In the summer of 2004, the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation launched an initiative in Virginia to develop community-based, non-profit college access programs. Dr. Nicole Hurd, then serving as Dean and Director of the Center for Undergraduate Excellence at the University of Virginia (UVA), attended a meeting for prospective partners and proposed that the Foundation partner with UVA to create an initiative that would encourage recent college graduates, many of whom were considering Teach For America or the Peace Corps, to become college advisers. The Jack Kent Cooke Foundation was convinced by the proposed approach and, in December of 2004, the College Guides program, the precursor to the Advising Corps, was launched with a $623,000 leadership gift.

In 2005, its first year, the program placed 14 recent college graduates in communities where college-going rates were below the state average. These advisers were charged with helping low-income, first-generation-college, underrepresented students plan for and complete the college and financial aid application process. They convened group information sessions, provided one-on-one advisory sessions, held parent meetings, and conducted many other activities with the goal of raising the college-going culture within their schools. In the first year of the program, the following campuses reported increases in applications from high schools served by UVA advisers: William and Mary (22% increase), Longwood (26% increase), James Madison (8% increase), UVA (9% increase), and UVA-Wise (112% increase).

 Pleased with the results of the pilot year, the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, with additional support from the Lumina Foundation for Education, invested $12 million over four years to expand the program nationally. The expansion RFP went to 169 institutions of higher education and 56 responded.  In March 2007, 10 additional institutional partners were selected, the program was renamed the National College Advising Corps and the headquarters was moved to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. UNC Chapel Hill’s senior leadership has consistently demonstrated the commitment needed to build a sustainable national movement committed to college access and success for all students.

 In April 2007, Governor Tim Kaine, former Governor of Virginia, recognized the program’s success by presenting the Governor’s Award for Community and National Service to Dr. Hurd.