Symposium Helps Students of Color Plan for College
Fifty DMPS students attended a symposium at Drake University to help students of color look ahead to college.
The inaugural Wanda Everage Academic Success Symposium, sponsored by Nationwide Insurance Company and the Drake University School of Education, has been going on all week at Drake and culminated Friday when participants delivered presentations on the topic of Secrets of Success.
Fifty DMPS students participated in the event designed to address the unique challenges that students of color face when preparing for college.
Participants came from four of the five high schools in the district – East, Lincoln, North, and Roosevelt – and six of the district’s middle schools: Brody, Callanan, Cowles, Goodrell, Merrill, and Weeks. They were selected after recommendations from school counselors and the district’s Gifted & Talented consultants and completion of an application process.
Petra Lange is a former Roosevelt High School teacher who joined Drake’s School of Education faculty last year as Special Projects Coordinator. “Drake is committed to partnering with DMPS to…meet the district’s goal of becoming a national model of urban education,” she said. “This is the first year for the symposium but we have a grant that ensures it will not be the last.”
The event’s namesake Wanda Everage (definitely NOT to be confused with average), is a Drake alumna with deep ties to the university and Des Moines Public Schools. Everage retired in 2012 as Drake’s vice provost for student affairs and academic excellence after previously working for DMPS as a middle school teacher, central office administrator, and vice principal at Roosevelt.
Before the students polished up their culminating presentations for delivery later in the day they were treated to a keynote address by Dr. Everage first thing Friday morning in the Olmstead Center on the Drake campus.
The peppy, positive Everage was not at the podium long before she waded into the audience to share her wisdom at closer range. She recalled her extreme homesickness when she came to Drake as a freshman in 1968. She called her parents to say she wanted to come home. They were sympathetic – to a point. Growing up in the Jim Crow south her mother got through 9th grade. Her father only made it as far as 3rd.
“He said he was sorry for what I was experiencing,” Everage recalled, “but also told me I would not be coming home. I had worked too hard for the opportunity.”
In one class where she was the only black student Everage made a point of sitting in the front row, directly in front of the professor. “I was never absent and I was always prepared,” she said. “But whenever I raised my hand he wouldn’t call on me. Eventually my classmates noticed and refused to participate in class discussions until I was included. I have never forgotten that.”
Besides personal memories Dr. Everage had some pointers to share. With the help of some student volunteers she demonstrated the point that everyone’s blood, sweat and tears look the same.
“You are alive and you deserve to be where you are,” she said. “But never miss a class. Always come prepared. And don’t ever be afraid to ask for help or express your feelings.”
Dressed in purple, Everage told the young people that to her it’s a meaningful color choice. “I used to use a purple sponge to remind my students of their royalty and to absorb everything they possibly could. Education is a marvelous thing. No one,” she said, pointing emphatically to her head, “can ever take from you what you work to put in here.”
After a week of workshops on career planning, time management, college life and related topics the students were excited to see it all literally come to life in the person of the trailblazer the weeklong regimen was named for. When they sprang to their feet to applaud after Dr. Everage wound her way through them back onstage and finished her remarks they weren’t just going through the motions any more than she had.
