News
Posse bringing diversity and talent to the Hill
By Ilana Schwartz ’17
October 20, 2016
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Hamilton College has eight educational goals:
1. Intellectual curiosity and flexibility
2. Analytic discernment
3. Aesthetic discernment
4. Disciplinary practice
5. Creativity
6. Communication and expression
7. Understanding of cultural diversity
8. Ethical, informed and engaged citizenship
According to Hamilton’s website, understanding of cultural diversity focuses on “critically engaging with multiple cultural traditions and perspectives, and with interpersonal situations that enhance understanding of different identities and foster the ability to work and live productively and harmoniously with others.” One way of achieving this goal is by making Hamilton as open as possible by providing access for students who may not traditionally have it, which can be done through scholarships.
One of the many scholarships provided is the Hamilton Posse Scholarship, which is a four-year program that, according to the website, “identifies public high school students with extraordinary academic and leadership potential who may be overlooked by traditional college selection processes.” The program’s philosophy is that placing students in small, supportive cohorts will help them succeed during the transition into college and throughout the four years spent on campus.
The program began through the Posse Foundation, a national organization founded in 1989 that identifies and builds groups of students that will go to various partner colleges. The foundation has 10 chapters in cities across America from which it forms the cohorts and it has partnered with 57 different institutions, including Hamilton.
Hamilton began its partnership with the Posse Foundation in 2001 when it enrolled the first posse class, which was comprised of students from the Boston area. The partnership expanded in 2012 to include students from Miami.
Becoming a Posse Scholar is not an easy process. High schools or community-based organizations can nominate juniors and seniors who have demonstrated extraordinary academic achievement, involvement in their communities, commitment to change and activism, and leadership qualities. Each chapter starts with thousands of nominees and the students undergo an intensive interview process. Once they narrow it down to nearly 25 finalists, Hamilton admissions officers travel to each city to interview and select the ten members of the posse. Once each posse is formed, the members spend nearly nine months prior to entering college in training, preparing for the transition. During this training time, they cover a wide range of transitional issues in order to ease the process of learning how to navigate the world of college.
Although the Posse program revolves around academic success, it is also highly focused on building a support network between the students in each cohort. Along with the network that students form with each other, Hamilton assigns a mentor to each posse to meet with and support the students during their time at Hamilton. The mentors chosen are tenured professors and must meet with the groups weekly during their first two years at Hamilton. During the last two years, weekly meetings are no longer required, but the support network between students and faculty remains.
As a partner institution, Hamilton is committed to providing full tuition scholarships for all Posse members that come to the Hill. In fact, the Posse Foundation itself is not responsible for providing those funds; Hamilton uses funding from financial aid programs to help bring these unique scholars to the Hill. Although the Foundation only requires that Hamilton cover full tuition, which doesn’t include room and board, Hamilton’s “scholarships are more generous than that because our policy is to meet 100 percent of demonstrated financial need of all of our students,” according to Monica Inzer, Vice President and Dean of Admission and Financial Aid. As with all other financial assistance that Hamilton grants, the Posse scholarships are funded out of the $38 million financial aid budget. This budget is comprised of restricted endowments for financial aid, unrestricted endowment earnings, the Annual Fund, and the College’s general operating budget. That general operating budget comes from unrestricted endowment income, annual funds, and net tuition. However, according to Dean Inzer, “all Hamilton students are receiving some form of financial support… even those who are not receiving financial aid” because the cost to educate each student is $14,600 more than the published tuition fee. Thus, “the endowment, made possible by our alumni, is subsidizing the cost [of education] for all students.”
Hamilton’s partnership with the Posse Foundation and ability to offer the scholarships have given many students access to achievements that they may not have had otherwise. Hamilton’s Posse Scholars have pursued a wide range of careers after graduating, including careers in finance, teaching, and marketing, as well as humanitarian work, legal work, and even work with the Posse Foundation.
Additionally, Posse has positively impacted the Hamilton community by increasing diversity on the campus. Posse has a very directed approach to inclusiveness because of its mission to build multicultural cohorts. According to Phyllis Breland, the Director of Opportunity Programs and Interim Director of Diversity and Inclusion, Hamilton has embraced change and activism that has grown on campus since Posse began here. Posse has had an incredibly positive impact on the campus and “it is a testament to the work that we’re doing for inclusion.”
Dean Inzer stated, “Posse provides a service to us by providing a pool of students that we would not have otherwise had access to. It is valuable to everyone in the community because it fits in with our goal of diversity and access in a broadly defined sense.”