Deborah Bial, who received the grant in 2007, created the Posse Foundation, which aims to make college more accessible for underrepresented and less privileged students who wish to pursue higher education. She focuses primarily on youths from urban environments. The program emphasizes skills that are traditionally considered less important in our school system. Students are chosen for the program based on their personal qualities, such as leadership, communication skills, and ability to work in a team. The chosen students become part of a school-year-long "college training" program that further refines these skills and acts as a support system. Bial's program has a high school graduate rate of nearly 90%, which is far higher than the national average of around 80%. Bial also communicates with the admissions offices of numerous colleges and universities across the nation and emphasizes the importance of alternative admission qualifications and diversity within schools.
I greatly admire Bial's work because she herself has created a program that works directly with youths to help them pursue higher education. For someone in her position as an education strategist, it would be easy to simply advocate for these issues, rather than actually taking action and working with the youths themselves. Her program also aims to send these small groups of youths that have gone through the 8-month program together to the same college in hopes that they will have an already-consolidated support network and will encourage them to stay in school together. This is a unique approach that I have not seen before and I think it is a brilliant solution to the problems that may arise in one's social environment. I think it is simple enough to take an underprivileged youth and help them get into college, but ensuring that they feel comfortable enough to make such a drastic change in their environment is more difficult and I think that is a problem that similar programs may run into.
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