Citizen alumna Lillian O'Donnell has high expectations for young people's success

Tisch College Bulletin, Tufts University, Vol. 7, No. 10, October 2010

“If we expect that our students can achieve what they set their minds to, we will see them flourish,” says citizen alumna Lillian O’Donnell, ’07, who recently completed three years as a College Advising Corps member before beginning graduate studies in Childhood and Special Education at NYU.

A nationwide initiative that increases college enrollment and graduation rates among low-income high school students, the Massachusetts program started in 2007 through a $1 million grant that Tisch College and Massachusetts Campus Compact (MACC) received from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation. The program is also funded by the Lloyd G. Balfour Foundation and the Wentworth Institute of Technology.

 “The College Advising Corps is based on a powerful premise that all students do not have the same knowledge and opportunity to apply to college,” O’Donnell explained. “Many students don't have parents or family members who have been through the application process and many urban schools are not fully equipped to help every student throughout the process when the schools deal with so many other issues.”  

To address these issues, the College Advising Corps places a recent college graduate to work full time with a participating high school’s guidance staff, helping students learn about and navigate the college application process. Each high school is also partnered with a nearby university – a resource the corps member can utilize for helping high school students better understand college life.  

In addition to hosting the program, Tufts serves as the partner school to Somerville High School, where O’Donnell was a corps member for a year after completing her first two years at East Boston High School.

 “In many of the schools the College Advising Corps is in, there are not enough counselors and hours in the day to provide the amount of guidance that is needed for students to be truly informed about financial aid, college choices, and all the many steps that go along with it,” O’Donnell said. “There is so much more that can be done to equalize opportunity for higher education in the U.S., and I think programs like the College Advising Corps are so important to both broaden opportunity and raise awareness of the issue..”

O’Donnell says that her first year in the program, working with Tufts alum and East Boston High School headmaster Mike Rubin was transformative for her.

“Mike Rubin has an amazing commitment to college access and really makes a point to celebrate his students' successes and expect more for them. High expectations are the best thing you can give to your students, as long as you are tempering it with understanding,” she said. “It was meaningful for me to see Mr. Rubin, as Headmaster and Tufts alum, because I had a sense that he valued my contribution at East Boston, even though I was someone straight out of college.”

O’Donnell was impressed by seeing how Rubin’s high expectations translated into success for his students.

“Mr. Rubin always had an attitude that the more opportunities for the students, the better,” she said. “As a result, there were several college access programs at the school, as well as many college trips for students across the grades, college representatives present in the school, and financial aid information in many forms.  All this resulted in a very strong college-going culture.”

O’Donnell, who was among the first group of Corps members, says she learned a lot in her first year, and that she did her best to share that knowledge with other young alums who later came into the program.

“When a program is just beginning, you're all learning together about what your roles are, how you can most effectively work within the schools, and how you are to measure your own success,” she said. “When I finished my first year, I was exhausted, but I knew that if I came back for a second year, I could really build on the knowledge I had constructed, help more students, and really share what I had learned with new advisers.”

“I wanted to make sure no one felt as lost as I did when I first began, to provide advice and assistance when I could, and to share best strategies so we could all get down to some great work right away,” she added.

To do this, O’Donnell made herself available to other advisers by regularly checking in.  “I made it a priority for us to be colleagues rather than advisers who worked very independently and saw each other occasionally,” she said. “Some returning advisers and I also began brainstorming ways to share our best practices and vital information, which I think really elevated the work we were doing in our individual schools.”

O’Donnell says it is the students she interacted with as a Corp member that really pushed her to continue this work as a career path.

“My favorite part of working with students was reading their essays.  I loved seeing the ways they constructed their narratives and stories, because they all showed such intelligence, humor, and maturity,” she said. “Some students had really powerful life stories, but it wouldn't always be enough to get into a four-year school when their grades weren't there.  Many students had grammatical and writing issues that stemmed from an elementary level.”

“These students had great goals for their futures, but I could only do so much as a college counselor. I realized that if I were to really affect change and help these students have better lives, I needed to reach them sooner,” O’Donnell added. “I decided to go to graduate school to become a teacher of fifth or sixth grade, so I could work in urban schools in another context.  I love working with students and being another person in their lives to believe in them.”

While O’Donnell says that she ultimately wants to work in education policy, she deeply values the time she spent in the College Advising Corp, and looks forward to life in the classroom.

“The most rewarding aspect of the College Advising Corps is that you have very tangible results after a year; you see the students you worked with going off to college and know that they were able to make a truly informed decision based on finances, interests, and what they wanted for themselves,” she said. “It's a wonderful feeling.  You've played the part of a motivator, a friend, and as someone who can give them as much information as you can for them to be successful in college.”