College of Education and Human ServicesCOEHS

Building opportunity

Alumna helps community build and provide future for at-risk students
By Teresa Koltzenburg ‘92

With a new academic year just underway, the back-to-school routine—homework assignments, research papers—is old hat for many students.

But for many at-risk students, that back-to-school routine may be missing. According to the recent report “Left Behind in America: The Nation’s Dropout Crisis,” in 2009, 16 percent of individuals between ages 16 and 24 were high school dropouts.

But one community in southeast Iowa, with the help of WIU alumna and current educational leadership doctoral candidate Laurie Bliven Noll MS ‘97 ‘04, has some good news, as well as some hopeful building blocks, that could help at-risk youth in her community.

“America is currently in the throes of a persistent high school dropout crisis that has been a long time in the making, with substantial disparities in dropout rates across race, ethnic and income groups and geographic areas,” states the May 2009 report, which was authored and distributed by the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston and the Alternative Schools Network in Chicago.

Communities small and large across the nation are struggling to deal with the dropout reality, all while state budgets are being squeezed from the ongoing economic recession.

But Noll, along with several fellow community members in Burlington, IA, received news over the summer that their YouthBuild grant application, which they had written and submitted at the end of 2008, was funded for $899,000. YouthBuild is a federally-funded grant program that enables students to participate in building homes.

Noll, principal of the alternative school in the Burlington Community School District, said the grant grew out of a community-wide effort to help at-risk youths complete their individual education and provide marketable skills that will allow them to participate and succeed in the labor force.

“Our community has been involved with a Burlington Youth Development Coalition organization. This organization includes people and many entities within our community, including the school district, Iowa Workforce, Southeastern Community College, the local Home Builders organization, as well as other professional and government offices, groups and organizations. As a group, our collective goal is to increase the graduation rate in Des Moines County,” she explained.
Noll recognized that YouthBuild caters to her students and their needs. That emphasis on at-risk youth was the impetus to help her fellow community members with the grant-writing project.

“It truly was a collective cooperation among many people and organizations in the Burlington community,” she said.
Noll said the dynamic and comprehensive YouthBuild partnership will allow program partners to tap into the expertise of each agency and will provide an excellent opportunity for frequent cross-training and staff development.

“Staff development will be offered quarterly and will include workshops for project staff and partners on topics such as case management, learning styles, student behavior and generational communication in the workplace, safety and program performance,” Noll explained.

Although Noll pointed out that the grant application involved the work of many individuals and organizations in Burlington, she did note that her courses in grant writing at WIU helped her in this new endeavor.

“They provided me with the courage to jump into a group of expert grant writers and add to the development of the grant. I am comfortable with the grant writers’ language due to the additional training through Western.”

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