Ep 210 | College or training? How do you pay for it?

SPEAKER_01 1:32

I think the motivation, if it's there, you can do anything. And you can be anyone. You just have to put your mind to it. And I think the limiting factor, like I already mentioned, for a lot of people is how do I do it? You know, I've got the drive. I'm smart, but I can't pay for this. You know, that's what exactly our office is designed to do is to get you started off on the right foot. You don't even have to think about money. It all comes down to if you've got an interest and a drive, there's a way to do it.

SPEAKER_00 2:10

Welcome to the Voices United in Education podcast. Each week we showcase the teachers, administrators, and community members who go the extra mile to contribute to the success of every child in Escambia County. You'll meet the real people behind the titles and learn about the amazing resources to support your child's success. Spend any time in an employee break room, and you'll see motivational posters encouraging you to persist, achieve, and do something that's never been done before. But when it comes to college, being the first in your family can feel foreign, intimidating, and risky. My next guest is a part of a program taking the sting out of the first step. He's the program director for TRIO Educational Opportunities Center at Pensacola State College. And today he's going to share his perspective and expertise on the program helping first generation college students, breaking down barriers, and building up potential, Matt Hebert. Thanks for being here.

SPEAKER_01 3:11

Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

SPEAKER_00 3:13

So there are a lot of TRO programs across the country. I think 3,500, right? And how many of those are at PSC?

SPEAKER_01 3:21

Well, there are eight total programs in over 3,400 different projects across the country. We have four at Pensacola State College.

SPEAKER_00 3:42

Okay, so there's not 3,500 programs. There's about that many projects.

SPEAKER_01 3:48

They call each location a project. So the Pensacola State College location has four projects of those I just mentioned.

SPEAKER_00 3:57

Okay. Okay. This is I'm glad we're doing this because this is where we got to unpack the layers. Because in addition to that, you're hosted by Pensacola State College, located in their building, but not a part of the college. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_01 4:09

That's mostly correct. It depends on which day you want to put what foot and what side of the line, but we are considered to be Pensacola State employees.

SPEAKER_00 4:17

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 4:17

We are on a federally funded grant program. So that money is reimbursable through the school. But yes, each project is considered to be its own entity. And of those eight total programs, they are sprinkled all over the United States. As an example, there are 11 EOCs in the state of Florida.

SPEAKER_00 4:38

Okay, 11.

SPEAKER_01 4:39

11 just in Florida.

SPEAKER_00 4:40

That's a lot.

SPEAKER_01 4:41

There's uh approximately 150 to 160 EOCs across the country currently.

SPEAKER_00 4:48

Okay. And then today we're focusing on mostly the financial support program, correct?

SPEAKER_01 4:53

That's just one of the things that we do at the Educational Opportunity Center. I like to think of the EOC as the front door of a house, of a trio house. And we set up students for success at the very beginning. So there may be a student that comes to Pensacola State or wants to come to Pensacola State and they present at one of the other trio offices, but then those trio directors will likely march them down to our office and we'll do a financial aid package on them. Normally it starts with a FAFA, but we also delve into scholarships and other types of financial aid like student loans. But the FAFSA is definitely one of our more popular services that we provide.

SPEAKER_00 5:38

I like the analogy. That helps a lot because when you think about college no matter what, it's a little overwhelming because there are a lot of pieces to it. But as a first generation college student, that's even more because you don't have that parental support. You might not have any other adults in your life that can advise you. And you feel behind as soon as you graduate high school.

