Yenni Alvarez had never even considered going to college.

The second eldest of seven children being raised by a single mother, she already worked a couple of jobs while attending high school and planned to work even more after graduation. “My plan was just to work — just to help sustain the family,” said Alvarez, who grew up in Liberty, Mo.

But then her high school hosted a college and career fair, and Alvarez heard about Donnelly College (Donnelly.edu) — a small Catholic college in downtown Kansas City, Kan. When the recruiter learned that Alvarez had a 3.8 grade-point average, she told the young woman, “We definitely offer full rides, and you would definitely be an applicant for this opportunity.”

“I had no idea what that [meant],” recalled Alvarez, now 20.

But she moved ahead with the application process and was awarded the Bloch Scholarship, which covers full tuition for her associate’s degree at Donnelly and completion of her bachelor’s degree at the University of Missouri at Kansas City.

The first in her family to attend college, Alvarez — who graduates soon from Donnelly — has a remarkable story.

But Donnelly specializes in remarkable stories. Each year, more than 80% of students are the first in their families to attend college (this year, it’s 86%). Nearly 70% come from families with a household income of $18,000 or less.

The college’s president, Msgr. Stuart Swetland, sums up the school’s mission as, “We’re here to serve the underserved.”

 

Wide Outreach

Founded in 1949 by the Benedictine Sisters of Mount St. Scholastica and the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas as a two-year college, Donnelly — which became a four-year college in 2006 — has a student body that is evenly divided between Catholics and non-Catholics, and the faculty and staff are also a mix of different faith backgrounds. More than 40% of students are Latino, nearly 30% are black, and 10% are Asian. Donnelly is federally recognized as a minority-serving and Latino-serving institution.

“One of the things I find, when you’re working with underserved students, can be that they unwittingly have low expectations,” said Msgr. Swetland. “We don’t want our students to suffer from that. We want them to have high expectations, because they’re very capable, given the opportunity to flourish.

“We make sure our programs are strong, and we do great work helping students catch up, because most students come here a little bit behind [academically]. We get them to the next level as they’re discerning their vocation, so they can be formed to do that vocation.”

But it’s not only on its campus that Donnelly strives to raise expectations.

Steve Jansen runs Donnelly’s satellite campus at Lansing Correctional Facility in Lansing, Kan., a 40-mile drive from the Donnelly campus. Since the program’s launch in 2001, more than 325 inmates have taken courses, and 14 have completed an associate’s degree. Nearly 50% of these students have been released from prison, and of those, only 23% returned (the overwhelming majority of them due to a technical violation of release conditions that resulted in a 30- to 90-day sentence). Compare that to the national statistic of 68% of inmates returning to prison after three years out.

Donnelly pays two-thirds of the inmates’ tuition through money it raises for the program; the students pay one-third of the tuition through minimum-wage jobs or family financial assistance, Jansen explained.

As Jansen pointed out, the inmates need this: “Just as much as they need physical fitness in prison, they will need mental and educational fitness when they’re out on the streets.” 

 

Giving Second Chances

Closer to home, Donnelly reaches out to high-school students who have fallen behind on their high-school credits — many of them as a result of issues such as homelessness and pregnancy. As one of the 43 institutions participating in the national Gateway to College program, Donnelly enrolls these students in a dual-credit program that allows them to complete their high-school education while simultaneously accruing college credits.

“Books are paid for, tuition is paid for, and they also receive a meal [each school day],” said Juan Rangel Jr., explaining that students attend Donnelly Monday through Friday on a schedule roughly the same as a standard high school class day. The director of Gateway to College at Donnelly added, “Half of them that we know will be graduating [with their high-school diploma] next year have indicated they want to stay here at Donnelly College. It’s pretty exciting to hear them say, ‘I want to finish my associate’s [degree] here.’”

As for the more traditional students at Donnelly, their experience is also anything but typical. Tuition to this private college is $7,000 a year — about half of what California residents pay to attend the public University of California. Reasonable as the tuition is, it would still put a Donnelly education out of reach for many. That’s why 94% of the 900 students receive financial aid — most of it in the form of institutional grants.

The vast majority of students commute to Donnelly; up to 42 students can live on campus in Donnelly’s residence halls, which offer each student his or her own bedroom and bathroom. Room and board averages around $7,000 per academic year.

Donnelly alumnus Miro Heyink, 25, was in the United States on a volunteer visa, living and volunteering at Kansas City’s Shalom Catholic Worker House, when he learned about Donnelly. A college career appealed to him; after falling into some bad habits with a rough crowd in Germany, he had tried to change direction and go to school — but going to a university was never an option because he didn’t qualify in his homeland.

The situation was very different with Donnelly, where he, like Alvarez, received the Bloch Scholarship.

“I just thought it was amazing,” says Heyink, who graduated from the University of Missouri at Kansas City with a bachelor’s degree in business administration after earning his associate’s degree at Donnelly (the associate’s degree is Donnelly’s most popular). “When someone does something kind for you, you want to pass it on,” added Heyink, who is now a consultant in health IT based in Kansas City, Mo.

And that, says Msgr. Swetland, sums up the mission of Donnelly College “We should radiate Jesus Christ to all those we serve.”

More specifically, he says, this downtown Kansas City institution is following Pope Francis’ exhortation to serve at the margins of society — something it has been doing for more than 60 years.

“If we’re listening to Pope Francis closely,” said Msgr. Swetland, “if Donnelly didn’t exist — we’d have to build her.” 

Elisabeth Deffner writes from Orange, California.