Educational Innovator: The Wight Foundation
Test Innovators believes in the power of educational innovation to shape the future of our society. Our Educational Innovator series highlights a program, school, or individual that is contributing to the advancement of education in a unique way, whether through groundbreaking curriculum, technological innovation, or other revolutionary projects.
This week we spoke with Thalia Brownridge-Smith, Director of the Scholars Training & Enrichment Program (STEP) at The Wight Foundation in Newark, New Jersey.
The Wight Foundation is an educational access organization founded in 1986 by real estate entrepreneur Russell B. Wight, Jr. The organization’s mission is “making a world of difference,” which it accomplishes by providing grants for socioeconomically disadvantaged students to attend prestigious boarding schools. This effectively allows these students’ voices to become part of a global exchange of ideas, and provides them with greater access to educational opportunities throughout their lives.
Academically motivated students are recruited from local middle schools in the Greater Newark area and encouraged to apply for the foundation’s Scholars Training and Enrichment Program (STEP).
“Our mission is to find capable students who may be in schools that aren’t as attentive to their needs because they are at the higher end of the class,” said Thalia Brownridge-Smith, Director of the STEP program. “[These students] may serve as tutors or helpers, but aren’t really challenged. Their potential is phenomenal and we look to identify curriculum that will tap into their strengths and allow them to see great success.”
Acceptance into the STEP program is competitive: many years, the program sees as many as a thousand applicants for only 54 available spots. The 54 accepted students participate in a full year of academics, starting in the summer after their seventh-grade year, in order to prepare them for the admissions tests they’ll need to take and the rigorous coursework of a boarding school environment.
“Our primary focus is to get our voices into independent boarding schools,” said Brownridge-Smith, an alum of the STEP program herself.
The organization sends students to boarding schools specifically because of these schools’ global perspective, with students attending from all over the country and world. Thus, students at boarding schools become exposed to ideas that stretch their thinking and include different ways of being.
Being in this environment helps Wight Foundation scholars in two ways: they learn from their peers from different backgrounds, and also contribute their own experiences to conversations, representing a demographic that has not historically been represented at boarding schools in the United States.
“A lot of our students go into careers where it behooves them to know with whom they are speaking and to know how to approach different people,” Brownridge-Smith said. “And we want our students’ voices to be heard across the country as well.”
For many students, however, the boarding school experience is unfamiliar and can bring new challenges along with it, especially if students’ families aren’t knowledgeable of the process either.
Brownridge-Smith, an alum of the program herself, was the first in her family to attend boarding school, college, and graduate school, which made these spaces difficult to navigate.
“My parents didn’t necessarily have the experience to guide me as they didn’t have that experience themselves,” Brownridge-Smith said. However, the Wight Foundation provided support and knowledge to her throughout her educational journey. “Having people know you and support you in those communities, to have somebody advocating for you… our students know that we are 100% for them.”
In addition to families’ unfamiliarity with the overall experience, boarding school is an environment that can also be culturally alienating for students.
“We are kind of the outliers,” Brownridge-Smith said. “Teachers treated us like they’ve never had a student like us… It is important for [students] to feel that they belong on campus.”
Having mentors in the organization who have gone through the entire process themselves can help to alleviate some of these feelings. Wight Foundation support is hands-on:
“We visit every student at least two times per year,” Brownridge-Smith said. “We meet with their advisors, sit in classes, take them out to dinner….There’s always support—someone that you can speak with, a network that is there for you, people that you can call on at any point.”
Beyond the STEP program, the Wight Foundation also helps students through their college admissions process, and checks in with students throughout their undergraduate experience. Many Wight Foundation Scholars actually return to work for the organization after college.
“Our entire recruitment team, we are all Wight Foundation Scholars,” Brownridge-Smith said. “It’s starting to come full circle for us. Essentially, it’s because there’s so much love and support for the organization, and so much that we give back and really hold true to the ideals of making a world of difference, and knowing that we have a responsibility in [students’] lives.”
You can learn more about the Wight Foundation on its website here: http://www.wightfoundation.org/
