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S3E48RAOK-CountryFinancialScholars050825

Natalia Sobery24min

Nakaya Rice

00:01

All my senior year, I had done dual credit classes, and I ended up graduating high school with over a semester's worth of credits.

Adriana Ryder

00:08

Because of the college now program, I am able to begin the first semester as a sophomore, and I just ended finals as a junior, and it means the world to me.

Alyssa Garrity

00:22

I definitely did feel more prepared. I knew everything that was going to happen. I knew the process of all the classes, especially just coming straight to Heartland. I knew exactly how everything was going to work, and I knew where my support systems were.

Adriana Ryder

00:35

My parents never went to college. My dad actually did not graduate high school. Yeah, I'm at Texas State just living the life that they should have been able to have.

Steve Fast

00:48

Early college opportunities are changing the landscape and the financial access to college for 1000s of young students throughout the United States. Heartland Community College offers a number of dual credit classes within high schools and on the Heartland campus. But to expand that access, Heartland has partnered with others to offer scholarship opportunities to students that otherwise might not be able to access dual credit. One of those opportunities is the Country Financial Scholars Program. This is random acts of knowledge presented by Heartland Community College. I'm your host, Steve fast, three success stories from that program, each of whom got an early jump on college while still in high school.

Nakaya Rice

01:28

My name is Nakaya Rice. I am a former country scholar, and I am a former BHS student, and I now go to Illinois State University.

Adriana Ryder

01:37

I am Adriana Ryder. I am also a Country Financial scholar, and I also graduated from Bloomington High School. Now I am a student at Texas State University.

Alyssa Garrity

01:49

Hi, I'm Alyssa Garrity. I was also a Country Financial scholar, graduated from Bloomington, and I am currently about to graduate here from Heartland.

Steve Fast

01:58

Well, that's fantastic. It's great to have you all here. Nakaya, your situation is a little slightly different, because you're going to one college right now, a university, but you're going to get your degree from Heartland in a week. Explain a little bit about how the dual credit process led you to where you are now, and how that's helping you in your overall academic path?

Nakaya Rice

02:23

Oh yeah, absolutely. So the summer into my senior year of high school, I got the scholarship, and so all my senior year, I had done dual credit classes, and I ended up graduating high school with over a semester's worth of credits. So then I went to ISU in 2022 and I continued freshman, sophomore, and then now I'm in my junior year, and I had the opportunity, because I technically started at Heartland to do a reverse transfer to get my associates in general arts. And so I'm really excited. It's a great honor for me, because my family, like my dad, never got any like degree past high school, my mom did get her associates, but it's a really big sense of pride for me, and I'm really excited to use that degree, hopefully, like to advance myself and my careers. I study Human Development and Family Science, so I'd like to maybe start getting some entry level positions in that field while I continue through my bachelor's and my master's degree,

Steve Fast

03:22

When you were in high school, what were your thoughts about college, and how did your parents communicate with you on that?

Nakaya Rice

03:29

For me and my family, it was always instilled in me, like I from as early as I can remember, I've always like, it's always been in my brain that I was gonna go to college, and so my mom was very encouraging for that, because she wanted me to get more education than what she had and what my dad had. And as a person of color, I felt like going against, like systems of oppression is really important. It was important to my family as well, and to kind of go above and beyond. And she just always wanted me to be great and show the world how great I was. And so I always was going to go to college, and I was honestly really happy to because I felt like I always excelled in academics. I was always in, like, honors and advanced placement classes. And so I was really excited to go, fortunately, through scholarships and grants, I was able to get my bachelor's degree with no debt.

Steve Fast

04:22

I want to ask you a little bit about that, because college can be really expensive, and I know that when I was in high school, I was kind of pretty ignorant about how college of college was going to cost. My parents didn't go to college, so they didn't know. They weren't thinking about it. Were you kind of blissfully thinking, Oh, it's all going to work out. Or were you....was there a concern about the financial impact of being able to go to college, and if you'd be able to do it and do it on the schedule you wanted to?

Nakaya Rice

04:50

I would definitely say that, as someone who is like from a low socioeconomic status, it's always been like a concern for me, but I didn't realize how expensive college. Was until I really started applying. I had originally been accepted into a college in Indiana, and I had went and toured there, and I really liked it, and I thought I was going to go there originally, and I had gotten, I believe it was over $40,000 in scholarships, but I still didn't have enough to go to that particular university. And so I think that was, like, one of the points for me where I realized, like, this is something that really could affect my future in academics. So luckily, you know, Illinois State University, because I already live in town and I didn't need room and board, I was able to even get, like, a refund check from the scholarships and grants that I got. I went and sought out external scholarships from other places, like my mom's job at the time had a $5,000 scholarship that I was able to have my old elementary school had one Irving Elementary School. I was able to get a scholarship through them. So it was definitely a big concern. And even now, as I go through to finish my bachelor's degree and eventually my master's degree, it's still something that I'm concerned about, but I'll just hopefully find a way to get that financed

Steve Fast

06:04

As you pursuing this degree, and what I think will be a field that might be able to connect you with folks to give back a little bit. Family Studies. What do you think that your experience is now and what you're learning about how do you hope to apply them when you enter the workforce, what do you want to do? What's your goal? Personally, that you want to do with your career?

