The STARS College Network, funded through a $20 million gift and formally launched on Tuesday, April 4, aims to help Brown and 15 other institutions empower rural and small-town high schoolers to gain insights into the college application and financial aid process, explore campus life and meet current students. The network includes fellow Ivy League schools such as Yale and Columbia universities, state flagships including Ohio State University and the University of Maryland, and leading private schools such as Colby College and the California Institute of Technology.

Logan Powell, Brown’s associate provost for enrollment and dean of undergraduate admission, said the University’s participation in the STARS College Network will encourage new collaborations with member schools and help to build a broader set of opportunities for rural students on College Hill and beyond.

“This initiative is enabling Brown to deepen our efforts to support students from all geographic and economic backgrounds and help them explore the incredible opportunities that a college education can provide,” Powell said. “Through collaborative planning and outreach, we can develop best practices together, share ideas, co-host events and more — all of which benefits the students we are trying to reach.”

At Brown, the number of admitted students from small towns and rural communities — many of whom are the first in their families to attend college — is at an all-time high, with a 30% increase over last year, Powell said. That progress has been accelerated by efforts such as the fly-in program and a wide range of investments in financial aid, including the replacement of loans with scholarships in University financial aid packages starting in 2018-19. Brown also covers full tuition for families earning $125,000 or less with typical assets, and all expenses — tuition, room, board and books — for students from families making less than $60,000 with typical assets.

“The STARS partnership builds on Brown’s progress in this important area of focus by establishing a long-term set of collaborative goals,” Powell said. “It commits us to working together to offer students from rural backgrounds information about a broad range of colleges and universities, both public and private, that they may not have considered otherwise.”

Bridging a gap in educational opportunities

The STARS College Network is co-chaired by Jim Nondorf, the University of Chicago’s vice president of enrollment and student advancement, and Douglas Christiansen, Vanderbilt University’s vice provost for university enrollment affairs and dean of admissions and financial aid. In formally launching the initiative, the program’s leaders said an estimated one-third of students from rural and small-town America are people of color, and research shows that college graduates from rural areas often return to their communities, indicating that efforts to help rural students can boost a cycle of support and success in their hometowns.

Students who live outside metro areas can face a variety of obstacles to pursuing a college degree, the STARS leaders noted. Conversely, college recruiters may face their own resource limitations that prevent them from engaging with smaller communities, where students are less likely to encounter programs that help with college applications, financial aid paperwork and standardized test preparation.

Students say that part of the challenge is simply understanding what is possible and feeling welcome at institutions that can seem unfamiliar and intimidating.

“There are so many rural students like me who could get into schools like Brown and be successful, but just don’t know that these opportunities are available to them,” said Goodreau, who is double-concentrating in engineering and chemistry at Brown. “Focusing on these students will allow them to access some of the opportunities that students from non-rural areas get. This will provide support towards bridging the gap between rural and urban education.”

In addition to supporting campus visits to help high school students prepare academically and socially for college, the STARS College Network will also provide resources to support expanded visits by college admissions staff to high schools in small towns and rural communities, as well as fly-in and virtual programs for counselors, teachers and administrators from rural and small-town high schools to help them better support their students on the path to college.

“The creation of the STARS College Network provides a powerful sense of purpose and accountability, and it demonstrates that we are working together to develop new programming opportunities for talented students,” Powell said. “We are stronger as a collection of universities — and stronger as a nation — through efforts that can help bridge the rural-urban divide. This deepens Brown’s commitment to making meaningful progress toward expanding college access to the widest possible range of students.” 

Byron Trott, who made a $20 million gift to the STARS College Network, said he was inspired by the ways in which college transformed his own journey, which began in small-town Union, Missouri. After earning an undergraduate degree and an MBA from the University of Chicago, Trott went on to become vice chairman at Goldman Sachs and then to launch the Chicago merchant bank BDT&MSD Partners.

“There is a massive talent pool in our small towns and rural communities that has so much to offer — to our colleges, to society and to future generations,” Trott said. “These small communities simply don’t have the resources to help show these students what is possible and help them get there.”

With the launch of STARS, Trott-affiliated philanthropies have devoted more than $50 million to supporting students from small towns and rural communities, including through initiatives like the rootEd Alliance, which has teamed up with other philanthropies and the states of Missouri, Texas, Tennessee and Idaho to train and place college counselors in local high schools that did not previously offer that service to students.

“Collaborative partnerships like STARS and rootEd not only help to turn the tide — they have a multiplier effect that can catalyze far greater change than any single institution or agency could make on its own,” Trott said.