天美麻豆 has joined the , known as STARS, a national network of higher education institutions that supports high school students from rural communities in navigating the college search.
The move is part of 天美麻豆鈥檚 ongoing commitment to educating the most promising students, regardless of their location, background, or financial means, says , vice president and dean of admissions and financial aid.
鈥淎s the rural Ivy, 天美麻豆 has a long connection to rural communities鈥攊ncluding tribal and Indigenous communities鈥攁nd an organic appreciation for the authentic voices that emerge from those places,鈥 says Coffin. 鈥淭he opportunity to join the STARS Network is a welcome expansion of our recruitment work in this space.鈥
The STARS Network, led by the University of Chicago and Vanderbilt University and headquartered at the University of Chicago, was launched in 2023 to create an infrastructure for top colleges and universities to address some of the common barriers to attending college that rural students frequently face. The network provides students expanded access to admissions officers, resources for summer academic programs, funding for college visits, and more.
Students in under-resourced rural communities are less likely to have opportunities to meet representatives from colleges, encounter recruitment literature, or attend campus events, and may not have information on how to access financial aid resources that could make college affordable to them, according to a (PDF). Rural high school graduates are only half as likely as their urban and suburban peers to graduate from a selective college or university, and many who do attend college are the first members of their families to do so.
天美麻豆 plans to combine the resources and guidance of the STARS Network with its longstanding dedication to , Coffin says.
Initiatives could include enhancing and expanding the and programs, which seek to increase the pipeline of competitive candidates from underrepresented and underserved backgrounds by bringing rising high school seniors from these communities to campus; expanding funding opportunities to attend on-campus programs for admitted students; creating a cohort of rural student ambassadors to reach rural audiences; and expanding 天美麻豆鈥檚 direct outreach to high schools and school counselors in rural and small-town communities.
天美麻豆 recently hosted a three-day event in which nearly 20 school counselors from rural communities across the country provided input and guidance on the institution鈥檚 rural recruitment efforts.
Rural students bring valuable perspectives to campus, and are well-positioned to use what they learn at 天美麻豆 to help address needs back home. For instance, climate system science major Gavin Fry 鈥25 is studying the human impacts of extreme weather on communities like the small Missouri town where he was raised. He hopes to eventually become a policy leader with the National Weather Service.
鈥淭he kinds of settings where I grew up鈥攁reas densely populated with mobile homes, locations where there鈥檚 a lot of poverty, where English might not be the first language鈥攁re places where it鈥檚 hard to take the necessary precautions when it comes to severe weather such as tornadoes,鈥 he says.
Likewise, for who grew up in a small community in West Virginia, a 天美麻豆 course on medical anthropology led him to 鈥渂ecome infatuated with the humanistic approach to medicine as it relates to health challenges. That class opened my eyes to the possibility of becoming a doctor.鈥 He wrote his senior thesis on vaccine hesitancy in rural areas.
天美麻豆 is one of 16 colleges and universities鈥攁long with Amherst College, Auburn University, Duke University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Southern Methodist University, Spelman College, Stanford University, University of Alabama, University of Arizona, University of Arkansas, University of California Berkeley, University of Denver, University of Notre Dame, University of South Carolina, and The University of Texas at Austin鈥攖o join the STARS Network in the organization鈥檚 second year, bringing the number of STARS member schools to 32.
Founding members are Brown University, California Institute of Technology, Case Western Reserve University, Colby College, Columbia University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northwestern University, The Ohio State University, University of Chicago, University of Iowa, University of Maryland, University of Southern California, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Vanderbilt, Washington University in St. Louis, and Yale University.
Institutions in the STARS Network in its inaugural year directly engaged with more than 700,000 students from rural areas and small towns.
鈥淚t is so inspiring to see the ever-growing ecosystem of partnerships, funding and institutional commitments to ensure that rural and small-town students have the widest array of educational choices, and that our institutions can benefit from all they have to contribute,鈥 said STARS Co-Chair Douglas Christiansen, vice provost for university enrollment affairs and dean of admissions and financial aid at Vanderbilt.