SPEAKER_01 6:03

That's correct. And you know, our typical population that comes to see us are adult age populations. There are other trio programs that handle, they have their own swim track, so to speak. They handle younger people, they handle veterans, and they handle students that are already in school. Our main goal is to get adults to come to post-secondary education. The neat thing about the EOC here is that we can help you get into any college in the United States. And that's the association that's somewhat mishandled to some degree because we're hosted by Pensacola State. Everybody thinks, oh, you're you're at Pensacola State, you must recruit for them. But by law, we're not required or we're not able to be PSC recruiters. We do help a large population that comes through our office ends up staying at Pensacola State College. It's the high 70s to low 80s, depending upon the year. It fluctuates a little bit. But we can help you get into University of Southern California, University of Michigan. Pick a school anywhere in the country, either a tech school, a two-year, or a four-year program, and we can probably assist you with financial aid in getting into those schools. The other pieces of our services, there are three. We get a lot of students that come in and they say, I'm very interested in coming back to school, but I'm not sure what I'm good at. Or I'm not sure what programs you have. Can you help me figure out what program I should register for? And we can provide them a career exploration assessment to find out, A, what their aptitude is, but B where their interests lie. And that's uh something that a lot of the other offices at Pensacola State can't offer. I already mentioned admissions. That's the third one. And the fourth service that we provide is money smart workshops. So financial literacy. We our our typical population is low-income first generation. That's where we try to target to try to help these individuals get into post-secondary ed. I think that one of the biggest questions we get from students is I want to go to school, but I don't know how to pay for it. I'm not sure what how I'm even going to do that. I can't even pay my bills at my home. And keep in mind that we typically like to think of adults as graduating seniors. That's we'll take them. But we're interested in the graduating seniors' moms and dads too, and their big brothers and their big sisters. So we will assist anybody in low to moderate income as long as they meet the age requirements. Obviously, it is our goal to try to get what we call the full meal deal, and that is financial aid support, admissions, applications to a school of your choice, and low-income first gen. And finally, you actually enroll and start going to school.

SPEAKER_00 8:56

Yeah, that's the goal.

SPEAKER_01 8:57

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 8:58

I find it surprising that the career guidance is a part of the financial conversation. But I love that because isn't that the ultimate goal? Like that is the ultimate thing that affects your financial place in this world, you know?

SPEAKER_01 9:16

That's right. And you know, once you feel secure in knowing you can pay for school, it makes it a lot easier to do better.

SPEAKER_00 9:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:24

You know, it makes it they become a little bit more at ease and they go, Oh, I don't have to worry about finding another job, maybe, to supplant this. And a lot of people just say, I can't, I can't do it. You know, I don't, it's not that I may not have the time. That might be true too, but a lot of them just don't have the resources. I'll give you an example. Up in the north part of Escambia County near the Century area, the poverty level is a bit higher than it is down in the lower part of Escambia County in uh Pensacola proper. And we we serve Northview High School currently, and we'll go in there and help the high school seniors that are getting ready to graduate do a FASFA. Well, part of what we require on our documentation is a parent signature as long as they're between 19 and 24 years old, somebody's supporting them typically, and they will claim them on their tax forms. And if that is the case, then their parents have to co-sign essentially the application for trio services, even though they're free. But when you go to the high school, the parents aren't typically there. And so how do you get these signatures? And we're finding that it's a challenge because a lot of these uh families don't have vehicles. They certainly might not have a computer or even a phone. And so, how do we get that? It's almost like you have to give the student a hard copy and take it home like a field trip for them to sign. But it works. And they may be the first ones to break out of their family and go, I'm gonna go to school. And they get so excited. And, you know, we have support at all of the PSC locations, Century Center as an example for Norfew, but you know, there's several satellite campuses just for PSC alone in the two county area. And that's our goal by our grant is to serve Escambia and Santa Rosa counties.

SPEAKER_00 11:05

And you said 18 to 24 as the age range. So that that's the requirement to qualify for trio services?

SPEAKER_01 11:14

It's actually 19. 19 years and there's no upper limit. We have students that are 80 plus years old that come in the office that just want to start taking some classes again just to learn, you know, not for credit even, but maybe get some funding to do it.

SPEAKER_00 11:29

Yeah. Is there a financial cap on like what they can qualify for as far as their income and their interaction with trio?

SPEAKER_01 11:37

We use the federal guidelines for what's considered to be low income. And it's online at the U.S. Department of Education, but it matches the current family unit size with your income. And that and income being taxable income, because a lot of people make the mistake of using gross income and it overestimates what they could get for Pell money. But the FAFSA is the typical place that you would start to drill down into other scholarships as well. So again, no upper age limit, 19 years, or you know, we will take the graduating senior because that by the time they hit the school, whatever school that will be, they'll probably be about 19 at that time.

SPEAKER_00 12:19

Yeah. But you seem to be particularly excited about the people that are, you know, the parents or the older siblings. And I love that because that is, as I mentioned, when you graduate high school and you don't have a solid plan for post-secondary education, you feel behind the moment you step off campus. But for the folks who have been away for over a year, maybe over 10 years, they really feel like their options are limited. And so this is kind of a cool, again, that front door situation because when you begin to think about what is next for me while you're dealing with adulting, it can be it can feel impossible. You can feel stuck.

