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College Goal Sunday adds states in 2005, extending effort throughout nation

College Goal Sunday expanded its reach across America this year with events in 18 states plus the District of Columbia.

From deep in the heart of the Navajo reservation in Arizona to the wide expanses of Alaska, financial aid professionals volunteered their time to work one-on-one with thousands of students and families to help them complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) – the universally required application for federal college aid and for many other forms of assistance.

Lumina Foundation for Education awards grants to states to fund the program, and the Foundation is working with the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators to expand College Goal Sunday to additional states. In 2006 eight more states will offer the program. Since its inception in 1989, College Goal Sunday volunteers have guided more than 100,000 participants through the daunting process of completing the financial aid application.

Here’s a look at College Goal Sunday’s 2005 successes in three states.

In Arizona, where statewide participation in the event was up 20 percent, April Osborn was particularly proud of the 200 percent increase at Chinle High School on the state’s Navajo reservation. Seventy-one students and family members traveled to the site, many driving hours to get there. Navajo-speaking volunteers helped them to navigate the FAFSA form.

“The way the FAFSA form asks many questions is challenging for a non-English-speaking individual,” said Osborn, executive director of the Arizona Commission for Postsecondary Education.

Osborne pointed out that many Native Americans have access to tribal funds for higher education, but they must first complete the FAFSA before they can obtain those funds.

Overall, 3,463 high school seniors, parents and adults returning to school visited the state’s 23 College Goal Sunday sites. Thirty-five percent of the families attending had incomes of less than $30,000 and in 54 percent of the families, no parent had attained any kind of postsecondary degree, Osborn said.

It was the ninth year for the event in Arizona, and Osborn says it has been successful because of the many partnerships College Goal Sunday has built with school counselors and community based organizations. “College Goal Sunday is becoming a statewide effort embedded in the state’s college access effort,” she says.

Next year Osborn plans to continue reaching out throughout the state by distributing information and working with the state’s Workforce Investment Act sites, where unemployed adults and youth seek training and job opportunities.

In Alaska, the state hosted its first College Goal Sunday event at seven sites. Nearly 700 students and families attended the event, and 373 completed FAFSAs, said Robert Conlon, College Goal Sunday project manager for The Coalition of Alaskans Supporting Higher Education.

“Some families drove six hours from Slana and Valdez to attend the event in Anchorage, and other families drove four to five hours from Kenai/Soldotna – enduring 50 mile-per-hour winds – to attend the event in Homer,” Conlon said.

Conlon said the coalition decided to pursue College Goal Sunday to address the state’s postsecondary education challenges. Since 1992 Alaska’s college participation rate and the rate at which the state’s low-income students persist from high school to college have ranked last in the nation, he said.

Going forward, the state plans to add more sites next year, send its mailings earlier to the state’s high school juniors and seniors, and work harder to deliver the program to rural communities.

In Michigan, the state experienced a 30 percent increase in College Goal Sunday participation, with about 900 students completing the FAFSA at the state’s 20 sites.

“We redesigned our outreach this year to focus on the message, ‘Fill out the FAFSA,’ ” says Bryan Taylor, president of Partnership for Learning, the nonprofit education organization that coordinated the state’s College Goal Sunday effort. “Then our secondary message was ‘If you need help, show up at College Goal Sunday.’ ”

In addition, Michigan State University publicized the event in the financial aid award letters it sent to 10,000 prospective freshmen. The partnership also worked to develop relationships with some of the state’s larger school districts.

Jaime Millard, College Goal Sunday program coordinator for the partnership, personally sent follow-up e-mail messages to participants reminding them to send in their FAFSA form. “I received a number of ‘thanks – I totally forgot’ responses,” she says.

Next year Michigan plans to add four sites and to partner with more colleges and universities across the state to have them include College Goal Sunday information in financial aid award letters.