Upward Bound made college possible for Chadron City Council member

“I’m here to tell you, it’s well worthwhile,” Coates said to the group of about 20 students in the CSC program’s summer session. “Without Upward Bound, I wouldn’t have been able to go to Chadron State.”

Started in 1964-65 as part of the federal War on Poverty Program, Upward Bound is one of a group of programs known as TRIO that aims to motivate and support students from low income families to further their education. Funded through grants, typically to colleges or universities, Upward Bound includes six weeks of summer classes and activities on campus and follow-up help during the regular school year. Several studies, including one by the Pell Institute in 2014, have found the program to be successful and effective.

Notable Upward Bound graduates include TV talk show host Oprah Winfrey, astronaut Jose Hernandez and professional basketball player Patrick Ewing.

Chadron State hosted the first Upward Bound program in Nebraska in 1966. Jim McCafferty, then a chemistry professor, directed the program from 1967 until 1974, when he left to work on his Ph.D. CSC discontinued its Upward Bound program a few years later, but renewed the federal grant again in 2007 under the leadership of Dr. Rex Cogdill.

Students in this year’s Upward Bound at CSC come from Chadron, Alliance and Crawford, and are taking courses in core subjects including English, math and science, as well as art, music, Spanish, and social dancing, said Dr. Maggie Smith-Bruehlman, the program’s director since 2009.

“For these students, entering college can be a huge mystery and fear,” Smith-Bruehlman said. “It’s opening their horizons.”

While in Upward Bound, students receive a small monthly stipend, but only if they successfully complete their course work, Smith-Bruehlman noted.

“They have to earn it.”

Coates said he was accustomed to earning his own money while a high school student in Rapid City, South Dakota, but probably wouldn’t have considered attending college if his history teacher hadn’t suggested he look into Upward Bound.

“I was just a borderline student,” he said. “Somebody believed enough in me to say, ‘Hey, maybe this will work for you.’”

Coates attended the CSC program in the summers of 1968 and 69 and remembered McCafferty as director.

“He had a heart for kids,” Coates said.

One of the other Upward Bound instructors, Steve McCarthy, became a role model, and remains a friend, he added.

Then, as now, Upward Bound students and their instructors lived in the college dorms and participated in a variety of activities outside of class. Coates said his group went caving in the Black Hills and staged an historical pageant at Fort Robinson State Park, among other things.

Prompted by students’ questions, he also remembered cafeteria food in the days before salad bars, pranks like filling another student’s dorm room with crumpled newspaper, and trips in his ’58 Chevy to the Pink Panther dance hall outside of town.

CSC’s Upward Bound program now includes visits to several college campuses so students can get an idea about what it might be like in different schools.

“We are such a rural environment, they aren’t exposed to a lot of colleges,” Smith-Bruehlman said.

That wasn’t the case in 1969, said Coates, but then-CSC Financial Aid Director Del Hussey showed students how to apply for grants, loans and work-study jobs, so they could pay for college. That made the decision to stay in Chadron for college easy, said Coates, who entered CSC in fall of 1969.

“That transition was smooth. We didn’t even have to move from our room in the dorm,” he said.

A semester-long break to earn money cutting trees at Chadron State Park delayed his graduation slightly but he earned his bachelor’s degree in education in 1974 and taught school on the Pine Ridge Reservation for a time. Later, he and his wife, Amy, were house parents at the Boys Ranch near Alliance for several years. Now a 30 year sales and finance employee with Wahlstrom Ford in Chadron, he was elected to the Chadron City Council as a write-in candidate in 2014.

Coates told the Upward Bound students that going to college would help them in finding a job.

“When you seek employment, look at what you have to offer. If you have a four year college degree, that makes a difference,” he said.

As a student in a high school class of more than 800, Coates said he knew he wanted to better himself, but could probably not have pursued a college degree on his own.

“I didn’t have the wherewithal to go to college. Upward Bound gave me the opportunity to see it as a step-by-step process,” he said.

The program also changed his view on school.

“I started to see education was about who I was, and what I could accomplish,” he said. “Upward Bound made a big difference in my life. I hope all of you finish Upward Bound and go to college.”

—George Ledbetter