Document text
Community Builders: Helping students discover their dreams Tom and Judie Drummond of College Dreams stand in front of a mural at Phoenix High School. [Mail Tribune / Jamie Lusch] Sunday Dec 31, 2017 at 12:01 AM By Steve Boyarsky for the Mail Tribune Editor’s note: Community Builder is a periodic Q & A series providing perspectives from local people who have been involved in significant change in Southern Oregon. Today’s conversation is with Tom and Judie Drummond, founders of College Dreams. Q: What is College Dreams? Tom Drummond: It is an organization that helps low-income middle and high school students who have multiple risk factors excel and prepare for higher education, technical training or meaningful careers. Q: How do you help at-risk students prepare for college? Tom: The initial key is a positive relationship with a long-term mentor. We start working with students in sixth grade. We provide students with opportunities to do things they’re not able to do because their families don’t have the money or the ability to get them places. We take them on college campus tours. Over the summer, we’re very busy getting them to pre-college camps ... where they get to be around other college-aspiring kids. It’s support, it’s opportunities and it’s providing resources. Judie Drummond: We help students discover their dreams. Finding a career field that lights them up gives them a reason to excel in school. We’re trying to level the playing field for low-income, at-risk youth. If you look at the national data, at-risk kids are no longer the exception, they are the rule. If we can get these kids excited about their education and what it can get them, then they see that education is the key to their future. Q: How many kids do you have involved this year? Tom: We have about 1,250 active dreamers in school right now. Judie: And we have about 1,700 alumni beginning with the class of 2005. Q: Which schools in Jackson County are involved with College Dreams? Tom: North and South Medford, Central Medford, Phoenix High, Talent Middle School, Armadillo Technical Institute, Logos Charter School and Ashland High School. Q: What was the inspiration for starting College Dreams? Tom: I had worked at Josephine County Mental Health doing school-based children’s mental health for years. I always loved working with kids. We started with substance abuse prevention funds from the state, but we discovered that promoting good things was more effective than preventing bad things. College Dreams formed as a nonprofit 15 years ago. We moved from prevention specialists to college and career preparation specialists. Judie: There is a personal piece, because I would have been a College Dreamer. I was actively discouraged from higher education with other project housing kids because we weren’t wealthy kids who were expected to go to college. I finally graduated with my bachelor’s degree at 41 years of age. I wanted to make a difference for other low-income kids. We created College Dreams to make sure these kids get the support, skills and information they need. Q: How did you find your way to Southern Oregon? Tom: I grew up in Rhode Island and came out to Oregon while I was in a Ph.D. program at the University of Pennsylvania. I was a backpacker. A college friend took a clinical psychology internship at Oregon Health Science University and told me Oregon and the internship were awesome. So, I came to Oregon. I drove down the Columbia Gorge and fell in love. I did an internship and a residency at OHSU, and my first job was in Southern Oregon. Judie: I found my way here because of Tom. Tom’s mother and my mother were very best childhood friends. Tom’s grandparents moved away to find work during the Depression, and Tom’s mother moved in with my grandparents. Our mothers lived as sisters for a year and a half. When his grandparents returned, she moved back with them. My grandparents moved to the Boston area and they never saw each other again. Inside my Mom’s Bible, it says, “awarded at Smithfield Avenue Congregational Church, Pawtucket, Rhode Island.” I went to the church, and they put a notice in the bulletin about anyone who knew my mother. I got a lovely letter from Tom’s mother. When we met, she almost passed out because she said it was as if my mom was walking through the door. So, we became family again, and with this family I got two brothers. One of those “brothers” was Tom, who lived in Oregon. I had no idea that years later I would marry him. Q: What’s kept you here? Tom: We love this area. This is home. People in Oregon are incredibly friendly. And Southern Oregon is just a beautiful place to live. There are lots of needs, and there are a lot of excellent people to work together with. Judie: And it’s a lovely place to be able to make a difference. In big cities it’s really hard to make an impact or a difference. In a smaller community, it’s a lot easier. It’s always fun to go back and visit, but this is home. Q: Could you tell a story or two about a student who has achieved their dreams