Ben Rogers always knew college was part of the plan. Nyjah Rollins will be a first-generation college student. Rogers attends Elon University, a school with an endowment of more than 211 million dollars. Rollins attends high school in the surrounding Alamance County, an area that has a total of 15 Title I schools. They consider each other family.
In 2006, Superior Court Judge Howard Manning threatened to close an underperforming school in Alamance County, just seven miles away from the thriving Elon University.
“(Elon University) President (Leo) Lambert, at the time, felt that this was awful that somebody so close to our great University should be struggling,” said Terry Tomasek, associate professor of Education and director of the Elon Academy. “So, he challenged the University to do something about it.”
As a result of Lambert’s thinking and commitment to the outside community, he brought together a group of faculty and staff to create a program called The Elon Academy where Rogers works as a student mentor.
As specified by Tomasek, the Academy’s goal is to provide an enrichment experience for these students and their families who are often overlooked in the college process given their background or family history.
As a senior education major, Rogers has spent is four years in college working with students like Rollins that are enrolled with the Elon Academy. It is designed as a three-phase college access program for students in Elon’s surrounding Alamance County who show true academic promise but are typically marginalized in the college population.
“When I grew up, college was something that I was expected to go to,” Rogers said. “But for these scholars it’s something that’s completely new, unfamiliar, and scary to them.”
The program is highly competitive making it a very difficult application process. According to Tomasek, they usually have about 150 applications; half of which make it to interviews. Last year it was close to 80 applicants. From there, they select only 25 students to fill the new cohort.
“It’s a difficult choice, but the first thing we do is tell all of the students that make it to the interview that they can, and should, go to college. The limitation is with us financially,” Tomasek said. “We strive to make the decision about who we think will likely not be able to go to college without some support.”
Ethan Gabriel, an Elon Academy scholar had a goal of getting into the selective academy since he was young.
“It was something I wanted for a really long time. I just knew the program was going to help me crazy amounts towards the college process,” Gabriel said.
The US Census Bureau reports on its website that Alamance County’s high school graduation rate in 2016 was 84.7 percent, while the college graduation rate was significantly lower at 22.1 percent, 10 percent lower than the national average. As a college access program, the Elon Academy aims to change this statistic.
Percentage of High school graduation rates versus college graduation rates in Alamance County vs. the national average vs. students in the Elon Academy.
***NOTE: The High School Graduation rate for Elon Academy represents the percentage of students who complete the four-year Academy program in high school.***
The program started in 2007 and was designed for students to begin the summer following their ninth grade, and extends all the way through a college graduation. It is sectioned out into three phases: 1. College Access Program. 2. Transition to College Program. 3. College Success Program.
Phase one is the high school portion of the program. In 2007 when it began, there was one cohort of 25 ninth graders. Each year following, a new cohort has been selected to join the academy. This phase combines three intensive four-week summer residential experiences, and continues to meet monthly during the academic year working on things such as SAT preparation, essay writing, and college decision making.
“My favorite part about being in the program is definitely the summer programs. That’s what makes Elon Academy, Elon Academy,” Gabriel said. “You get to meet a variety of different people and really live the college experience.”
This pre-college experience allowed Gabriel to learn the ins and outs of Elon as a young before going through the college process.
“Everything just clicked after that.” Gabriel is a freshman at Elon this year.
Because this phase is crucial in scholars college decision process, scholars and their families also meet with a college planning staff to ensure the families have the resources they need to be a supporter of their children in encouraging the college process.
“Since many of our students are first generation, their families likely don’t have that background or history of going to college,” Tomasek said. “We have family programing throughout the high school portion of our program so that we feel like we are assisting both the student and the family in making the important decisions related to college.”
Scholars are also paired with one college access team mentor (CAT). These are Elon students who meet with scholars face-to-face and virtually, to answer questions and provide support during the monthly Saturday programs. Ben Rogers is a CAT veteran.
“The best thing for me is when the scholars leave a meeting and they just say, ‘let’s do this again, I had a really good time’,” Rogers said. “That means I did a good job.”
It is the role of CAT mentors to foster a relationship of support and assistance with their scholars throughout their time in the program.
Rogers has been working with Nyjah Rollins since he started working for the Academy, when she was a freshman in high school. Nyjah, now a senior, has always been intimidated and extremely anxious by math.
“I remember that her mom emailed me on the first day of class saying that she needed a tutor because she was already freaking out about her math class,” Rogers said. “I’ve worked very, very hard for her, and she has worked very hard for me. Whenever she would get an A on a math test, she would text me in all caps saying ‘I DID IT!’ She’s done well in all her math classes in high school. This is the first year I haven’t worked with her.”
CAT mentors and summer mentors like Roger help guide the scholars through all three phases of the Academy. Following the high school summer experiences, phase two is designed to prepare scholars for financial, academic, and personal social challenges in the transition to college, and phase three is designed to ensure college completion.
“While they’re in high school, Elon Academy is an ever-present resource. An ever-present resource,” Tomasek said. “As they go off to college, that rope gets longer because we want them to connect to those resources on their particular campuses.”
The Elon Academy’s Assistant Director of College Success, Princess King, visits each scholar at their University once a year to help scholars continue to use resources and build leadership and academic skills at their university.
For Gabriel, coming to college was an easy transition.
“There are a lot of valuable lessons learned that you can take to any college,” Gabriel said. “I was too prepared to be unprepared.”
Throughout high school and beyond, scholars are a part of the Elon Academy. Graduated college scholars are supported in developing plans for life after college by the Academy, and also return back to campus to support new scholars in phase one. They continue to stay connected with the relationships they build throughout the academy.
“The most special thing is at the end of the summer program, the graduating class gets to come up and give a speech in front of all the mentors and staff and other scholars. Nyjah started balling during hers saying that I made such a difference in her life because I taught her how to be confident and take on a challenge of learning to love math,” Rogers said. “Being able to show someone that they can do something they didn’t think they could, is something that the Elon Academy abides by, and something I abide by as a mentor.”
The Elon Academy has worked to be more than just a college access program. It thrives on collective involvement, and dedication to the value of access to a higher education. The faculty and staff consist of Elon directors, professors, and students who are committed to engaging in the surrounding community to make a difference outside of the university bubble.
They work to be a resource, support system, and positive relationship for their scholars who, for the first time, are given a chance and hope toward a college education.
“It’s not that being in the Elon academy makes life easy, makes going to college easy, or paying for college easy. That’s absolutely not the case,” Tomasek said. “But seeing the students be successful and face challenge and persevere, that’s the most rewarding and exciting part of the program.”
For Ben Rogers and Nyjah Rollins, the academy has done that and more. Rogers is prepared to take the skills he has learned from scholars like Nyjah, and face the teaching world head on after graduation. Rollins awaits four exciting years of higher education and growth at college – something the Academy and Rogers made possible.
“I still text her. I’ve been to a couple of her softball games, I text her mom, I feel like I’m part of the family,” Rogers said. “It’s those relationships where you know you have such a big impact, that really change your life.”