Wednesday, November 6, 2013 COMMUNITY.TIMESFREEPRESS.COM
Graduates featured on billboards with CollegeBound! Program
by Kelsie Bowman
As a result of the CollegeBound! campaign, familiar faces are popping into view along the roads of Hamilton County.
The campaign, a partnership between the Public Education Foundation, Hamilton County Department of Education and Bi-Lo, highlights 18 local high school graduates by displaying their picture along with their college destination on billboards across the region. The young faces on each billboard are smiling, waving a diploma in the air beside the text: “Bound for (insert college or university here)!”
“We like to highlight the wonderful places the students in Hamilton County go,” said Stacey Lightfoot, PEF’s vice president of college and career success. “We want to show the community that the students are getting into the best colleges in the country.”
Hamilton County is below the national average in the number of residents with a college degree, according to a press release from PEF. The CollegeBound! campaign seeks to change that, said Lightfoot.
“You very often hear about the negative, low test scores. You don’t hear about the successes as much,” she said. “They [the highlighted students] become role models. It gives them a sense of pride to represent our schools and our communities.”
The campaign also inspires current HCDE students while they are making their own decisions about college, she added.
“It’s possible for [current HCDE students] to see themselves in that student [on the billboard] and it gives them hope to achieve that as well,” said Lightfoot.
Not only do the students’ faces appear on billboards, six of the 18 students have committed to blog about their experience through their first year of college.
One of the students is attending a naval academy, one is in Boston, Mass., and another is attending school in New York City, said Shannon Edmondson, development and communications officer for PEF. The three other bloggers are attending colleges in Tennessee, she said.
The students highlighted in the campaign were chosen by their school’s PEF college adviser based on a number of factors, explained Lightfoot. Each adviser nominated up to three students for the campaign and a committee made the final selections.
“It’s a hard process,” Lightfoot said in regards to the determination process. “It’s based on a variety of things; students who stick out that they’ve [the advisers] have worked with.”
According to Edmondson, six of the 18 students are first-generation college students, and 14 received at least one scholarship. Half of the students are attending public universities and the other half are attending private institutions.
The committee also tries to choose students who are going to a diverse range of schools, Lightfoot added.