Educators from across the country traveled to Scottsdale, Arizona, to participate in the 2022 Rural College Access and Success Summit. Hosted by Partners for Education at Berea College and Education Forward Arizona, the three-day event was dedicated to bringing forth ideas and strategies to best support students in rural communities.
The event featured keynote speakers such as country artist and advocate for at-risk youth, Jimmy Wayne. As well as renowned youth basketball coach and mentor Raul Mendoza. The schedule of sessions included a variety of topics, including social and emotional learning, federal funding and advocacy, community engagement, career exploration, and much more.
Arizona GEAR UP which works with over 50 schools across Arizona, invited 30 school community members from rural districts to participate in the Summit. Kimberly Knapp is a counselor at Westpark Elementary, and this is her first in-person conference since the pandemic.
“I’m excited about the sessions. I look forward to learning new ways to help our students with career exploration and showing them there is a lot out there,” Kimberly said.
Arizona GEAR UP’s Program Managers, Jasmine Dean and Daniel Pulu, presented alongside the Partners for Education team at Berea College. Together, the group hosted the “Emergent Learning for College Access Professionals” session. An immersive session where attendees split into different groups and addressed three guiding questions:
- What would it take to close the academic gap among rural students?
- What would it take to create a holistic approach to student success?
- What would it take to improve the value proposition of postsecondary attainment?
Two table hosts led each group, and they reviewed data and trends impacting schools in rural communities and discussed their findings with the rest of the session participants.
“Our goal for the session really was to just give a space for the trending topics in college access and let folks determine their own conversation,” Sarah White with Partners for Education said.
While discussing each topic, groups were also developing plans on how to address these very subjects. With each group bouncing ideas off one another, this sparked conversations and brainstorming efforts from the entire room.
“By the end of the session, people became so invested in the discussions that they carried on even after we closed out,” Sarah said.
The session wrapped up with a review of each group’s newly developed plans and participants creating personal action commitments to help move forward in supporting the success of students in rural communities.