FARMINGTON – Several hundred middle school students and their families in Franklin and Oxford counties will benefit from more than $2 million in federal funding.
About 10 percent of more than $20 million granted to the state for educational purposes was awarded to University of Maine at Farmington’s GEAR UP partnership program.
GEAR UP, which stands for Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs, will provide tutoring, mentoring, after-school and cultural programs as well as providing college information to students and parents in three school districts.
Middle school students in Jay, Rumford, Mexico, Dixfield, Carthage and Canton will be able to participate in these programs provided through partnerships with the three school districts and UMF, NewPage Corp., Finance Authority of Maine, American Express in Jay, Oxford County Federal Credit Union, Child Health Center in Mexico’s Big Brother and Big Sister program and the Franklin County Health Network.
More than 400 sixth- and seventh-grade students from Jay Middle School, Mountain Valley Middle School in Rumford and T.W. Kelly Middle School in Dixfield will have programs available to them through the remainder of their public school education, according to Weiya Liang, GEAR UP coordinator for UMF who also wrote the grant for the program.
“The overarching purpose (of the program) is to level the playing field (for rural and low-income families) and to help prepare students and parents for undergraduate programs,” Liang said Friday.
Parents and students will be able to learn about financing higher education through the Finance Authority of Maine’s NextGen savings plan. Liang said he will also provide college visits and cultural exposure “not readily available to students in the area.” He hopes to be able to offer a trip to Quebec City as he did with the last round of GEAR UP recipients who graduated last spring from Dirigo High School in Dixfield.
Liang said 84 percent of students from the previous program went on to higher education compared to 37 percent in the mid-1990s.
That was better than goal of 75 percent. Six of those students are going to UMF and many were accepted by their first choice college, he added.
“We’re very happy to see the results,” he said.
Student tutors from UMF will also gain from the experience, he said, particularly education majors, though the paid tutors are not necessarily teachers-in-training.
“They will gain valuable experience in the classroom,” he said of education majors. He has already hired 20 tutors this year, three of whom are returning from previous years. But, he said, he could always use more.
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