Posse Foundation

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The Posse Foundation
Founder(s)	Deborah Bial
Type	Education
Founded	1988
Headquarters	New York City
Key people	Jeffrey Ubben, Chairman Deborah Bial, President & Founder
Area served	Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, Washington D.C.
Focus	Posse
Method	Identifies, recruits and trains student leaders to pursue their academics and to help promote cross-cultural communication on campus.
Revenue	US $23.8 million (2006)
Endowment	US $30.0 million (2006)
Website	www.possefoundation.org
2006 Posse Foundation Annual Report

The Posse Foundation is a non-profit organization that identifies, recruits, and trains student leaders from public high schools to form multicultural teams called "Posses" of 10 to 12 Posse Scholars. These teams are then prepared, through an intensive eight-month Pre-Collegiate Training Program, for enrollment at top-tier universities nationwide to pursue their academics and to help promote cross-cultural communication on college campuses.

1 Success of Program
2 Goals of the Posse Foundation
3 Posse Scholars Pre-College Training Program
4 Posse Plus Retreat
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Success of Program

The Posse Program has exhibited great success over the past 14 years placing 1,228 students into colleges and universities. These students have won over $112 million in scholarships from Posse partner universities and are persisting and graduating at 90% — a rate higher than the national averages at institutions of higher education. Twenty-six colleges and universities, including Carleton College, Boston University, DePauw University, Dickinson College, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Grinnell College, Brandeis, Claremont McKenna College, Pomona, Union, Oberlin, The University of the South, and Lawrence University are partnered with the program. Posse has sites in six major cities across the United States: Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and Washington, D.C.

In 2007, it was among over 530 New York City arts and social service institutions to receive part of a $20 million grant from the Carnegie Corporation, which was made possible through a donation by New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg.^[1]

The Posse Foundation's founder, Deborah Bial, was recognized for her ground-breaking work by receiving the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship (nicknamed the "genius grant") in 2007.^[2]

[edit] Goals of the Posse Foundation

Posse has three goals designed to address some critical issues of importance to institutions of higher education in the United States today:

1.) To expand the pool from which top colleges and universities can recruit outstanding young leaders from diverse backgrounds.

2.) To help these institutions build more interactive campus environments so that they can become more welcoming institutions for people from all backgrounds.

3.) To ensure that Posse Scholars persist in their academic studies and graduate so they can take on leadership positions in the workforce. (From the Posse Foundation website.)

[edit] Goal 1

University admissions offices in the United States often search for ways to identify “non-traditional” candidates who might contribute greatly to and benefit greatly from their institutions. Such universities want to continue to increase access for students from diverse backgrounds. As a result of its belief that traditional measures sometimes miss capable students, Posse has developed an alternative evaluation strategy called the Dynamic Assessment Process (DAP), hoping to identify urban youth leaders who can succeed despite varying scores on tests such as the SAT. The Posse Foundation hopes to help more students from urban high schools to enter top colleges and universities.

[edit] Goal 2

According to the Posse Foundation, many colleges and universities experience a climate where students from different backgrounds find little opportunity to interact. The Posse Foundation aims to train students to improve their leadership skills so that they can help colleges and universities address diversity issues on campus.

[edit] Goal 3

The Posse foundation hopes to improve college retention and completion rates for students of different cultural and racial backgrounds.

[edit] Posse Scholars Pre-College Training Program

For eight months before they begin their college career, Posse Scholars attend a weekly pre-college training program. The goal of this training program is to prepare Posse Scholars for as many as possible of the academic, social, and personal challenges they may face in their college career.

[edit] Posse Plus Retreat

The Posse Plus Retreat is a collaborative, focused group discussion on a contemporary issue which Posse Scholars and invited college community members will conduct every year in a retreat setting.

Before 2008, Posse Scholars from individual colleges will select a particular discussion theme, facilitated by Posse trainers, for their college's Posse Plus Retreat. Since 2008, Deborah Bial, the founder of Posse Foundation, introduced a new discussion theme selection process which all of the Posse Plus Retreats across the entire nation will have a unified, rather than individual, discussion theme. Similar to the previous selection process, Posse Scholars from individual colleges will first choose a discussion theme for their college. Then, the Posse staff will discuss, analyze and refine those themes that are collected from individual colleges. Finally, the Posse staff will deduce an articulated common theme for all of the Posse Plus Retreats for that year.

In 2008, "Social Responsibility" was chosen as the first Posse Plus Retreat theme. It is expected that by the end of the year, a booklet that will summarize all of the discussion made in that retreat will be published. This publication will be made available to the public as well as will be distributed the presidents of all universities and colleges across the United States, to raise their awareness of this particular theme and the discussions made by the Posse Scholars.