Record number of Atlanta students awarded Gates scholarship

By Gracie Bonds Staples

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

For most of their lives, it looked as if money would stand between them and their dreams.

Last week, Aundrea Collins, Randie Henderson and Alyssia Clore discovered that cash will be the least of their worries when they head to college this fall.

And they cried.

It turns out they were among more than 50 metro Atlanta students, and 75 in Georgia, named winners of the Gates Millennium Scholarship, which covers the academic costs at any university, for any major, for as many years as it takes them to graduate.

“I knew there was a lot of competition,” Clore said. “I didn’t think I’d get it.”

In all, 29 students from the Atlanta Public Schools were awarded the coveted scholarship, the most for any district in the country.

“This achievement is most certainly a testament to our dedicated and hard-working teachers and school-based staff and administrators,” said APS Superintendent Beverly L. Hall. “It is also a tribute to our high-performing students.”

Atlanta is one of several cities that the United Negro College Fund, the program's administrator, has targeted to increase the number of eligible students.

“We started this initiative in 2008 working with the school district and then Mayor Shirley Franklin,” said Larry Griffith, vice president of the program, which is funded by a $1.6 billion grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Since then, Griffith said, Atlanta student participation has increased 89 percent -- from 19 scholars in 2009 to 36 this year.

Before launching the initiative, Griffith said, the program received significant interest from the Atlanta region, particularly the Atlanta Public Schools, but applications weren’t competitive in a national pool that numbered around 21,000.

“We issue 1,000 scholarships so there’s only about a 5 percent chance of even getting the scholarship,” Griffith said. “So we came up with a plan to work with school districts to help students they considered strong candidates. And that’s the work we began to do with the Atlanta Public Schools that has led to this wonderful outcome.”

Now in its 10th year, the program has awarded more than $500 million in scholarships to low-income minority students, he said.

For the local students, many of whom plan to pursue doctoral degrees, the scholarship will mean the difference between graduating college strapped by having to repay loans or entering the job market debt-free.

“I plan on going to Northeastern University in Boston and then to medical school,” said Alfred Quaicoe, 17, who aspires to be a neurosurgeon. “This just makes everything easier.”

Quaicoe, a senior at the Galloway School and one of three private school students to receive the award, said he just wishes other needy students could be so lucky.

“I feel bad that they can’t get the same assurance,” he said.

In addition to financial assistance, which can be extended to graduate school if students study education, engineering, library science, mathematics, public health or the sciences, Gates scholars receive academic support, mentoring and leadership training.

Such support is particularly important to low-income minority students who are often the first in their families not just to attend college but to graduate high school.

“We hear educators talking about the crisis among young people, especially African-Americans, but we know there is a silent majority of kids who are doing great work, staying focused and committing themselves to good work,” Griffith said. “The great joy of the work we do is we can identify those students and provide the critical help that the need.”

Griffith said about 60 percent of scholarship recipients have family incomes under $40,000; about 20 percent have family incomes under $17,000.

Some have overcome adversity. Others have excelled despite illness. All have positive outlooks and understand the benefits of a college degree.

Clore, 18, became the sole breadwinner in her family recently when her father was laid off.

Collins, also 18, nearly died when she fell into a diabetic coma at age 11.

Like the rest, Henderson, 17, a student at Carver Early College, and Taylor Graves, 18, who attends North Atlanta High School, grew up in single-parent households.

Clore, a senior at South Atlanta School of Health, Medicine & Sciences, believes her essay on leadership, one of eight that recipients had to submit, helped win the judges over.

In it, she said, she wrote about having to be a “mother figure” to her little brother and earning her family’s only income, money she makes from a paid internship at Emory University.

She will use her winnings to attend Spelman, the college she has wanted to go to since elementary school, when she first toured the campus.

“It felt very homey,” Clore said. “I also liked that the girls who attended were very serious about their education, like I am.”

Clore plans to major in biology and then pursue a Ph.D. so she can continue the stem cell research she has been doing at Emory the past three years.

Graves, who plans to major in international studies at Boston College, will continue to immerse herself in Chinese culture.

“I know that’s where a good career might be,” Graves said.

Collins’ career choice is brain surgery. The North Atlanta High School senior will get started at Florida A&M University, where she plans to major in psychology and biology.

“I had the opportunity to meet a surgeon once and ever since then I’ve been interested in medicine,” Collins said.

A Sunday school teacher, she also attributed her career choice to almost dying when she was in the sixth grade.

“I thought little kids didn’t die,” she said. “It made me realize that in order to live I had to take care of myself, [and] that included staying on top of my school work. It’s paid off.”