Coates Inc College and Career Conference
Hi, my name is Catisha Toney. I am the CEO of Coates Inc. I am welcoming everyone to the second annual College and Career Fair here at the Railcats Stadium. This college fair is specifically for high school students, high school graduates, and young adults.
This year we had over nine sessions that would benefit the participants. Some of those sessions were “New Year, New Me” a student panel of current college students where they participated in an open Q&A dialogue about their college experiences. “I Graduated, Now What?” where students and families were able to complete a transition to college checklist. We had some community colleges such as Ivy Tech talking about their free college certification programs. We also had members of the community serving as vendors, the City of Gary Mayor Jerome Prince, the State Senator Eddie Melton, and members of Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority Incorporated attending the event.
In addition to the sessions, we also gave every participant an Off To College bag full of college essentials, as well as raffling off mini microwaves, mini refrigerators, and a laptop computer. Today's event was a great success. We’re looking forward to doing more in the future.
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Catisha Toney
The Education Problem in Gary Indiana
Coates Inc. is mainly focused on educational equity in college and career areas. So I mainly focus in Gary, Indiana, but I also support a lot of Northwest Indiana. I am from Gary, Indiana so that's my home and that's the first place that I really wanted to push and support college and career. Because as a high school student, I didn't have anyone who really supported me going to college and really determining what my next goal would be post high school. I also had a lot of friends that also didn't have that opportunity either. And I felt like for a while, I always blamed the counselor, like '“our counselor sucked - they didn't really care.” But as I got into it and became a counselor, I realized it's not that they don't care. It's that they just have minimal amount of support that they can provide. They're trying to support every senior that's graduating and every student in the building, and in low income areas, it's just not possible to really give yourself to everyone.
Educational Equity and Supports for 9th and 10th Graders
With Coates Inc. it really became how do I provide additional, what I would call wraparound support or counselor on loan services to help others get more college and career support. And so some of the initiatives I'm doing right now - the first is the Jump Start Program. It's a 9th and 10th grade program where it's really being more proactive as opposed to reactive and supporting students in terms of college and career. Taking the time with 9th and 10th graders, taking them on college tours early, talking to them about curriculum and careers and why it's so important to get good grades, but also showing them. Every other week we have someone from our community talk to them about their career path. So someone who looks like them, someone who's still serving in the same community that they're living in to say, you can be a chemist, you can be a doctor, you can be an entrepreneur. You know, like not saying that it has to be college specifically, but making sure that they're hearing from someone consistently. And so now they can put it in place to say, oh, now I see why it's so important for me to figure out what I want to do a little bit earlier.
Essentially just to make sure that we're supporting the students that for one look like me and didn't have a lot of support and just helping those create a level playing field. When you're thinking about college and career.
College and Career Mobile Office
I'm real big on always saying, oh, I want to meet you where you are. So like, this is essentially really people where they are. So we'll be going to three stops each week, two high schools and one middle school, and they can come on the bus. I always say, think of it as like the bookmobile where we pull up and give you college and career support. So you can come onto our bus and we have computers and you have access to quality counselors who can support you through like the college application process, post high school.
Supports for 8th Graders
And then with eighth graders, we have something in Indiana called 21st century scholars. You have to sign up for it before the eighth grade. And if you do that, you get four years of college, but a lot of people miss it. So we'll be putting a focus on that, too.