Campus housing and an internship keeps many from dropping out of college
Rachel Mitchell at her 2009 Rutgers graduation. She is on the way to earning her master's in social work.
As one of eight children, Rachel Mitchell was expected to help support the family – not go to college. When Mitchell, then 18, insisted on pursuing her dream of attending Mercer County Community College, her mom kicked her out of the house.
With the help of high school mentor, Mitchell wound up in a group home for homeless teens run by the Division of Youth and Family Services in Trenton. For the next three years, she called this facility home.
“It was something I didn’t think would necessarily happen to me,” Mitchell said. “But it was better than living at home. I think I made the best decision I could at the time.”
At 19, she transferred to Rutgers with the help of a Rutgers Assistance Grant, a Pell Grant, and tuition aid. But the summer before her senior year, she aged out of her foster home. Unable to afford an apartment, she tried living with family members, but when these situations didn’t work out, she found herself at 21 homeless again.
That’s when a Rutgers program, Transitions for Youth-Summer Housing Internship Program (known as SHIP), offered her a lifeline – a place to live on the New Brunswick Campus, full access to student services, and a connection to a paid, supervised internship.
Overseen by Rutgers School of Social Work, SHIP is aimed at an underserved population: young adults who successfully found their way to college but have lost a place to live in New Jersey’s foster care system. Launched in 2006, the Division of Youth and Family Services funds the program.
“The program opens people’s eyes that there are kids in the system who don’t have the luxury of going home during the summer,’’ said Mitchell, who went on to graduate with honors from the School of Arts and Sciences in May 2010 and has just completed her first year of studies for her master’s in social work. “If it wasn’t for SHIP, I would have had no choice but to leave school.”
Ronald Quincy, director of the Center for Nonprofit Management and Governance at Rutgers’ School of Social Work, said it is common for college students who have been living in foster care to find themselves without housing once they age out of the system.
"When the academic year ends, the young people move out of the dorms, and, suddenly, they do not have housing for the summer, “Quincy said. “All these young people need is one extra – layer of resources to assure that they don’t drop out of college, and they can remain on track toward becoming self-actualized and productive citizens.”
For the past five summers, SHIP served 10 young adults each year, housing them at Rutgers’ Rockoff Hall, an apartment-style dormitory in downtown New Brunswick. But through new interest from private donors and increased funding from DYFS, SHIP expanded this year to serve a total of 40 students in dorm settings on Rutgers’ New Brunswick, Camden, and Newark campuses, as well as Montclair State University. The program this year began May 30 and will run until August 12 after which students return to school.
All SHIP participants are helped to attain and maintain part-time employment. They attend biweekly meetings with program staff and discussion groups related to child welfare policy. While at Rutgers, they are given the status of “visiting scholars,” which allows them full access to student services, such as use of the library and gymnasium.
Participants have been placed in internships as diverse as RU-tv, the Middlesex County Chamber of Commerce, and Robert Wood Johnson Hospital. One recent SHIP participant, Christina S., interned with the Highland Park Police Department, graduated with honors from John Jay College of Criminal Justice in May 2010, and attended the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, this summer.
As a participant in SHIP, Mitchell worked at as a pharmacy technician in Princeton. This summer, she is serving as a resident assistant in the program, helping to shepherd other foster care young adults through the complex transition she went through two years ago.
“This program keeps more people stay in school,” Mitchell said. “I knew several people who dropped out of college because they needed a place to stay but couldn’t find one on their own, so they had to start working to afford to live.”
Such was the case with Corey Lofland, 21, of Camden. Like Mitchell, a recipient of a New Jersey Foster Care Scholarship which pays for former foster youth to attend college, Lofland was attending Burlington County College, working toward an associate’s degree in radiography.
But it was difficult to keep any kind of balance, as he worked at McDonald’s and struggled to find a stable housing situation.
Lofland applied to SHIP and was accepted, arriving on the New Brunswick Campus May 30. He is interning at WCTC 1450 AM in Somerset, helping to edit audio and compose on-air narration. He said the experience living at Rutgers has already been transformative, the internship opening doors he believes he would never know existed. Lofland is hoping that spending the summer in SHIP will allow him the stability and resources he needs to stay in school.
“Before I go, I’ll be able to do everything here,” he said. “Working here, and living in the dorm in New Brunswick has been amazing. Every day I wake up to something new. Every day, I learn something new.”