GEARUP WEEK: For 25 years (and counting), VSAC’s GEAR UP program supports Vermonters’ college dreams

Every September, VSAC celebrates National GEAR UP Week to make more Vermont families aware of the resources offered through the GEAR UP program—which stands for Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs. This federally funded program, which VSAC has administered in Vermont for the last 25 years, helps students from modest-income backgrounds find interest in, and prepare for, post-secondary education and training. GEAR UP week is September 23 – 27.

While economic data show that continued training beyond high school is critical to prepare young Vermonters for good-paying jobs and careers, the planning and the cost for such programs can be daunting for many families. Under GEAR UP, VSAC counselors serving modest-income students in select Vermont middle and high schools help students prepare for, and pursue, college or career.

GEAR UP outreach counselors help students discover the connections between interests and career paths, research schools and training programs, prepare applications, and understand the complicated landscape of scholarships and financial aid. Here are three ways that GEAR UP has supported Vermont students on their educational journeys.

Helping a high-achieving new Vermont student go to college

When Amon Chumba emigrated to the US from Kenya at age 17, he found that the American higher education system was far more complicated than what he was used to.

In Kenya, a student’s college list is determined for them based on their grades and a high-school final exam. Here in the US, the student has much more ownership and responsibility over the process, and as soon as Amon arrived on American soil, application deadlines were looming. “I didn’t have anything I needed,” he recalls.

His science teacher and advisor gladly wrote letters of recommendation for the conscientious and high-achieving student, and his VSAC GEAR UP outreach counselor, Jessi Krause Herron, helped him find schools that met his criteria: a location close to his new home in Vermont and a major in chemistry, biochemistry or biology.

When Amon was accepted to UMass Dartmouth, Herron also helped him navigate the financial aid system, whose requirements were hard to meet for a new-to-Vermont family. “We had only been here a year, so we didn’t have prior-year tax forms for the FAFSA. I remember it gave us a headache,” Amon recalls. “I had several meetings with Jessi when it came time to fill it out, because our other big question was, ‘could we afford it?’”

After qualifying for a lower in-region tuition rate at UMass and earning six scholarships, Amon is now in his second year as a biology major, with plans to go on to medical school. While the timing of his family’s international move—just before his senior year of high school—was a bit unwieldy, Amon now thinks the move was helpful in terms of preparing him for college.

“If I had finished high school in Kenya, I wouldn’t have participated in the GEAR UP program, and I wouldn’t have known which schools to apply to or how to apply. I feel like I learned a lot finishing high school here,” Amon says.

Funding summer enrichment programs

Cooper Hodgeman of Derby and Tate Parker of Newport grew up together in the Northeast Kingdom, where they shared a strong interest in engineering. The 2024 graduates of North Country Union High School often participated in the same events—sometimes as teammates, other times as fierce competitors.

“My earliest memory of Tate was the fourth-grade garden trellis building contest. I was so mad when his group beat mine for first place,” says Cooper.

At North Country, both were members of VSAC’s GEAR UP program. Outreach counselor Matt Mitchell worked with Tate and Cooper for three years and described the students as “very smart, very engaged, and very involved.” As members of Skills USA, Cooper and Tate participated in fundraising projects and entered several statewide competitions, where they placed well and won awards.

When they were interested in attending the Envision Engineering Program at Georgia Tech, an elite summer camp for engineering students, Mitchell found them funding to support their trip. With the school contributing as well, the cost became affordable for the two families. Tate and Cooper spent a week on the Georgia Tech campus, where they learned about 3D design, laws of electricity and resistance, and other engineering concepts, along with 1,000 up-and-coming engineers from across the country. In the evenings, industry-leading guest speakers offered college and career advice.

“It was kind of like a college preview,” says Tate of being in a different city and living on campus. Cooper adds that their professors and speakers offered great advice. “They had as much insight as we could ever ask for about choosing degrees and careers.”

When the students returned home for their senior year, Mitchell was equally helpful with college applications. “Matt outlined all the steps to follow and told us about schools and scholarships we weren’t even aware of,” says Tate.

Cooper and Tate agree that the GEAR UP program was instrumental in making that formative trip possible and helping them reach their college goals. Cooper just started his freshman year at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston, where he plans to study electromechanical engineering, and Tate is a first-year mechanical engineering student at Clarkson University in New York.

Supporting the next generation of Vermont farmers

Both of Lizzie Vaughan’s parents went to college, which is an advantage when it comes to college applications. But the dairy-farming family still appreciated the guidance of GEAR UP. “Everything about college was very overwhelming,” Lizzie recalls. “My mom told me, ‘When I was your age, we did this with typewriters!’”

Lizzie had participated in GEAR UP since the seventh grade. During middle school, she recalls, it was mostly whole-class meetings to talk about careers, colleges, trade schools, and apprenticeships. As a junior, when she realized she’d like to go to college to study agricultural business, she asked for a one-on-one meeting with her GEAR UP outreach counselor, Kassidy Moore. Over the next year, Moore worked with Lizzie to narrow down her college list, complete the common application, and apply for scholarships. “She knew all the ins and outs, and she was able to simplify things and make the process easier to understand.”

Lizzie started at SUNY Cobleskill this fall, where she plans to earn her associate’s degree in agricultural business. “If I want to continue, I always have the option of going on to a bachelor’s,” she says. “I’m hoping college will help me identify new ways for me to make a career out of farming”—a family tradition that also became Lizzie’s own passion after participating in the 4-H program as a teenager.

While coming back to the family farm is a possibility, Lizzie isn’t 100% sure that’s what she’ll do. “I really like working with the cows. But I might learn something I like even more. Ag business is such a broad area, I probably don’t know half of the things I can do with it.”