Lindsey Lassiter is the Y.E.S. Advocate placed in the school to work with identified students in collaboration with their families, high school counselors and teachers, according to the community foundation. Lassiter said the program is meant to help first-generation college students gain the “essential tools for success.”
The program was granted $10,000 through AT&T’s Aspire program during a ceremony Friday at the high school.
“There’s no shortage of ideas for what I want to do with the grant,” Lassiter said, including overnight visits to colleges further away and an incentive program to keep kids motivated.
Mark Romito, director of external affairs for AT&T Ohio, said education has been a growing focus of the AT&T Foundation, with a priority on increasing high school graduation rates and preparing students for post-secondary life.
By 2018, 63 percent of all jobs across the U.S. will require post-secondary education, according to Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce.
“AT&T and many businesses need highly educated and skilled employees, and customers who can afford to buy our services,” Romito said. “There’s a difference between surviving and thriving.”
In Hamilton, the Y.E.S. program begins in the ninth grade with help on homework, gauging the student’s strongest subjects and showing them how to read a transcript. The program gets more directed in 11th and 12th grades as students take standardized tests for college acceptance and begin applying to schools.
Audrey Amburgy, a senior, has been in the Y.E.S. program since it began four years ago. Amburgy said she would have been a “deer in headlights” without the program.
“It has encouraged me to go to college, and helped with the type of schools and programs that interest me,” Amburgy said. “My sophomore year, math was hard and Lindsey instilled confidence and helped me study.”
Amburgy said she went on college visits to Xavier University, Ohio State University and Miami University Hamilton through the program. She’s now striving to study radiology at Xavier next year.
Shelby Bushnell, a junior enrolled in Y.E.S., said when she started high school she had no idea what interested her or how to start gathering information on college visits, scholarships and degree options.
“I am so glad I’ve become a part of this; it’s such a big help,” Bushnell said. “My parents like the program because they don’t have to worry and it takes a weight off their shoulders.”
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