The Alamance Foundation recently presented a $2,200 gift to the Elon Academy to be used to support college visits for more than 75 Elon Academy scholars during the summer of 2011.
The gift was presented by Fairfax Reynolds, chairman of the Alamance Foundation.
Each summer scholars in the Academy visit a variety of colleges and universities – large, small, rural, urban, public, and private. A key component of college success is finding a college or university that is a good match with each student’s needs, interests, and academic ability. Physically visiting college campus is essential to finding that match.
“When students enter the Elon Academy, we hear them saying ‘If I can go to college.’ After the first summer in the program they begin to say, ‘When I go to college,'” said professor Deborah Long, director of the Elon Academy. “By the end of the program, after visiting many, many different campuses, they are saying, ‘I can see myself being happy and successful on this campus.’”
The first cohort of Elon Academy graduates are attending 13 different colleges and universities. “We are sincerely grateful for the support of the Alamance Foundation for helping us take our scholars to different campuses so that they can find the right institution for them,” Long said.
The Alamance Foundation is a geographic affiliate of The Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro that provides donors with a flexible way to accomplish their giving goals, maintains a permanent endowment to address the community’s evolving needs and encourages private giving for the public good.
In 2007, in collaboration with the Alamance-Burlington School System, Elon University established the Elon Academy, a three-year intensive college access program for academically promising high school students with a financial need and/or no family history of college. Its mission is to inspire students to pursue and earn a postsecondary degree and to assume leadership roles in their communities.
The Academy welcomed 26 scholars and their families to the program in summer 2007. Each year a new cohort of scholars has been added, and with the fifth cohort of scholars in 2011, the Elon Academy will be serving more than 120 scholars and about 300 family members through its Elon Academy Pre-College Program for high school students, a Summer Transitions to College Program for graduated seniors, and the College Success Program for the first cohort of graduates who are now first-year college students.
For more information, visit www.elon.edu/elonacademy.