Four years ago, a seed was planted when the first cadre of Tacoma’s Act Six students went off to Whitworth College in Spokane on full-ride scholarships.
That seed has flowered beautifully. Twelve students – most of them minorities or low-income – graduated in May. Most have returned to Tacoma, ready to go to work and contribute to their community.
That’s exactly what Act Six director Tim Herron hopes the program – an initiative of the Northwest Leadership Foundation – will accomplish. As he told The News Tribune’s Karen Hucks, Act Six’s goal is about more than helping young people succeed at a participating faith-based college: “Our vision is really to inspire them to care about their community.”
The strategy behind the Act Six Leadership and Scholarship Initiative is that if students go off to college as a well-prepared team whose members provide support for each other, they’re more likely to succeed – even at a school with little ethnic diversity like Whitworth.
Selected as high school seniors who already showed leadership potential, the students met weekly during their last year of high school to discuss such topics as study skills, time management, race relations and community development. They visited the Whitworth campus twice and participated in team-building exercises.
That preparation paid off. They made a splash at Whitworth, stepping into leadership roles that included student body president and starting the college’s first gospel choir. All 11 of the first group and one from the 2004 cadre earned degrees.
Now they’re home, with those degrees and a sense of accomplishment that are sure to translate into the kind of success that might have eluded them had it not been for a program like Act Six. Forty more of the program’s college students are in the pipeline to graduate, and it is putting out the call for up to 20 applicants for the Fall 2008 cadre.
Tacoma is fortunate to have a program like Act Six working to help young people succeed. Participating colleges like Whitworth – and Pacific Lutheran University next year – contribute greatly by paying student expenses that aren’t covered by scholarships such as those provided by the Gates Foundation.
Few factors are likely to help the city more than increasing its number of college graduates – especially those from less-advantaged neighborhoods.
To apply for 2008
Download Act Six applications at www.actsix.org or call 253-272-0771.
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