against the odds? Judie: Sabrina grew up most of her life homeless in the Illinois Valley. She floated around a lot. By the eighth grade she had switched schools 23 times. She always found her way back to the Illinois Valley. She developed a very close relationship with our staff member Monet. Sabrina is one of the most resilient young people I’ve ever known. College Dreams helped her graduate from high school, RCC and SOU. After college we put her to work part-time, and that grew into full-time work. If anyone knows how to help get kids to college, it’s Sabrina. Then she decided to attend graduate school and was accepted at UCLA into a master's program. She graduated in June 2017 and was invited to stay to work on her Ph.D. — and they are paying her to do it. We’ve known Pele since fifth grade. She always told us her dream was to be a doctor. Her family is wonderful, they just didn’t know how to get her there, so College Dreams helped. She’s attending Oregon Tech and doing exceptionally well. She earned more scholarship money than any student in her school’s history. She received a Ford Family Scholarship, which pays 90 percent of need for up to six years. Pele has overcome obstacles and hurdles, challenges and barriers; and she just keeps her eye on the prize and keeps going forward. She is the first in her family to go to college, I believe the first in her family to finish high school. Tom: Katie graduated from Phoenix High School and called recently. One of our first Phoenix High School students, she was always fascinated with law enforcement. She is at Portland State. Katie called to say, “What is it that I have to do to become one of you guys? I’ve changed my mind about law enforcement, and I think I want to do what you guys do?” Judie: They will always be our Dreamers. Once a Dreamer, always a Dreamer. David Liskey is a doctor. Rhianna is an emergency room nurse. There are so many. We have Brandon Welch, who is an engineer. We could bore you all day long with success stories. Tom: We’ve tracked how our kids are doing in higher education. The odds of a first-generation college student who is low-income graduating with a bachelor’s degree is 11 percent. Our first alumni cohorts who enrolled in college have an 80 percent graduation rate. Q: What criteria do you look for in kids? Tom: We look for kids with lots of strong academic potential but who have risk factors for success. We screen them in fifth grade. We look to see if they from a low-income family. Are they the first in their family to go to college or even graduate from high school? Are they minorities or mixed race, Native American? We then start looking at things like do they come from a single-parent family? Are they being raised by grandparents or other relatives? Are they homeless? We look at all the things that make it more difficult for bright kids to succeed. I always liken it to carrying an invisible daypack, and every one of the risk factors is a brick you have to carry in an endurance race. Once you have two, three, four bricks, your endurance is not going to be as good as other more privileged students. Our goal is to help them learn, despite challenges they have in life, to excel and provide the support and resources for them to succeed. Q: You are turning over the organization to a new executive director. What are you most proud of? Judie: Right now I think we have assembled the strongest team that we’ve ever had. We’ve had the ability to grow because of new funding sources and an awesome management team. Tom: We’re investing directly in students with scholarships, individual development accounts, and work experience. College Dreams invests over half a million dollars a year in lower-income students in Southern Oregon. Q: What about students who don’t want to go to a four-year college? Tom: We’ve developed, through a contract with Rogue Workforce Partnership, a very effective career development program. Not all of our students are headed for a traditional four-year university. Many want to attend community college. Some are headed for technical training. We have now developed paid work-experience programs for students to give them training in a career area of interest. This gives us the opportunity to serve kids who want to do something like diesel mechanics at Rogue Community College. It’s a great career for the right student, and College Dreams now has more resources in that area. Judie: We have a very successful student from our second class who is a certified diesel mechanic, and he’s probably making more money than we ever will. He loves it. Q: Have you made a difference? Judie: This has certainly been a passion. When I moved here I told Tom, “I just would really like to find something that I could do that would make a difference,” and I really believe we’ve done that with a lot of kids. I guess we can retire and feel like we’ve really made a contribution. — Steve Boyarsky is a retired educator and longtime resident of the Rogue Valley. He continues to be involved in educational and youth programs.