Nakaya Rice

06:26

Personally, I've always just wanted to be an advocator for communities that are historically marginalized. That's something that I'm really passionate about, and I've already kind of gotten glimpses through that. So currently, I work at the Multicultural Center at Illinois State University. And I also, through my connections as a country finance scholar, through the college now program, I was able to after graduating high school, work for the same team, so I work for the early college team now, and just getting to work with college students is really impactful for me. And I think I see how important the work both those programs do is for the students and so through like College Transitions, or, you know, creating a sense of home for students, especially those from historically marginalized communities, I definitely want to continue through those paths from my mentors like Dr Krista Platt or Dr Alana McGee, kind of following in their footsteps is definitely an avenue I want to go down, but also therapy as well would be interesting.

Speaker 1

07:27

And my classes for ISU have been super eye opening. I recently got into the major last fall semester, and so I'm still pretty new to Human Development and Family Science, but I feel like the classes that I take now kind of have like a real world application, like I'm in a public policy class, and I get to learn about how the policies that we have in the United States affect families that maybe weren't really considered when those laws were in place, or how adolescent development is affected by school and social media and how that affects their mental health. It's just, it's really fascinating, and I do care a lot about what I'm learning.

Steve Fast

08:08

Well, it sounds like you're learning a lot and applying it pretty directly to what you want to do. It's nice to have you on the team of working with Heartland and the College Now team, as you move on, we are getting a lot of great help too, including Alyssa. Tell us a little bit about so you graduated from BHS last year, yeah, and you'll be graduating from Heartland this year. Yes. So when did you first learn about and get engaged with the the Country Financial Scholars Program and as a way to assist with dual credit?

Alyssa Garrity

08:37

I found out about it. I think it was January of my sophomore year of high school, and I was just meeting with my guidance counselor, and she was like, there's this scholarship. It's kind of new, and it'll help you take classes early, like college classes before you go to college. And I was like, Okay, that's cool. I'll think about it. And I wasn't really like, this is really cool. I want to do this like I am now. And I went home and I talked to my mom, and she was like, Alyssa, that is amazing. And I was like, Okay, and so I wrote the essay. I got accepted.

Steve Fast

09:13

It sounds to me like you didn't have a super well formed, like, grasp on necessarily what you wanted to do with college. Then you just kind of were going with the flow.

Alyssa Garrity

09:22

I knew I wanted to go, but I just didn't know what was gonna happen.

Steve Fast

09:27

Was it something where, I mean, obviously that, you know, I should talk about some of the criteria that they have for the scholarship is you all have to be good students. And it's something where did you have any concern that this level of classes would be more of a challenge, or too much of a challenge, or too much of a challenge compared to your regular class load when you were in high school.

Alyssa Garrity

09:44

I think that, honestly, I think that it was great, because I don't think I was challenged enough in my high school classes. So coming in and taking all the college classes that I did, it was very good for like me, learning how to do things and how to study. Study because I never had to study before. I learned how to study. I learned how to write.

Steve Fast

10:05

So let's talk about that, because I know that there's some support that accompanies this, and talk about learning to study and learning study habits. Was that something you had to develop yourself? Was it something that your instructors are like, listen, here's what you need to do, or did that come from maybe a peer mentor or a mentor that you would have in the program?

Steve Fast

10:23

It was a little bit of, I had a class. The first class I actually took was life success, and it taught me, like study skills and how to be successful in life. And that gave me like, kind of a basic understanding. But once I started taking, like, more classes like I took psychology and sociology and classes like those, and I was like, wow, I really need to know how to retain this because it's different than everything I've ever learned, and it's more in depth than just like, hey, here's the brain. This is how it works. In the psychology class, it just taught me how I kind of learned it myself, I guess.

Steve Fast

11:00

It opened up some new doors, really, though, yeah, yeah. And once you got involved with that level of study, did that kind of help learning new things? Did that motivate you to, I guess, study harder?

Adriana Ryder

11:11

Yeah, it did. Up until that point, I was like, Oh, well, I guess I'm gonna graduate. I'm gonna be I have good grades. It's not really that hard for me. And then I was like, I think I could do something more than just graduate. I could do it well.

