Choosing Northern: How a Group of Antrim Scholars Found a Home at NMU

A new college access and scholarship program in Michigan's Antrim County saw its first-ever cohort of students graduate from high school this summer, and all four decided to head north, choosing to enroll at Northern Michigan University.

Lots of factors went into their decision, but Evelyn Keast, Savannah Duff and Emma Wilste all agreed, a campus visit was integral in that decision. The fourth scholar, Aspen Evans, was unavailable for an interview.

It wasn't just Marquette and all the outdoor recreation it has to offer, though that certainly helped, and it wasn't just NMU's campus and the friendliness of its faculty, staff and students, though that certainly helped as well.

It was that when Keast, Duff and Wilste were on campus, it felt like where they were supposed to be.

"Ever since I first toured, I was like, 'Oh, I could see myself going here. This is the school I'm going to go to,'" Keast said.

Duff expressed a similar sentiment. NMU is one of a handful of institutions in the state that offered radiography, a program she became interested in after conducting an internship assisting x-ray technologists at McLaren Northern Michigan Hospital in Petoskey as part of Antrim Scholars. She had initially ruled Northern out because of Marquette's reputation for long winters. But a campus visit changed her mind.

"We drove past the ore dock and I knew that this is where I wanted to be," Duff said. "Then, setting foot on campus, it just truly gave me that 'home' feeling."

Wiltse, double majoring in psychology and criminal justice, said the financial aid package offered by NMU was instrumental in her decision to attend Northern, along with a campus visit, adding now that she's in the U.P., she's been surprised at how much she enjoys life on campus.

"I'm very family oriented," said Wiltse. "I thought I was going to get really homesick, but everyone's just been so nice."

Keast, a nursing major, echoed those comments.

"I went home for the first time (recently) and it was weird to go back home," Keast said. "The entire time I was like, 'I really want to go back up.'"

Sylvia Schonauer-Kalchik, Antrim Scholars Program director and treasurer of Antrim Women's Alliance, which oversees the program, said the scholarship awarded through the Antrim Scholars Program is not tied to any specific university, and there is no push from the program to attend one university over another.

"We don't tell them where to go," Schonauer-Kalchik said. "We just help them get the best information and find the best fitting school, the one that's going to give them their program, the financial aid that makes the most sense and any other criteria that's important to them. They make the decision."

The Antrim Scholars Program is geared toward first-generation college students, which all four members of the Antrim Scholars are. Schonauer-Kalchik knows first-hand the difficulties that can come with being the first in the family to attend college, having to navigate the ins and outs of university life largely on their own.

As one of eight children in a single-wage-earning household, with no one in her family who had attended college, Schonauer-Kalchik found herself taken under the wing of a high school friend's parents. They nudged her toward college, taking her to ACT and SAT exams, and ultimately opening a door she thought was closed to people from circumstances like hers.

"When I went away to school, we went to the same school," Schonauer-Kalchik said of her high school friend. "They would always pick me up, take me to school. When they came down to meet their daughter, they'd take me out to dinner. They really influenced me."

That influence led her to earning her first degree, which set her on a path to a successful career as a food process engineer, working for big names in the food industry like Frito-Lay, Nestle and Kellogg, and ultimately, to earning her PhD.

"For someone who was never going to go to school, I've gotten to travel the world," Schonauer-Kalchik said. "Because I feel so fortunate with my career and everything I got from going to school, I always wanted to help anyone I could."

"Help" for Schonauer-Kalchik meant providing those same opportunities to young people today that her friend's parents provided to her. So, she set out with other members of the Antrim Women's Alliance to craft a scholarship that could help make college financially feasible.

They pitched their idea to a group of angel investors and were initially denied, until one of those investors approached the alliance on her own, offering substantial investment for a program that went far beyond financial support.

With a $10,000 check in hand, and a lot of advice from their investor, who had started several college access programs in other cities, the Antrim Scholars Program came to life.

"She said what these kids really need is support, and to start early," said Pam Singer, Antrim Women's Alliance president. "They need to go on college visits, they need help applying, they need mentors in their life. She really inspired us to look bigger and create more of a college access program."

That advice laid the foundation for what would ultimately become the Antrim Scholars program, which requires extensive participation from its members, including taking multiple SAT prep tests, attending workshops on leadership, regular one-on-one meetings with assigned mentors to continue through college, tutoring, essay writing, visiting college campuses to include at least one overnight visit and a service day project to give back to their communities.

"This year, the NMU class (of Antrim Scholars) helped design a mural on the Central Lake Park Pavilion and it's fabulous," Schonauer-Kalchik said. "It's beautiful."

The main goal of the program is to send more young people to college after high school, but both Schonauer-Kalchik and Singer said they hope those same young people return home, ready and able to use what they've learned to better their hometowns.

"We're hoping, and I'm sure it'll happen, that these students will come back and be supporters of our program, speaking to the next class about what the value of it was to them," Schonauer-Kalchik said.

For now, the members of the first graduating cohort of the Antrim Scholars Program are attending their first semester of college as NMU Wildcats, still a few years away from graduation, but already a positive example for their peers back home

Duff, echoed by Wiltse, said one of the best parts of the program was the internship portion, adding her advice to anyone wondering where to start in their career should "job shadow anything you might be interested in."

"Go out, get some experience, and when it comes to picking where you want to go to school, go to that place, step foot, envision yourself there," Duff said. "If you don't feel that sense of home, and that's just not somewhere that you think you can be happy, then that's not the pick for you."

Keast's advice to anyone thinking about attending NMU, or to those who may not yet have considered it, is to make the trip to campus and see it firsthand.

"Tour it, but really tour it," Keast said. "Stay up here for a weekend, tour campus and experience Marquette. Go explore. That's what I did and that's what really got me to want to be up here."

Northern has several programs and supports in place for first generation students and hosted a day of celebration for first generation students, faculty and staff on Nov. 6. Read more about that here .

For more information on the Antrim Scholars Program, click here .