Since 2005, Johnnie Mitchell of Malvern has been a Career Pathways counselor at College of the Ouachitas, providing aid and encouraging low-income students, especially nontraditional students, to stay in school until they complete their education and are prepared to build a successful, well-paying career.
Those efforts will be enhanced, and the program will be open to all students at COTO, the two-year college in Malvern.
“If students are worried about having the water or the lights shut off, it won’t help them stay in school,” said Mitchell, who will lead the school’s new Working Families Success Network strategy funded by a three-year, $210,000 grant.
The funds are being presented by Achieving the Dream, a national organization dedicated to helping low-income students and students of color attend a community college and earn a degree or certificate.
“The new program utilizes our existing programs in our Career Pathways program that have been offered to students who are eligible,” Mitchell said. “With the grant, we can spread the love around to all of our students.”
The career counselor said the Career Pathways program already established at the school was available to about 60 percent of the school’s 2,000 students working on earning college credits and 4,000 noncredit students in vocational and other skills-certification programs.
“The Working Families program is made up of three areas of training,” Mitchell said. “There is education and employment advancement, along with income and work support, and financial services and asset building.”
The programs are presented with the help of banks in Malvern, and community action programs such as the Central Arkansas
Development Council and the Arkansas Workforce Center, a division of the Arkansas Department of Workforce Services.
“The Arkansas Workforce Center helps with job readiness by trying to match the student with high-demand and high-wage jobs in the state,” Mitchell said. “Students can take the TORQ, a Web-based assessment system that makes career suggestions based on what you are good at, according to the questionnaire.”
She said the college also helps with workshops that show students how to fill out applications, write letters and make the best impression during an interview.
The program will help students receive financial aid and refer them to agencies and community organizations for assistance with needs such as child care and transportation.
“We can link the students to the CADC and their LIHEAP (Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program) to keep their power on, and to other programs we cannot tap into directly,” Mitchell said. “What can a college do to keep their students in school? We have programs that can help pay for child care and give students gasoline vouchers so they can get to school and work.”
The Central Arkansas Development Council helps students establish an individual development account, which is a savings account that can receive matching funds from the agency. The organization, along with area banks, has created a “financial reality fair” to help students learn better money management.
“When the students arrive, they receive a [pretend] salary of $25,000,” Mitchell said. “The fair then has booths representing businesses with goods and services, and we see how they spend their money. Sometimes they run out, and it teaches them how to make better choices.”
Mitchell said she knows the program will make a difference because she has seen it before with the Career Pathways program.
“I have seen the program help people stay in school and become teachers, nurses and have other good jobs, with our help,” she said. “I know one former student from Bismarck who used the program and stayed in school and just moved to Washington, D.C., with an IT job making six figures.”
Mitchell then shared the story of a successful Pathways student who wrote about how the program helped her complete school and start a career.
Kim Lester started her higher education at College of the Ouachitas under the Career Pathways program.
“When I first enrolled in the program,” Lester wrote, “I did not realize the opportunities it would provide for me. The program truly lived up to its name. It helped me find a pathway to a wonderful career.”
Lester said she was old enough to be the mother of many of her classmates, but she was dedicated to achieving an education.
“Pathways was very supportive,” she said in her story. “They helped me with gas vouchers to ease the cost of traveling back and forth to class; they helped with books and supplies that would have cost me hundreds of dollars.”
While Lester was a student, her father died, and she said it was during that time that she received the opportunity to attend mortuary school in a partnership program with National Park Community College in Hot Springs and the University of Arkansas Community College at Hope.
Writing that she put her own grief to work, Lester trained to help others in their time of loss. She added that the people in the Pathways program provided encouragement and support as she studied for her new career while dealing with the death of her father.
Mitchell said they challenged Lester when it came time for her to take the tests required for her licensure.
“We told her we would play for her exams, but only if she passed,” Mitchell said. “If she failed, she would have to pay us back. It was real motivation for her.”
College of the Ouachitas was selected through a competitive process that assessed the school’s commitment to racial equality and poverty reduction, as well as the college’s demonstrated ability to support student success. COTO is one of four schools in the state and 16 in the nation to become involved in the Working Families program.
“Once again, College of the Ouachitas is engaged in a vanguard national effort targeted to transform students’ lives,” said Stephen Schoonmaker, COTO’s president. “We have a strong history of caring for our students’ success, and our work nationally with WFSN will make a difference in not only the lives of our students, but in shaping the very nature of how we conduct business at the college.
The grants are funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Bank of America Charitable Foundation, the Lumina Foundation, the MetLife Foundation and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
“These programs are a catalyst for change to help students break out of those barriers that hold them back,” Mitchell said.
Staff writer Wayne Bryan can be reached at (501) 244-4460 or wbryan@arkansasonline.com.