If you are a high school counselor, or a college advisor working in a school, one of the most important relationships you can build is the one with your local (or closest-serving) community college. In a few moments, I will share some tried-and-tested ways for school counselors to create (and build-upon) that particular partnership. The first set of ideas and tips will be for bringing your community college representative on-site to your school; the second set of ideas and tips will be for bringing your students directly onto campus.

In a typical high school, creating a partnership with your building’s community college representative (rep) is perhaps one of the biggest value-adds for your students—and counseling programming—in general. This partnership can take on many different forms, but by simply having your CC rep come on-site to your school for multiple visits a year, your rep can partner with your team to support the aspirations and goals of huge swaths of students at various stages of the college exploration process.

Here are some ways that bringing your CC rep on-site can be tremendously-impactful for your students:

• Application (and scholarship) completion: Because community colleges are open-admissions institutions, students can rather quickly sit down with their CC rep and work through the application process—including completing their online orientation and getting their own college identification number and their school email address all set up.
• Fun, celebratory days, like College Decision Day (an event, typically, in the Spring for Senior students, that celebrates scholars proudly proclaiming where they will be continuing their educational careers beyond high school), or other similar events.
• Classroom lessons; lunch-area display tables; and/or FAFSA nights/workshops—these are but a small sampling of opportunities for students and/or families to learn important information directly from the college expert(s) themselves (whether it is learning about key programming and resources on campus or getting help with completing forms for financial aid).
• Helping students learn more about college courses (and actual course selections—which, reflecting back upon my own experiences as a First-Generation college-going student, was really helpful, as my local community came out to my high school in the spring of my Senior year to help me register for classes); similarly, your school’s CC rep can also assist or guide students looking to participate in Dual Enrollment.
• Bringing in your CC rep the same day(s) as you are bringing in your Medicaid-eligible (in Michigan, for instance, it is the Tuition Incentive Program-eligible students—T.I.P., for short) or Pell Grant-eligible representative (again, in Michigan, it is through MI Student Aid). This is a huge value-add for eligible students, as they can take advantage of a one-stop-shop, and it is also a tremendous way for school counseling departments—and districts, at-large—to help close the access gap for students who also sometimes come from under-resourced families.

Here are some reasons why bringing your students on-site to your local community college can be tremendously-impactful:

Many under-resourced—and, also, many First-Generation—students have never been on a college campus before. As a school counselor, I am a firm believer in the adage ‘if you can see it, you can be it’. For high school (and even middle school) students who have never set foot on a college campus, it’s really hard to imagine what college will be like. But, for students seeing a college campus for the first time—all of a sudden—many start to become really excited at the possibility of becoming a member of the student body. College is not like what many students routinely see in the movies and television shows—that is sensationalized. But setting foot on campus now—almost instantaneously—makes the unknown, known. No more anxious thoughts or murky vision of what academic life is like beyond high school. It is seen in the here and now.

As a school counselor, I have taken multiple groups of students to higher education institutions all over the state (and just beyond the state borders). Many of those students have been First-Generation and/or under-resourced students, and what this does for a student’s focus; motivation; and purpose is hard to fully quantify in writing. But you feel it; you see it in their eyes; and it comes out in future conversations with these same students.

When taking groups of students on campus, impactful visit-experiences include: comprehensive campus tours; Q & A sessions and meet-and-greets with faculty and students; informational sessions about programs of study, student-life, and resources on campus; and, last but not least: checking out the school bookstore and enjoying a great meal on campus!

Final notes: Some districts may have limited funds for providing transportation to visit different college campuses. So, this is one reason why taking your students to visit the local community college can be so impactful: because there are typically fewer transportation barriers. Even still, I have been a part of groups that have planned (sometimes, months) in advance and done effective fund-raising to secure bussing, in order to visit college campuses. If there’s a will, there’s a way, right, school difference-maker?