Steve Fast

11:25

When you got to Heartland, how did those dual credit classes sort of prepare you for college classes where you know you didn't have the high school experience moving into the college experience? Was it something where you felt more prepared?

Adriana Ryder

11:38

I definitely did feel more prepared, like I knew everything that was going to happen. I knew the process of all the classes, especially just coming straight to Heartland. I knew exactly how everything was going to work, and I knew where my support systems were, and I knew everything that I needed to get done.

Steve Fast

11:54

For you and other students, what do you think are some of the more important support systems that students can take advantage of that they need to, you know, lean on or learn more about, to be successful?

Adriana Ryder

12:06

I think for me, tutoring was very important, because there are a couple classes that I struggled in, like, specifically one of my math classes, and I met with the tutor, and it just helped me understand it a lot better, but also meeting with like success coaches, so that you know what to do, how to do it, and they can help you walk through it.

Steve Fast

12:30

And so you are also graduating in a week or so. What's next for you after this?

Adriana Ryder

12:37

I'm transferring to a four year university. I don't know which one yet. I have a few options but to study architecture, hopefully to be an architect.

Steve Fast

12:45

All right, so, Ariana, you are participating in our commencement. Yes. You probably had to travel the farthest of everybody in this room to get there, because you came just today, I think, from Texas. Yes, yes, San Marcos, Texas. Tell everybody that's listening what you were doing in Texas.

Adriana Ryder

13:03

I am studying Applied Mathematics and Physics at Texas State University, and because of the college now program through Country Financial and all of my mentors, Brittany Stokes and Jose, I am able to begin the first semester as a sophomore, and I just ended finals as a junior, and it means the world to me because, like, my parents never went to college, my dad actually did not graduate high school, and my mom came from Mexico, like in the 70s, 80s, there was not a lot of options, but they've always, like, pushed me to do the best for my little sister and I. And, yeah, I'm at Texas State, just living, living the life that they should have been able to have.

Steve Fast

13:58

Tell me about a little bit about your parents? What do they do now?

Adriana Ryder

14:01

Yeah, so they actually both worked for district 87 my dad is maintenance. He keeps track of the football fields, the soccer fields, and my mom is a she's a paraprofessional Bloomington junior high school, and so she works with Hispanic kids and just help them integrate into the classes that are not completely set up for them.

Steve Fast

14:30

Did they talk to you at all about I kind of have a feeling that I'm in a room full of smart kids that everybody thought were gonna go to college when they were like, you know, eight years old, probably. But Did your parents talk to you about that at all, since their experience didn't involve higher education. Did they say you're gonna go to college, here's what you need to do. Did they have a lot of experience secondhand with that?

Adriana Ryder

14:51

Yeah. So honestly, they did not have any experience at all. And so it was really a learning process for all of us. But. I as a kid, it was just ingrained, like instilled. It was one of the core values that I will go to college because I have the opportunity to, and I know that whatever I put my mind to, I have them there, like supporting me.

Steve Fast

15:16

Did somebody at district 87 approach you about this program. How did you learn about it?

Adriana Ryder

15:22

Actually, no, my mom is a really big Facebook mom, so she was just scrolling on Facebook and saw it, and it was one of the millions of emails that she sent me of scholarships and internships that I could apply for, and one of them was the heartland program. And so I wrote the essay, I applied. I did not think that I would get it, but I did. And since my sophomore year of high school, I was taking classes, and after this past semester, I applied for graduation, and just very thankful to be able to have my associates already.

Steve Fast

16:01

One of the things that's unique about this program, from my understanding, is the country financial folks are invested themselves in the success of these students and the scholars. They connect you all with with a mentor, and I think I met your mentor the other day, Jose. Can you talk a little bit about what he offered to you and how he might have helped, if nothing else, maybe just kind of keep you motivated. What role did he have?

Adriana Ryder

16:27

He had honestly, he became my best friend for a big part of like my college experience at Heartland. I had no clue how I should write personal essays. I had no clue how to make a resume, and he helped me from literally applying to Texas State University to writing the essays that granted me a full ride there. And I'm just so very thankful for him and his daughter Eve I met her at a dinner that we had before I moved to Texas, and now he's honestly like family to me.

Steve Fast

17:06

Something else I want to ask you all about is what you think this program might offer somebody that, frankly, isn't maybe quite on your level, where you know what you want to do, but somebody that isn't sure whether or not, even though they might have good grades, whether or not college is something for them, we see a lot of students coming into Heartland that are first generation college students, and they don't always necessarily have the example in their family of seeing success in that way. And it's intimidating. I think sharing stories like the three of you, I think can help students. But is there any advice you would give if you were going to take on that role of that mentor like Jose did? What would you say?