SPEAKER_01 13:01

We get a lot of folks that come in that have either started school and for whatever reason, they maybe they took time to have children. Maybe they had to go to work to support the family and they drop out for whatever reason. We call those folks stops, and we love to see them come back to school. And they're typically beyond the age of 24. A lot of them have several children, maybe even. Some of them have full-time jobs and they're and they go to night school. We take the non-traditional students as well as the traditional what you would think, you know, I just graduated from high school. I'm gonna go to college somewhere. Great, we'll take them as well. But I think the program was originally set up to help those types of individuals who started and maybe felt that had to come back. This is why I say we're not interested so much in the graduating seniors, we are, but we're also interested in their parents and their older brothers and sisters who, for whatever reason, either didn't finish or want to start. We get a lot of families that just want to get a leg over the fence and their employer says, Hey, if you go get this certification or this degree, blah, blah, blah, we'll increase your pay, you know, and and that's a motivator for a lot of them. And the beauty of some of these programs, especially at Pensacola State, is there are scholarships that can send you to school for free. I think you've had that on other podcasts, but technical certifications right now are are hot. The trades, there's all kinds of new workforce programs opening up across the country. We see it at George Stone, at Lachland Technical Center, and at Pensacola State, just in the two county area. So these folks are they're hungry to reindustrialize the United States. And what's driving these workforce programs is the community interest. So when the community says, hey, we need more plumbers or electricians or HVAC techs, they will put out notifications to the schools and say, we we need to start turning these people out. And there might be scholarship money that can get funding. Uh, there's a couple of really big ones right now that we tap into. One of them from the BP oil spill is still money around.

SPEAKER_00 15:11

Really?

SPEAKER_01 15:12

It was called the Triumph Scholarship. It's a fantastic way to go and get, if you're interested in truck driving school, CDL, get your CDL license. They will pay 100% of that cost, eight weeks school to go.

SPEAKER_00 15:24

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 15:25

All you have to do is show up and be a good student and graduate, and it's all paid for.

SPEAKER_00 15:30

Huh. So it really is a pretty big variety of options, which is surprising because when you do think about Pensacola State College or any sort of like late in life career choice, and I say late in life lightly, because as you said, they could be in their 20s, just not the, you know, junior in high school. You tend to think about like, oh, I don't know, maybe it's just me, nursing or like very limited selection. But what you're talking about is not limited at all.

SPEAKER_01 15:59

Sky's the limit on your interest.

SPEAKER_00 16:01

Have you seen any trends as far as career paths in the last, I would say, three years?

SPEAKER_01 16:07

Anything workforce is a trend right now.

SPEAKER_00 16:10

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 16:10

The two-year programs are extremely popular also at Pensacola State. I think you're still gonna have the four-year degree programs no matter what across the country in in all kinds of things. But what I'm seeing is the trades being very, very popular right now. And for good reason. As an example, I've seen some plumbers coming straight out of school. Think of my I just don't want to even think about what it costs to have a plumber come to my house. But um, if they are in an apprenticeship right out of school, some of them are reporting back. They they're making six figures. Yeah. You know, and that's just the first couple of years of being out of their technical certification program.

SPEAKER_00 16:48

Well, it's interesting because I would have thought that you would have said AI or something, because that's just such a a big it's just it seems like a big opportunity. And what you're saying in my mind is the opposite of AI. It's what AI cannot replace.

SPEAKER_01 17:02

Well, currently at Pentacola State, just as an example, there are no AI programs. Really? We have cybersecurity, uh, and that's very popular. There's a lot of other computer-related programs, but that's probably one that we'll see in the near future because of the explosion of AI across the platforms on online. So there are new programs firing up all the time. They just brought online diesel mechanics at Pensacola State. They're now about ready to bring on marine diesel mechanics with uh companies like American Magic now in the in the city. They are begging for fabricators. So we see a lot of those kind of positions and the need for the education to be able to do those jobs.

SPEAKER_00 17:48

Well, that's exciting for that person who would be a first generation grad. I wanted to ask you about this because you yourself were in aerospace and were an operational psychologist in the Navy, served as a captain, oversaw a lot of young people, you know, they who were all presumably working to make their life better. Do you feel like you have witnessed what you would consider key ingredients in someone who can follow through successfully with being a first-generation college grad?

