Program aims to put Appalachian teens in college

Knoxville News-Sentinel, Knoxville, Tennessee
March 27, 2002
By J.J. Stambaugh, News-Sentinel staff writer

A program aimed at making college more accessible for teens in three rural East Tennessee counties was launched Tuesday at a luncheon in downtown Knoxville.

The Tennessee Appalachian Higher Education Center will fund programs at high schools in Campbell, Cocke and Scott counties in order to boost the number of students who choose to further their education, officials said.

“It's a program that really reaches out to rural high schools and rural communities in Appalachia to awaken young people to the realization that they can go to college,” said Duane J. DeBruyne, spokesman for the Appalachian Regional Commission.

“The economy of Appalachia is very dynamic, and the good jobs in the future will require education and training beyond high school.”

The program is funded through ARC and the Kellogg Foundation; it will be administered by the University of Tennessee.

“In general, we'll just be facilitating students to go on to college and a good career,” Director Terry Lashley said.
Using an estimated $100,000 in seed money spread over a two-year period, the center will encourage teenagers to continue their education through a combination of field trips to campuses, working with parents, and even helping students improve their test scores.

Individual high schools will develop their own programs, which will be funded through the center if they fall within certain guidelines, Lashley explained.

All three counties are classified as economically distressed by ARC, which pulls statistics from various federal agencies to keep track of trends in Appalachian counties stretching from northeast Mississippi through southwest New York.

To be categorized as “economically distressed,” a county must have an unemployment rate at least 1.5 times the national average, a per capita market income less than two-thirds the national average and a poverty rate that is at least 1.5 times the average.

Like many other communities in the Appalachians that once depended on the mining and lumber industries or blue-collar factories, the three counties have suffered tremendously over the past few decades as those jobs dried up, officials said.

Due to cultural factors and misperceptions about the price of a college education, many students in those regions never seriously consider a university career, according to ARC Federal Co-Chairman Dr. Jesse L. White, Jr.

“For so long, we did not invest enough in rural and small-town Appalachia,” White said, adding that the lack of well-trained “human capital” is the single biggest obstacle preventing Appalachian communities from competing in the global economy.

White and others pointed out the success of similar initiatives in Ohio, Kentucky, Mississippi and West Virginia, where some county school systems saw the percentage of students who went on to college double since the programs were implemented.

“Our goal is no less ambitious for Tennessee,” White said.

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