Academy is open to students who have achieved a GPA of 3.25.
By Kyle Sanders
sac-ranger@alamo.edu
History Professor Jonathan Lee, coordinator of this college’s Honors Academy, is seeking an agreement with the San Antonio Education Partnership to admit scholarship recipients into the academy.
According to their website www.saedpartnership.org, the SAEP was created to tackle the issue of low high school completion and performance rates by providing more than $2 million in needs-based scholarships and services to more than 30,000 students through its Road to Success program.
The Road to Success program provides College Access and Success Advisers throughout 25 San Antonio high schools.
The Advisers provide colleges resources, guidance and assistance to the students and their families on these services: goal setting, career planning, college entry and enrollment, financial aid and college transition.
The partnership provides high school students with B grade-point averages and a 95 percent attendance rating a scholarship of $600 a year toward Alamo Colleges, $850 a year toward San Antonio public universities and $1,500 a year towards San Antonio private universities.
To find out more about the SAEP, go their website at www.saedpartnership.org.
Currently, there are about 350 students enrolled at the Honors Academy with 196 new students this semester.
High school students meeting the minimum of a 3.25 GPA and placement scores at college level in reading and writing can apply to be a part of the Honors Academy.
If students do not have a 3.25 GPA or higher, they may still be able to get accepted by submitting an essay on why they want to be part of the Honors Academy, Lee said.
College freshmen can join the Honors Academy if they can meet the same requirements, but they must have fewer than 15 hours of college credit, he said.
“We would accept any student who receives their scholarship to our program,” Lee said of the partnership.
“We said that we would help identify the students who get their scholarships and join our program at the Honors Academy to keep track to tell them that this is how their students are doing while not giving away private information, obviously,” Lee said.
Lee said the Honors Academy will track students by college graduation, hours completed each semester and GPA.
A problem with the agreement is the program fills up by the end of July, and they are not awarded the scholarship funds until September.
“As time goes on, we want to try to figure out a better way to identify the students to help get them into the Honors Academy so we need to overcome the lack of communication between high schools and colleges,” he said.
Lee is considering having some of the Honors Academy students go to the SAEP college access workshops during the summer to help those transitioning from high school to college. “We are just beginning, and I think it can lead to some really great things,” Lee said.
“We all need to start talking to each other more to make these processes seamless.”
