Supporting Students at Everett Community College

Earlier this month, College For Success Foundation staff Hillary Ryan and Donna Quach met with Allison Werling and Alisa Lennox of Everett Community College (EVCC) to discuss the Passport to Careers Program. Ms. Werling currently serves as the Passport Designated Support Staff and Ms. Lennox as the Student Support Services. The two explained their positions supporting students enrolled in the Passport to Careers program in an abbreviated version of the interview found below. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

 

Hillary Ryan: Tell us about how the Passport to Careers [program] works on your campus.

Allison Werling: Walking through a student’s path to us would provide the most input into about how we operate. We find students in a varying number of ways. Sometimes they wander into our offices. We get a lot of referrals through financial aid because [the students] indicated on their FAFSA they are at risk of homelessness. We have relationships with school counselors in high schools. [This upcoming school year] we have 27 incoming students, 2 of them are former foster youth and the other 25 are unaccompanied homeless youth. Sometimes we’ll get referrals through our youth re-engagement program, which is when a youth is coming back in after they get their GED after they dropped out of high school. We’ll also get referrals through TRIO.

The Federal TRIO Programs (TRIO, also known as TRiO) are federal outreach and student services programs in the United States designed to identify and provide services for individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds. They are administered, funded, and implemented by the United States Department of Education. TRIO includes eight programs targeted to serve and assist low-income individuals, first-generation college students, and individuals with disabilities to progress through the academic pipeline from middle school to post-baccalaureate programs. TRIO also includes a training program for directors and staff of TRIO projects. Their existence is owed to the passing of the Higher Education Act of 1965.

This is when tracking comes in. We find out where [the students] are at financial aid-wise and advising-wise. Alisa and I start a group chat with the students via text. We email them with their high school counselor or social worker and case manager. We’ve developed a new passport scholar checklist. The whole enrollment process is just wild. We’ll get the student in with an appointment to develop an individualized plan about what happens next. We work with the student to get all the forms and housing done.

We give out Student Support Funds pretty freely to students. If there is a barrier preventing the student from attending school, we give them those support funds. We’ve supported their housing and rent [with Student Support Funds]. We’ve had students who have done sex work and were able to provide them with funds so they were able to stop [engaging in sex work] just to survive. We use the funds for groceries and [school] supplies, textbooks, tuition payments, and course placement payments. If they are not TRIO eligible because they are undocumented or they’re in a program that’s not TRIO supported like dental hygiene, they will get all the advising and tutoring through Passport. Alisa is our student coach!

Alisa Lennox: The second part of the Passport program we have at EVCC is specific to EVCC. My position works with the Passport program. Something that makes this program really successful is the ability to work within the TRIO and Passport program. I can work with all of those students for extra support. [I am] the second or third individual they can connect with. Allison is doing advising, transfer advising, career exploration and graduation requirements. I am providing life skills, life coaching, and executive functioning…it’s essentially one-on-one tutoring and mentoring. [We talk about] credit cards, interest, health insurance and healthcare, resources, and questions about Work Force Funding. I’m just that extra go-to person.

Part of my position is running programming, so trying to create a connection and community between Passport students. Coming out of the pandemic has been difficult. We are working on creating connections and are hosting Thanksgiving, Mother’s Day, and Father’s Day. Events that are typically around holidays can be difficult for students [so we] try and create a lot of community with students.

We host open tutoring to support them academically. They have access to an advisor and counselor whenever they need that. I flex my schedule to meet with students when they don’t have the opportunity to meet with a regular tutor, since many of our students are working full-time jobs.

Hillary Ryan: Thanks for sharing all that. If you think outside of the two of you, on your campus, who are the biggest champions for the Passport program? It seems like there’s quite a lot of awareness. Is that driven by a particular department or person?

Alisa Lennox: Well, Allison does a ton of work. Allison does all the work of making us super visible and making sure Passport students are seen as students. So does Kesia Ceniceros, our Trio dean.  When she talks about Trio to other departments, she also talks about Passport extensively. She makes other partners at different levels aware of Passport and how Passport and Trio work together. Veronica Deatherage in Financial Aid is [someone we talk to about the well-being of students] several times a day. We feel lucky to have a proactive and responsive Financial Aid team that understands and empathizes with the needs of the students. They do a lot of work to make us visible. Jenn Rhodes [the Dean of Student Development] does a lot of work to make Passport and Trio students with Work Force Funding to not let the program and those students fall through the cracks.

Allison Werling: Anita Radliff is the interim head of Financial Aid, is a huge TRIO advocate and proponent. She also takes on supporting our incoming students. We’ve always had support from our Financial Aid directors in prioritizing our students. Laurie Franklin, VP of Student Services, is someone we can go to. We have a lot of support from Laurie. Housing [staff] is also a great support, they will always support our students. The Department of Equity of Social Justice has always been super wonderful for advocating for more full-time positions [that are needed to adequately support Passport students]. We have really great relationships with individuals throughout campus on different levels that help us prioritize our students. That helps our students find more success and security. With it being such a large program, the capacity isn’t there for all our advisors, so being able to hire into Alisa’s position makes our program very unique and has led to a lot of great student successes.

Hillary Ryan: You’ve talked a lot about student successes, champions, and what makes your program unique. What changes would you like to see in the Passport program? What would you like to see done differently?

Allison Werling: Mine is always manpower. In my position, I wear multiple hats. It can be really challenging to balance. How do we expand capacity? How do we continue to fund Alisa’s position, which is grant-funded? We are figuring out what funds we can leverage moving forward to fund that position.

Alisa Lennox: The student successes with this position have been really wonderful. We had a student who was failing all of her courses five weeks before the end of the term, and we connected and had tutoring and she passed all her classes. Just having that one-on-one support and academic and core-building tutoring has been really beneficial. Our students have higher needs and need someone who is accessible most of the time to move forward with tutoring specific subjects and larger executive functioning.

If other programs had an individual who was assisting the designated staff members, the same strides could be made for students who are in the Passport program. Having an individual who can assist with specific academic and life skills [because] the designated staff members are so busy has been amazing. If everyone had a position like the one I am currently in, it would lighten the load and build capacity. It would be a great addition to Passport programs.

A special thank you to Ms. Lennox and Ms. Werling for sharing their time with us. Congratulations to all of our 2023 Passport graduates and welcome to our incoming class!