SPEAKER_01 18:17

It's hard to say what drives people. You know, I think the motivation, if it's there, you can do anything. And you can be anyone. You just have to put your mind to it. And I think the limiting factor, like I've already mentioned, for a lot of people is how do I do it? You know, I've got the drive. I'm smart, but I can't pay for this. You know, so if you go back and and you rewind, that's what exactly our office is designed to do, is to get you started off on the right foot. You don't even have to think about money in some cases. Like I said, it depends on the program and potentially the scholarship or the amount of Pell grant money that you might be able to ascertain from the government. But it's it all comes down to if you've got an interest and a drive, there's a way to do it. You just have to knock on the right doors. And I think that's one thing that we help a lot of prospective students find for themselves is the interest. I sometimes you don't even have to know what exactly what you want to do. You just have to be, I want to do something. You know, I want to get, I want to get out of this town or I want to get or I want to get out of this situation that I'm in. And we kind of kick the rocks over and dust off stuff and start showing you what the art of the possible really is. And when they see that, you can just their eyes open up and they're amazed. First of all, I didn't even know that thing existed. So how do I do that? You know, that's the first thing we we start them off on how do you do that?

SPEAKER_00 19:42

I love knocking on doors, knocking on the trio door, back to the door analogy. That's fantastic. Well, when it comes to making those major life advancements, I think, you know, baby steps. So obviously the baby step is to like knock on the door. But if you were to talk to like a listener who represents the ideal candidate for this journey, this path, I mean, would that be the first step is to call your office? Or is there something that is more preliminary that you'd recommend?

SPEAKER_01 20:16

No, we're the first stop you should make.

SPEAKER_00 20:18

The literal first stop.

SPEAKER_01 20:19

We literally should be the first call you make. Okay. Like I said, we're the front door of the house. If you are low income or moderate income and that you're 19 years and older or getting ready to graduate from high school, you should call us because we can help you. Now, there's other places that can do a FAFSA for you, but there's very few places that will do the FAFA and all those other things that I mentioned that we provide free of charge. It's all funded by the federal government. And like I said, you don't have to go to school anywhere in Pensacola even. But there are some fantastic places to attend post-secondary education in these two county areas. So don't overlook what's here. And just as an example, I maybe there's a little another great plug for Pensacola State, but the tuition there is very, very affordable. You know, if you're doing Gen Ed your first two years, you plan on undoing a four-year program, Pensacola State is the place to go. They haven't raised their tuition in years, from what I've heard. And they are expanding programs. There's over 55 technical certificate programs you can do at Pensacola State. And that's pretty amazing. I've only been at Pensacola State through the EOC about just shy of a year and a half now. And I was involved with the President's Leadership Institute this last seven or eight months or so. And it really starts to unravel what Pensacola State really is and what's about, what's offered to these students. And I was amazed. I said, I was almost ready to go back to school. I'm like, what can I do? I I saw the CNC machine and I just got all fired up. I went, oh, I want to run this thing. It looks so much fun. And if you want a field trip of some of these programs or places, you should come over and just ask. And we can set you up with that kind of stuff too. Just come see what's available to you. I think our biggest problem is getting the word out to everybody that's in this general area and say, come find out what you can do. Come find out what you can be. And in a lot of cases, you can do it for free. Just got to stir in a little motivation and show up to class. Some of these classes are even online. And all you have to have is a computer. And if you don't have one of those, we can help you find one of those on rental, you know, right there at on campus. So there are resources like I've never seen before just at Pensacola State. And I'm sure they exist at these other locations as well. But I'm just real close to what's happening at PSC, even though technically we're not a PSC program per se. But I know Pensacola State is very proud to have the trio programs on board. It's it's a great feather in their hat. And the students love it. Across the nation, on an annual basis, there's over 800,000 students that are served by all these programs. So it's very impactful to our populations across the country. They're typically located in places where the demographics support low-income or moderate income kind of populations.

SPEAKER_00 23:24

I love that. Should we wrap up with how to reach your office?

SPEAKER_01 23:28

Sure. You uh can give us a call at 850-484-1961, or you can email us at eoc at pensacolastate.edu. That's the best place to start right there.

SPEAKER_00 23:45

Thank you so much for this, Matt. This is great.

SPEAKER_01 23:47

It's my pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_00 23:50

Thanks for listening. Be sure to subscribe and share. Voices United in Education is a production of Escambia County Public Schools.