Prepping kids for college

Many Hispanic people come to feel that college is out of reach, a YSU official said.

By SEAN BARRON

VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT

YOUNGSTOWN — She may be only 6 years old, but Keania Boone already has her sights set on becoming a doctor.

“I like medicine because it makes you feel better,” the Stambaugh Academy first-grader said shyly.

Keania spent part of Thursday’s Educators and Community Helping Hispanics Onward college summit talking to Joe Rottenborn, executive director of the Mahoning Valley College Access Program, about her interest in medicine.

The 6-year-old nonprofit access program serves Mahoning, Trumbull and Columbiana counties and is set up to increase the number of young people in the Valley who will attend college, Rottenborn explained.

Keania came with her father, Kenny Boone, a deputy clerk with the Youngstown Municipal Court, to the two-hour college fair at the Salvation Army, 1501 Glenwood Ave., on the city’s South Side.

The Youngstown father and daughter were among several dozen high school students and graduates, parents, former college students and others to attend.

“It’s never too early to give your children the tools they need to be successful in life,” Boone said.

Among the purposes of the fair, themed “How to Educate Our Future Leaders Now,” were to help high school students and others learn what they need to prepare for a college of their choice, and to try to remove barriers that make it more difficult for some Hispanics and other minorities to attend college, noted Maggie McClendon, assistant director of Youngstown State University’s Office of Undergraduate Admissions.

McClendon noted that 2000 Census Bureau figures showed that Hispanics make up about 13 percent of the country’s population, yet a much smaller percentage have a college education.

The high school dropout rate among Hispanics is high partly because many opt to support their families, and eventually they feel that higher education is unattainable, she continued.

Dava Pugh’s twin 16-year-old daughters, Janee and Lanee Cotton, hope to be a lawyer and pediatric physical therapist, respectively, so the Youngstown woman thought it would be beneficial to expose the two Girard High School girls to materials related to several Ohio colleges.

“I brought my daughters so they could learn more about higher education and achieving their goals in life,” said Pugh, a 1990 South High School graduate who also graduated in 2003 from Stark State College near Canton with a degree in occupational therapy. Pugh also brought her 10-year-old daughter, Korree Cotton, who she said wants to be a pediatrician.

Participants took time to browse numerous display tables that contained information on roughly 15 state colleges and universities. On hand were catalogs, applications, forms about financial aid packages and literature on scholarship programs.

Among the schools represented were YSU, Baldwin Wallace College, Ohio University, The College of Wooster, Wilberforce University near Dayton and the Northeast Ohio Universities College of Medicine. Information also was available from an organization called Historically Black Colleges and Universities, which represents predominately black schools in Ohio and around the nation.