Adriana Ryder

17:53

Honestly, just don't care what anyone else has done. Don't care where you came from or what you look like, or literally, honestly, the United States and what's happening, but you can do whatever you put your mind to, and you have to be proactive, and it will be scary, but open to new connections, because there are people there and immense support of People, especially at Heartland, that will help you, and honestly, maybe came from the same background or have not been to college before, with their parents, and they will give you advice, and they will lift your spirits and treat you like a person that is worthy of going to college being a person in the workforce.

Steve Fast

18:42

Nakaya, you have any thoughts on that?

Nakaya Rice

18:44

I mean, I think that sums it up beautifully. But to kind of add to that too, I think a lot of the times, institutions don't really think about how difficult it can be for first generation students to navigate college, like even just as simple as picking classes, because it's a very new system, and our support systems, like our parents or our caregivers, might not know what that system is, and that's usually the first go to for people when they need help. And so someone for me, that was super influential and super vital to my process as a college now and country finance scholar was Brittany Stokes. She was my advisor at the time, and she cares so much about students, it's unreal. She's passionate about her job, and she's knowledgeable, and she genuinely wants to see us succeed. And she helped me pick my classes.

Steve Fast

19:34

And at the time, I was going into neuroscience, I'm very I'm in Human Development and Family Science now, so I didn't exactly have everything figured out, too, but that's okay. I think the period of like going into emerging adulthood is really special, because it's a time where you can kind of form an identity and explore and see what kind of fits for you. And that's something I've been learning in my classes as well. So, but she was amazing. I mean, she. Support me, not even just as a student, but as a person too. So I do theater, and she would go to my performances and just something like that. Seeing someone in the field that really just cares about me as a person too was super helpful, and she was actually one of the reasons why I'm in Human Development and Family Science Now, as well as another member, my supervisor, Janelle Beverly, for the early college team, and I think those connections are really important. So seeking that through the success team at Heartland is really important because there's a lot of people here that want to see students succeed.

Steve Fast

20:34

Alyssa, you have any thoughts about advice you would give?

Alyssa Garrity

20:37

They all said it pretty well, but I just really want to emphasize the knowing your support system, because, like Nakaya mentioned, Brittany, Brittany changed the whole game for me. It was amazing. I work here now. I work with early college student success, so it's kind of like the behind the scenes of everything that goes into college now program. And I work with Brittany, and she's so enthusiastic about everything she like, if a student hasn't checked in, or she sees their grades aren't going well, she'll just go like, Hey, are you okay? Do you need any help? And people just, I feel like finding your support system and your people like my Brittany is probably the best way My best advice that I can give.

Steve Fast

21:22

Before we wrap things up, I should mention Ariana that you're not stopping here once you if you don't think you're going to UT and your ultimate goal actually, is to pursue a PhD, which you'll probably, you know, are you gonna Yes? Like you'll be able to drive a car? Wait, no, we're able to buy alcohol before you get your PhD.

Adriana Ryder

21:42

I don't know. I do not know. Actually, I was supposed to graduate Texas State in 2026 which would make me graduate at 19 or 20. And I added another major to that, just because I was like to make me 20 or 21. Is better for that, and that will also allow me to get into a graduate program easier. I am pursuing a PhD in aerospace engineering, uh, hopefully at UT or rice. I do have an internship this summer at UT for Cyber Infrastructure research for societal advance, which I'm greatly looking forward to. But along with what Nakaya and Alyssa said, support teams like at Texas State University, that is the first thing that I knew I should and could do because of the heartland program, was just talk to my professors, talk to advisors, and know that there are people out there that are willing to go above and beyond. I mean, Brittany went to Alyssa and I's soccer game once. I couldn't believe just looking up in the stands and seeing her,

Nakaya Rice

22:54

when you'll hear her too.

Adriana Ryder

22:57

But, yeah, graduate program, hopefully, hopefully I can I can drink before I get my PhD.

Steve Fast

23:04

Who knows? I mean, you could always just hold off. Well, I want to thank you all for coming in and congratulations, not just on this upcoming graduation, but all of the success that you've all had in these programs. And it's great to have you as shining examples of what can be done, and it's a privilege to have you come through Heartland in one way or another as you reach those goals. So thanks for thanks for coming in. Thank you. Thank you. Nakaya Rice, Ariana Ryder and Alyssa Garrity are all Country Financial scholars who attained dual credit from Heartland Community College, beginning at Bloomington High School. If you're interested in other student success stories or other stories about dual credit, subscribe to random acts of knowledge on Apple podcasts Spotify, or wherever you found this one. Thanks for listening.

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