DIAMONDS IN THE ROUGH
Students from Troubled Backgrounds Face Special Challenges.
A Bold New Program Can Help.
A quick selfie at the Cougar Paw outside E. Cullen, and the group was off.
M.D. Anderson Library, the A.D. Bruce Religion Center, the underground Student Center satellite.
With the briefest of stops to post to social media, the group was on to the next stop on this UH-centric scavenger hunt.
#FindUHWay, the hashtag read, suggesting the exercise was intended to make a 500-acre campus less daunting when students started their freshman year this fall.
But there was an additional message for the Diamond Family Scholars, a program for students who spent time in the state’s foster care system or otherwise suffered a serious family disruption: in working as a team to navigate a sprawling research university, they saw they weren’t alone, that success is possible for everyone.
“Too often, we only hear success stories of people who haven’t had the same struggles,” who have that perfect family with two parents, two kids and a dog, said Madeleine Couling.
That doesn’t describe Couling, one of six inaugural Diamond Family Scholars. Her mother died of a drug overdose when she was five, and her father died a few years later. “I think it’s important for everyone to see representations of themselves,” she said. “Just because your parent was neglectful, was an addict, doesn’t mean you can’t be successful.”
Freshman Madeleine Couling is eager to show the world that success isn’t limited to people from traditional backgrounds.
That sentiment is at the heart of the program, built on the promise not to ignore problems but to offer resources to overcome them.
Raven Jones, director of the Urban Experience Program, which includes the Diamond Family Scholars, said students in the program receive holistic support for academic, professional and personal concerns.
“We offer real help for real problems, every day,” she said.
Making a Difference
The Diamond Family Scholars initiative was launched with a $17 million gift from Houston philanthropists Andy and Andrea Diamond. It ensures students receive the state-mandated benefits to which they are entitled – students aging out of the Texas foster care system and other wards of the state are eligible for a tuition waiver at public colleges and universities – as well as plugging the gaps to help with room and board, books and other supplies. Students live in one of the on-campus residence halls and receive hands- on mentoring and academic advising.
Nationally, more than 23,000 youth a year age out of the foster care system when they turn 18, according to the National Foster Youth Institute, and experts say few have the financial and emotional support crucial to college success.
Andrea Tijerina loves to cook and hopes to someday own her own restaurant or bed and breakfast. For now, she will make the most of academic support from the program.
Andy Diamond told the University’s Board of Visitors last spring that he and his wife – both graduates of the UH Law Center – are interested in what happens to these young people once they leave state custody.
“Most of the time, the outcomes are not good,” he said, noting that only about half of students who have been in the foster care system graduate from high school. “Andrea and I looked at ways we could make a difference in the world.”
Sean Ferrell
Freshman Madeleine Couling is eager to show the world that success isn’t limited to people from traditional backgrounds.
Freshman Madeleine Couling is eager to show the world that success isn’t limited to people from traditional backgrounds.
Andrea Tijerina loves to cook and hopes to someday own her own restaurant or bed and breakfast. For now, she will make the most of academic support from the program.
Andrea Tijerina loves to cook and hopes to someday own her own restaurant or bed and breakfast. For now, she will make the most of academic support from the program.
Sean Ferrell
Sean Ferrell
A Good Student and a Model Citizen
The Diamonds’ substantial gift allowed Jones and Kolby Robinson, assistant director of the Urban Experience Program, to create a program formalizing that support; the first cohort of Diamond Family Scholars will pioneer a program organizers hope will become a national model.
That carries a special responsibility.
“We have to pave the way and show people what it is to be a Diamond Scholar,” said Sean Ferrell. “To be a good student and a model citizen.”
Ferrell lived with his grandparents while he finished high school in Marble Falls after his parents died. But like all the Diamond Family Scholars, he’s so much more: a lanky baseball player whose taste in clothing runs to jerseys of Houston’s sports teams; a sports-lover who is majoring in sports administration; a shaggy-haired young man determined to be successful.
“Obviously the financial aid will help,” he said of the program. “But also it will give me a community of people who are going through the same things I am.”
A key goal is to improve success rates for this particular group of students, from recruiting and retention to graduation rates. A cohort will be selected each year, but the expanded advising and mentoring services are available to all UH students who have been in the foster care system, not just to Diamond Family Scholars.
Andrea Diamond said she and her husband ask only that the Scholars try to pay it forward. “Sometime down the road, give another person in need hope and opportunity,” she said.
The first cohort has accepted the challenge.
“Being the first group means not only that everyone wants us to succeed, but we should also mentor the next group to keep the program going,” said Andrea Tijerina, who will attend the Conrad N. Hilton College of Hotel and Restaurant Management.
“It will definitely provide the support I need financially, but also academically,” she said of the Diamond program.
