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Success Program to unveil new digs at open house
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A small house with a big heart will open its doors to welcome
the Boise State community, Thursday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at an
open house to celebrate the long-awaited new home of the Student
Success Program.
The original home of the Student Success Program consisted of
several little red houses where the new parking garage stands. For
the past five years the program has been with out a permanent
home.
Last year, the brick and mortar house on 1885 University Drive
became available as a new home. “We never had such an offer
ever before, in terms of getting a space and getting to like, make
it fit what we want it to do,” Greg Martinez Student Success
Program Director said. The only drawback was the lack of a real
kitchen, Martinez joked.
“When I first started the program we had nothing,”
Martinez said. The students were sharing one 1993-era Macintosh.
“It was just totally funny cause now we’re completely
different,” he said.
Better funding in the past couple of years has translated into
technology upgrades; better pay for tutors and a little extra money
for scholarships. “In all respects our program is just
… so much better than it was than even five or six years
ago.”
While the Student Success Program is better known than it used
to be, Martinez still gets the occasional student who has never
heard of the program. “The fact of it is that we don’t
really do a massive kind of ‘spread the word’ about our
program across campus,” Martinez said.
Enough students who qualify manage to find out about the program
with out a lot of advertising.
“Coming here I really wanted to create a really homey
space, that’s one thing we’ve always been pretty good
at,” Martinez said. “The staff makes the time to talk
and develop relationships with the students. That type of
atmosphere builds a social support network.”
Students benefit in their own personal ways, but the benefits
are many. “I think the greatest benefit would be that if
somebody just says, and I think many would say, they wouldn’t
have graduated had they not been in the program,” Martinez
said.
The Student Success Program is part of the Federal Trio Program,
designed to assist disadvantaged students overcome the barriers to
higher education. The Trio Program helps organize funding and keeps
the politics going in Washington D.C., said Martinez. The Student
Success Program and others like it across the nation focus on
keeping students in college once they get there.
The program provides a variety of services designed to help
students say in school including tutoring, educational counseling,
services for students with learning disabilities and career
counseling. “The kind of value that students get in our
program is that it’s very one on one, if you want one on one
services, you get it in our program,” Martinez said.
Students must prove they have need for academic support as well
as meet the guidelines for admission. If all of those criteria are
meet then applicants are interviewed on a one on one basis. With
only 180 seats in the program Martinez admits he has to turn down
students.
Monica Price
News Reporter
The Arbiter