Francesca J. Gamber

As a student at a private high school in Baltimore, Francesca “Frankie” Gamber, a 2003 Jack Kent Cooke Graduate Scholar, had an advantage. She received the advice and wisdom of a college counselor to help her navigate through the confusing college-application process. She often wondered how students in overcrowded, inner-city schools were able to manage. Most of those schools’ guidance counselors were overworked because of the sheer numbers of the students they served. College “counseling” consisted mostly of keeping the shelves stocked with admissions booklets.

Fast-forward to 2002 and the beginning of Frankie’s senior year at Harvard, where she was exposed to The COACH Program (College Opportunity and Career Help) which was designed to help kids in big city high schools who often slip through the cracks when it comes time to register for the College Boards or get applications in on time.

Frankie, although she didn’t know it at the time when she volunteered to be a COACH mentor, had found her calling. The program was begun in 1999 by two Harvard professors who were researching why urban public high school graduates enroll in postsecondary education at lower rates than their private school peers. What they discovered was what Frankie already knew: At public schools, counselors can’t possibly give close attention to the students who need it most – those who have the desire to attend college, but are unsure of the process to get there.

Frankie and an army of other Harvard undergrads scattered about Boston’s public schools and helped make a difference.

“Volunteering with the COACH program was one of the most meaningful things that I did when I was in college and it was an experience that stuck with me. I was able to form some really great relationships with students who were in my COACH group and I realized that watching them complete their application and find success in getting into the colleges they wanted to get into meant more to me than doing well on a paper. It meant more to me than any of the usual definitions of success that I had been operating under,” said Frankie recently, as she looked back on the experience.

Now, it’s mid-2009, and Frankie’s just a few months away from receiving her PhD. She has been working for the past few years at The Greater Homewood Community Corporation, a non-profit that serves 40 neighborhoods in north central Baltimore. Frankie saw the same need in Baltimore that Boston teenagers faced and has worked to bring the COACH model to the Charm City under the auspices of Greater Homewood. Right now students from Johns Hopkins University are volunteering as mentors in three public high schools in Baltimore City and the program is expanding.

For anyone familiar with the COACH program, there are similarities to the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation’s College Advising Program. Both programs are there to help students who want to better themselves, but need a slight push.

As Frankie said, “I really felt that there was no better way to show my appreciation for the support I received from the Foundation than to try and spend my working life helping students on the path to college.”