtown College Prep charters, told me it’s critical to get students into internships as soon as possible, so they can start building professional networks.
