by Allan Appel The New Haven independent
Featured student speaker Zechara Golden, with Dean Heidi Green: “I was awestruck by how kind everyone is” upon arriving at Gateway. Credit: Allan Appel Photo
The pastor back then was an introverted, very shy young man who found a professor who believed in him and literally enabled him to find his voice in that Gateway Community College speech class back in 1989.
And in 2012 the mayor at the time used all his political acumen to convince skeptical business leaders and Hartford power-brokers that giving up valuable taxable land in downtown New Haven would produce a return on investment through the skilled workforce it would create for a future meds-and-eds technology economy, and it was simply right that it be in the heart of downtown.
Those respective achievements of Pastor Harold Brooks, who now leads the Beulah Heights First Pentecostal Church, and of ten-term New Haven Mayor John DeStefano, were hailed as part of the 28th annual awards and Hall of Fame dinner of the Gateway Community College Foundation on Thursday night.
The other two awardees of the evening were Dr. Alice Forrester, CEO of The Clifford Beers Community Care Center, and Jeff LeClair, the education manager of Subaru University of New England. They too were honored for their contributions to the health and well-being, psychological and economic, of Gateway students and the community of New Haven.
Credit: Allan Appel photo
Last year the fundraising arm of the college raised about $100,000 in scholarships for Gateway students, and the goal is to equal or exceed that this year, said Heidi Green, the school’s dean for advancement.
“In light of what’s coming down from D.C.,” she added, the private fundraising effort undertaken by the foundation is more important than ever.
Many Gateway students hail from economically struggling families where students work multiple jobs in addition to school responsibilities so that a grant of $500 or $1,000 to offset the costs of books, to pay for child care or transportation, or to buy a set of costly tools required, for example, to be able to accept that first job offer in the automotive industry — well, that literally can change a life.
That in effect was the gripping theme of the evening that featured the awardees but, through one modest but moving overcoming-obstacles success story after another, centered the lives of the every-day inspiring students at Gateway.
The event attracted 100 people to the college’s festive community room, full of good food and good cheer, where every table had a card that featured a thumbnail profile of a Gateway student.
There was, for example, the featured student speaker of the evening, Zechara Golden. After being home-schooled from fourth grade through high school, which learning did not follow the state curriculum, she simply wasn’t prepared for the standardized tests required to enter college and many schools wouldn’t admit her without requiring extensive, expensive remedial course work. She went instead on the job market, rising over nine years to manage four Starbucks locations across Connecticut and multiple other jobs.
Deciding to return to school, but still fearing debt and other impediments, she tried Gateway and reported at the first visit “I was awestruck by how kind everyone is. I was assigned an advisor, and it all began.”
“Gateway meets students where they are,” said the evening’s emcee, Rev. Hiram Brett, who serves as the Gateway Community College Foundation’s board chairman. “You don’t need 700s on SATs. Gateway meets students where they are. Gateway fills the knowledge gaps and the scholarship filled the financial gaps.”
The foundation’s vice-chair, Ruby Melton, called the evening “a celebration of possibility” and fleshed out a kind of composite portrait of the Gateway Student: “Anyone of us would be daunted by the challenges they face every day,” she said.
“Scholarships don’t just pay tuition, they remove roadblocks for single moms balancing classes, for new immigrants who are learning English and calculus, for adults in their 30s who say, ‘I’m not done.’”
Add to that cumulative portrait not only the many young adults who, like Golden, go on to four-year-colleges, but about 700 people a year who enter the workforce as skilled technicians in fields ranging from the medical to the automotive. They include veterans, people who have just made their way to graduate through the city’s Adult Ed programs, and those turning the page on addiction.
Golden said the scholarship she received “lit a fire in me and, more importantly, I felt seen. I was enabled to buy textbooks and focus on one job.”
She’ll be graduating next year and transferring to the University of Connecticut to finish a bachelor’s degree in psychology.
“Small acts of support can lead to incredible transformation,” she concluded, and brought the house down.
Click here , and see below, to watch the student-made video screened at the event featuring interviews with all four Hall of Fame awardees.