These high school girls face steep hurdles to college. This NJ fund provides a bridge

Tatia Haywood, a counselor at Montclair State University, walked the stage, warming up a crowd of 400 high school girls visiting the campus from Paterson, Passaic and other urban school districts where family income is often the single largest hurdle to a college education.

"We got to boss up, right?" Haywood said. "We bossin'!"

The girls, who wore every shade and style of hair and headgear from braids to hijabs, gave a rousing cheer.

Haywood, a Paterson native, was hosting a recruitment event to promote the Educational Opportunity Fund at Montclair State. The 55-year-old state-run program provides supplemental financial grants for low-income college students that cover costs beyond tuition, such as books, room and board, a free freshman summer academy and strong academic supports.

The fund is designed to help "first generation, limited-income scholars from urban districts and plant a seed," said Daniel Jean, assistant provost and former director of the Educational Opportunity Fund program. "I believe every student is a scholar, so we don’t use terms like 'at-risk, underrepresented, marginalized.' We refer to them as scholars specifically so that they can understand their potential.”

Friday’s program at the university’s annual young women’s empowerment conference went beyond inviting students to apply to Montclair State through the fund program. It featured an open mic, a student catwalk to showcase college and business attire set to pumping hip-hop hits, and an inspiring keynote address on overcoming trauma and partnering with other women to succeed from Mary Ann Diaz, a social worker and sign language interpreter at a Bronx charter school.

The university held a similar initiative a few weeks ago for young Black and Hispanic men from urban high schools.

The events were intended to help students see their potential as future scholars and professionals even if their backgrounds might present significant hurdles, Jean said.

And “bossing up” to their dreams was on the minds of many visiting students. Soft-spoken ninth grader Leilani Zapata dreams of running her own makeup company and working as a professional wrestler. Long-haired and petite, with shimmer blush on her cheeks, she sounded determined to continue wrestling and soccer in school, even though her family does not support her love for sports.

“Sports for me is everything," she said. "Like, I cry when my mom doesn’t let me ... they say it’s not for girls. They want me to focus on school.”

Zapata and her friend Marilyn Ramirez attend Perth Amboy High School and are from the Dominican Republic. They would be the first from their families to attend college in the United States, they said.

An aunt who works in the FBI inspired eleventh grader and honors student Lindsey Batista to consider a degree in criminal justice. Her charter school, Paterson College Achieve, and her family, also from the Dominican Republic, inspire her to “get out of her comfort zone,” she said.

All three girls are the oldest in their families. Attending college is important also for their siblings’ sake, the girls said. “I want them to look up to me,” said Ramirez.

The EOF program is unlike others in that it is not a race-based or affirmative action program. Applicants must meet and prove rigid income criteria — for example, the income limit for a student from a family of four is $55,500 — and demonstrate academic potential.

The program funds a free summer residency, giving students a “jump-start to the college experience,” Jean said. EOF scholars at New Jersey colleges earn six credits in a five-week mandatory residential program offered the summer before freshman year, with foundational courses in college writing and public speaking, mandatory study hall, tutoring and community activities.

The rigorous summer program ends up with many new EOF scholars “kicking and screaming,” because they don’t understand it, Jean said, adding: “They have all these mandatory things and a curfew." At Montclair State, they must be in their buildings by 10 p.m., in their rooms by 11 and ready at 8 a.m. for the day's activities to start.

But the rigor pays off.

“By the end of the summer, they’re part of this larger community and they recognize that they belong," Jean said. "They make connections and they understand what the university's expectations are.”

Paterson native Ghadir Abdulaziz graduated in 2015 from Montclair State’s EOF program. The daughter of immigrants from Palestine, Abdulaziz said her first two years were fully funded through the EOF and federal student aid.

Her father helped with his earnings from working at a fried chicken store, and she worked through her college years in a pharmacy. Now a counselor at her old high school, John F. Kennedy High in Paterson, she said she is thankful. “It’s funny how the world works,” Abdulaziz said. “I’m very grateful.”

In 1968, the state allocated $2 million to create the program, making it one of the largest appropriations in any state for economically disadvantaged students. The program, sponsored by then-freshman legislator Tom Kean, was one of several solutions offered in response to the November 1967 riots in Newark.

It received $54 million in allocations in the 2023 budget. Montclair State enrolls 800 EOF students, who receive between $850 and $975 in stipends every semester, along with tutoring and dedicated counselors, officials said.

Montclair State's Haywood and Jean are alumni of the EOF program from Ramapo College, and both testify to how it changed their lives. For Jean, who grew up in Newark surrounded by other Black and Hispanic men, the summer program at Ramapo was a way to meet more people who looked like him but came from other parts of New Jersey, from Neptune to Jersey City. But once classes began in the fall, he was the only Black male in his class; the friends he made in the summer helped him thrive, he said. His wife is also a beneficiary of the EOF, and both have doctorates.

“Our children will not be alums of the EOF, and that’s how it’s supposed to work,” he said.