NEWS ARTICLE

An entrepreneur backs first-generation college students

by Beckie Supiano

Reproduced by permission from The Chronicle of Higher Education, September 20, 2010.
Link to original article (subscribers-only):
http://chronicle.com/article/An-Entrepreneur-Promotes-a-/124521/

Eric Suder started out as a pretty conventional donor. The company he started, which makes telephone systems for businesses, made Mr. Suder a wealthy man. He used some of that wealth to endow scholarships at his alma mater, West Virginia University, and at the University of Texas at Austin, where his children went.

But Mr. Suder is an entrepreneur. He wanted to do something bigger to support students, and he wanted to make it his own. Now he’s giving money to colleges he had never even visited and seeding a scholarship program he hopes will sweep the nation—like a fast-food franchise.

Mr. Suder started his own eponymous foundation and began awarding grants of about $1-million to $1.5-million to start up new programs for first-generation college students at a handful of public universities. Mr. Suder had learned about the needs of first-generation students through conversations with senior staff members at West Virginia and its foundation and began focusing on that group in his philanthropy there. Mr. Suder’s foundation has selected four universities so far and has the ability to seed two programs a year for the next two or three years, according to its executive director, Diane Schorr.

Starting his own program and trying to build it up fits with who Mr. Suder is, says Charles D. Kerzak, assistant vice president for major gifts at the West Virginia University Foundation. “He wasn’t a fall over, bleed blue and gold, we’ve got to go to watch the football game alumnus,” he says. “He was a businessman.”

Mr. Suder knew that not every student who receives a scholarship ends up graduating. As a business principle, he says, you think through the impediments to a project’s success and then remove them to improve its odds. In the same way, he thought, if you took away the impediments to first-generation college students’ success, more of them would graduate.

He was impressed with what Student Support Services, a federally financed program for first-generation and low-income students, was doing at West Virginia. The recipients of the scholarship he endowed for first-generation-college students at West Virginia are selected from those in that program. He wanted to make sure his new First Scholars program included a similar support-services emphasis.

Working through his own foundation has several advantages over giving directly to a few universities. It allows Mr. Suder to home in on the kind of student he had identified. It lets him design his own program and try to scale it up nationally. It also enables Mr. Suder to track what his money is accomplishing. And creating a program rather than giving to an existing one was a natural fit for Mr. Suder.

“Because he’s an entrepreneur, he’s built this company that he has now, and I think he likes that process,” says Ms. Schorr. “He likes building something. And doing it this way will allow him to reach lots of students if things go the way he envisions they will.”

Mr. Kerzak, at West Virginia, struggled at first watching Mr. Suder take the ideas he had formed through his relationship with WVU and use them to give money elsewhere. After all, what fund raiser wouldn’t want that money to go to his own institution? But now, he says, he’s proud.

A National Brand

The foundation focuses on public institutions, where a flat partial scholarship of $5,000 a year will go the furthest. The first two sites, the University of Kentucky and the University of Utah, have their initial classes of First Scholars this fall. Two more institutions, the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa and Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, are in the planning phase and will begin their programs next year.

Mr. Suder wants to build a national brand, with dozens, if not hundreds, of colleges eventually on board. Once his program has proved itself, he envisions other universities will come up with their own money to host the program.

Before Kentucky and Utah were selected, Mr. Suder had never been to either university’s campus. That made the universities better test cases, he says. After all, just because a program ran smoothly at a site where he has many connections wouldn’t mean it could work everywhere. Mr. Suder sees a link between this and his business. When his company tests a new system, he says, they don’t do it in their own offices: They choose beta sites in the field. If the dealers there can’t figure out how to install the product, there are going to be problems elsewhere, too.

Each university will give 20 scholarships per class. At first, the foundation will pay for the scholarships and additional costs, but over time the university will start picking up the tab until it has full financial responsibility for the program. And the universities are welcome to give more than 20 scholarships if they find additional donors. Students selected for the program will be mentored intensively, by the program director and a peer mentor. Matthew B. Deffendall, director of the First Scholars program at Kentucky, describes his role as that of a “life coach.” And scholarship recipients have to meet other requirements, like living on campus their first year, meant to help them become connected to their university, and so more likely to graduate.

Mr. Suder compares his program to a franchise model, like McDonald’s. The idea is to “seed” programs, instead of supporting them indefinitely. So it’s important that the foundation chooses universities willing and able to bear the costs of the program in the future. As the program develops, the foundation will expect more of the universities that host it. At the same time, Mr. Suder says, he will help each university find both local and national donors.

And the hope is that the program will have several advantages in gaining donor support. For one, Mr. Suder expects that the national program will develop a proven track record of raising graduation rates and data to appeal to people like him who want to know their money is being put to good use. Also, donors will have the opportunity from the very beginning to name a scholarship.

Initially, all the scholarship recipients were going to be known as “Suder Scholars,” but after talking with university fund raisers, the foundation decided to leave open the chance for other donors to have scholarships in their names. So next year the University of Kentucky might have an entering freshman class that includes its 20 new Suder Scholars and also a Jones Scholar, all under the First Scholars umbrella.

Administrators at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale were impressed that Mr. Suder wasn’t naming the whole program after himself, says Mark A. Amos, director of the university’s first-year program. “He’s really savvy” letting other donors have that honor, says Mr. Amos, who is also an associate professor of English.

Measuring Success

Like many foundations, Mr. Suder’s is keen on measuring its own success. The Suder Foundation is using a tool called the Student Strengths Inventory, a questionnaire that measures noncognitive traits, like resiliency. Universities will use it as part of their scholarship selection process. Mr. Suder wants to support students who fall into the middle range academically at their universities. Applicants’ financial need will help the universities select participants, as will Mr. Suder’s unusually strict definition of first-generation status (neither parent has attended college). But the noncognitive measure will help scholarship committees choose among otherwise similar applicants and focus on those who appear most likely to benefit from the program.

The questionnaire will also help in the intensive advising First Scholars will receive. The student and program director will use it to shape personalized short-term goals and measure progress over time.

And the university can also use the tool to help those students who were not accepted as First Scholars. Each applicant who takes the test and enrolls at the university will have the chance to sit down with an adviser and work through his or her results. The questionnaires could also let each institution research how the program helps scholarship recipients because those who took the test but did not receive the extra support can function as a control group.

Using the Student Strengths Inventory is important because universities need a “rational” basis for choosing who gets the scholarship, say Mr. Amos at Southern Illinois. Having that kind of information on all the students who applied will also help the university come up with best practices for helping the rest of the university’s first-generation students. Not every university would be able to afford to participate in First Scholars, he says, but those institutions could still benefit from some of the best practices the program develops.

Once the foundation has data to back up its program, Mr. Suder expects it to really take off. “You can give out scholarships all day long and hope kids graduate,” or, he says, putting on his best sales pitch, “you put money in this program and we’ll guarantee a 96-percent graduation rate.”

Mr. Suder expects the program to develop a strong track record. If it does, he thinks universities will want to participate even without foundation money. He also imagines some larger foundations interested in raising graduation rates might also want to help.

And while First Scholars was designed for first-generation students, Mr. Suder’s vision doesn’t end there. “If this program works,” he says, “why wouldn’t you do it with all your entering freshmen?”