Whenever the homesickness seemed too great, Andrew Johnson knew he could turn to his Posse.

Johnson, a student at Grinnell College in Iowa, is one of 10 college seniors from Los Angeles awarded full tuition to Grinnell through the Posse Foundation. Posse works with 39 partner undergraduate colleges across the nation to award high-achieving public school students from one of eight major U.S. cities with full college tuition.

Syracuse University will introduce three separate groups of students to campus in fall 2012 as part of the university’s first Posse class, said Don Saleh, vice president for enrollment management.

Scholarship winners hail from urban settings including Boston, Chicago and New York City, and are sent to college with a ‘Posse,’ a group of students from the same city.

It was Johnson’s LA Posse that helped him transition from life in LA’s sprawling urban landscape to the tiny Iowa college town during his freshman year.

‘It was nice having a group of nine other people who I knew related to me,’ he said.

Saleh and other officials involved in SU’s Posse selection process traveled to Atlanta, Miami and LA, respectively, during the last week to finalize each city’s Posse. Winners in Atlanta and Miami have been selected, while selections for SU’s LA Posse will follow in this week, Saleh said.

The three cities are of ‘particular interest’ to SU because the university has strong alumni bases in each, faculty interest is high and SU hopes to ramp up admissions in those regions, Saleh said.

Because Posse students are recruited from public schools in urban cities, the groups tend to be racially diverse, though Saleh said Posse’s selection process is not designed to be exclusive.

Tuition for Posse winners is funded through the college, but because most of the students come from lower-income families, a large portion of their normal SU tuition would likely be covered through financial aid such as federal grants, Saleh said. If needed, SU will increase the amount of grant money awarded to students, but the scholarship does not go beyond funding tuition, he said.

Youlonda Copeland-Morgan, associate vice president of enrollment management and director of scholarships and student aid, works closely with Posse candidates to ensure students and families understand how to finance an SU education beyond the tuition covered by the scholarship.

Merit scholarship winners, like the Posse students, are not typically required to earn a GPA above 2.75 to maintain their scholarship, though scholarship winners tend to perform well above the minimum requirement, Copeland-Morgan said.

SU’s partnership with Posse officially began a year ago after members from the foundation visited campus. Saleh said the program identifies students with strong leadership skills and proven track records of success. Posse students graduate at about a 90 percent rate, he said.

Bringing students who have demonstrated strong leadership and community involvement fits into SU’s ‘overall recruitment goals and strategies,’ Saleh said.

Between now and mid-August, the scholarship winners will meet with fellow Posse winners and staff members located in their individual cities. Once on campus, each of the three groups will be assigned to a faculty mentor for their first two years at SU.

Vardges Khachatryan, a senior and member of Grinnell’s LA Posse, was initially antagonistic toward the Posse process, he said. As a senior in high school, Khachatryan said he grew weary of having to navigate heavy LA traffic to attend Posse meetings in hopes of possibly getting to know strangers.

This frustration followed Khachatryan to the Grinnell campus, as he said he disengaged himself from Posse activities in his first year as a student. But after attending the Posse Plus Retreat between his first and second year at Grinnell, Khachatryan’s outlook on the entire program changed.

Each year, the retreat centers on discussing a pressing social issue. The topic that summer — race — evoked ‘meaningful and powerful conversation,’ he said. Khachatryan said he remembers a lot of crying at the retreat and was particularly struck by the personal account of a student who was discriminated against for being Muslim American. Following the retreat, Khachatryan felt Posse may offer more than he originally gave the organization credit for. 

That experience from the retreat in mind, Khachatryan said he entered his sophomore year with a more welcoming attitude about Posse and now praises the program for the people and resources to which he has been exposed. 

Said Khachatryan: ‘Give a little bit of your heart and it’ll work.’

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Published on December 14, 2011 at 12:00 pm

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