Last month Keith D. Roots took over as College Guide Program director, marking a transition in the program founded by Nicole Hurd to encourage more high schoolers to go to college.
Hurd founded the College Guide Program in 2005 as a response to the diminishing college enrollment rates of high school graduates in the Commonwealth. According to Hurd, the program has made major strides during the past two years in providing high school students with college-related information to which they might not otherwise have access.
"In Virginia, about 79 percent of our young people are graduates from high school, but only 53 percent are going to college," Hurd said.
She added that in many schools there is only one counselor for every 369 students, and it is because of these ratios that guidance counselors across the nation are overworked and unable to devote much attention to individual students. The focus of the College Guide Program is to address this issues by placing recent college graduates in partner high schools to share their knowledge of the college application process with high school students.
"We work with guidance officers and college access personnel at our partner high schools and community colleges to help students eventually enroll in college, be it a four-year or a two-year institution," Roots explained.
Currently there are 24 guides who assist high school students not only with their college applications but also with financial aid forms and scholarship applications. As part of his new position, Roots will manage these guides as well as the three members of the office staff; however, his obligations extend beyond simply managerial tasks.
As director, Roots oversees fundraising for the program, a responsibility he said he takes seriously. As one of his goals for the coming year, Roots said he will look for sustained long-term funding. He also hopes to expand the program to other school districts throughout the Commonwealth.
The program had a solid start as its first year ushered in double-digit increases in the overall college enrollment rates at the partner high schools.
In the past, Roots has served as an admissions officer at the University of Texas, the University of Georgia and Longwood University. He also has been in the development office at the University for the past six and a half years and was part of the team that put together the initial proposal for the establishment of the College Guide Program to the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation.
Hurd was once the director of the program here at the University and is now working at the University of North Carolina to oversee the 10 other universities that have followed the University's example in creating a college guide program.
"Keith has been a member of our leadership team from the beginning; it was a natural transition for him to take over the leadership position upon my departure," Hurd said.
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