Odyssey Project offers doorway to higher education

By Matthew Schroyer/For CU-CitizenAccess — Tommy James can do almost anything when it comes to building a house. He can install plumbing, wire a home for electricity and set up walls. But something James can’t do at the moment is counsel children. That is, not without the right paperwork. 

“I have many skills, but no papers,” James, who’s been self-employed most of his life, said. “The way it is, you have to have papers. I have earned a lot of money, but messed up a lot.” 

When James, 53 learned of the Odyssey Project – a course granting college-level courses free of charge for people living near the poverty line – from friends and spiritual advisers at Restoration Urban Ministries, he took it as a chance to change his life. James helped Restoration Urban Ministries in the past with building maintenance and security. 

James lives on government disability and needs expensive, slow-acting insulin to stay healthy. He’s using samples given to him by his doctors, but when his supply runs out, he doesn’t know how he’ll afford the medicine, which costs $200 a month. 

“It’s by the grace of God that I’m here,” James said. “When I run out, I don’t know what I’m going to do.” 

His physician advised him to take up a job that requires no heavy lifting. And that’s OK by James, who would rather help children in his community. He said he’s “like a magnet” when it comes to children; he revels in their eagerness to learn, and how receptive they are to adults who dispense wisdom on life. He also sees the job as a moral responsibility. 

“I feel I have to do what I have to do to help the children,” James said. 

To do that, he needs college credits. 

Connecting with ‘their intellectual selves’

James is among 35 adult students admitted to the Odyssey Project for the 2010-2011 academic year. Students meet twice a week at the Douglass Branch of the Champaign Public Library, taking two core humanities classes each semester. Students who finish the academic year earn six credits that can transfer to an institution of higher education. 

The project aims to provide “high-quality humanities education to low-income adults,” meaning those who have an income of less than 150 percent of the federal poverty level, and enrolls 25 to 30 students annually. 

“Our goal is to expose people to the humanities and this intellectual heritage,” said Michael Burns, co-director and writing instructor for the Odyssey Project. Odyssey began in 2006, and Burns has been teaching classes since 2008. 

“We want them to start to get in touch with their intellectual selves.” 

In a class in early October, students discussed classical philosophy, such as Plato’s Republic. Students brought a variety of life lessons to class, framing Plato’s complex ideas on morality with real-life experiences. 

“I don’t like utopias where people don’t have religion,” James said in a discussion on perfect societies. “It’s not your job to tell people what they need. It’s your job to help their needs.” 

James has a GED and hasn’t stepped into a classroom like Odyssey since 1971. But following his wife’s death, he moved from Champaign to Racine, Wis., and took classes at Racine Technical College. 

His life was upended when his apartment was flooded in 2008. That left him with a $481 bill from the technical school that he couldn’t pay, and he was forced to drop out and return to Champaign. 

A May 2010 report on the Odyssey Project said the “fundamental notion underlying Odyssey is the capacity of humanities education to improve peoples’ lives, in particular to help lift them out of poverty and help them see beyond present life conditions and look for pathways to further post-secondary education.” 

Burns said Odyssey’s primary goal isn’t to improve a student’s employability or economic status, even though the program can have that effect. 

“The first thing is to just expose these students to this intellectual heritage and have them recognize that they can partake in that and contribute to it,” he said. 

It gave ‘me perspectives that I haven’t had before’

In 2005, Shamika Goddard was one year away from graduating at Stanford University, when a combination of financial and paperwork problems with the university forced her to take a leave to pay off debts. After a round of temporary, factory and phone-bank jobs, a friend in Champaign made her a deal: use the money she would have paid him for rent on student loans, and she could have a free room to stay in for six months. 

She took the offer and moved from her home in San Antonio, Texas, to Champaign in September 2008. One of the first places she visited was the Champaign library, where a librarian gave her a pamphlet on the Odyssey project. 

“First of all, it was free, so I was excited,” she said. “When I saw how the program was structured and what it offered in terms of having real professors and graduate students teaching courses, I really felt like this was a great opportunity in general, but also it got me thinking about going back to Stanford.” 

It wasn’t much longer until she was earning a steady income working at the local Cracker Barrel. By then, she had been out of Stanford for three years and had begun to wonder if she’d be able to make the transition from work back to the classroom. 

“Every year was the year that I was going to go back. That got me truly thinking about, well, when am I going to go back, and what is it going to look like when I do,” Goddard said. 

After an interview with Odyssey administrators, she was admitted to the class of 2010, and began working days and learning at night. 

“I took it extremely seriously, and it was just like applying to college for me,” she said. 

She completed the Odyssey course, and all her credits transferred to Stanford. Her fears about being unprepared for full-time academia vanished the first day of class. 

“In my intro to African American Literature, my professor said something about, is anyone familiar with the black migration that happened at the beginning of the 20th century. My hand shot up, because we had read Richard Wright’s ‘Black Boy’ in the Odyssey Project,” she said. 

“Not only did it give me a little more confidence going into the classroom, but it had given me perspectives that I haven’t had before.” 

Goddard returned to Stanford, and is on schedule to graduate in the summer of 2011 with a Bachelor of Science in African American studies. Then, she plans to pursue an advanced degree. 

Working to reduce the dropout rate

Goddard is a special case in the Odyssey Project’s history. While Goddard was in her 20s during the program, the average age for students from the years 2007 to 2009 was 38, and the makeup of the 2009-2010 class is similar. And unlike Goddard, who graduated with a sparkling record, many students don’t complete the program. 

During the 2008-2009 year, just six of the 25 students who enrolled in Odyssey graduated. Burns and other instructors responded by contacting absentees, asking about any problems that might have kept them from coming to the night courses, and when possible, working with them to come up with alternative schedules. 

The situation improved in 2009-2010, when 17 of the original 35 students, or 48 percent, graduated. However, that’s still short of 60 percent, which was the original goal in Odyssey’s funding proposal to the Illinois Humanities Council. 

Similar programs elsewhere had a 62 percent completion rate. 

The Odyssey’s evaluation noted that part of dropout issue might be the way the program is marketed to students. Odyssey advertised to prospective students that all that was needed was a GED and enough literacy “to read a newspaper.” Some students said that could have misled applicants about how challenging the writing aspect of the program would be. 

“Some people weren’t ready personally,” one student said. 

Some students cited outside responsibilities, including child care, changing work hours and physical illness, which might cause someone to quit attending. Whether someone had the help of family or friends during difficult times was a key factor in retention, Burns said. Whether those friends or family were also taking educational courses also made a difference. 

“Are [students] physiologically able to even make it to the classroom?” he said. “Students who did stay that year, in 2008 to 2009, had support structures in place. They had other family members, husbands or significant others, who had either been through academia or were currently enrolled in school.” 

There’s an issue that not only hurts retention, but affects students even if they do finish the program. And there’s the question of what a student can do after graduating Odyssey, after they’ve earned the college-level credits. 

Julio Rosario, a 2008-2009 student who didn’t have much difficulty completing the program, thought students might have given up because it didn’t directly lead to further education or a better income. 

“The classes are nice, but after that, what?” he said in an interview for the Odyssey report. 

Bridging the gap 

It’s an issue Odyssey administrators and instructors are trying to tackle this year, by providing resources to new graduates to continue their education – either at a university or through Parkland College’s adult reentry center. 

So far, Odyssey instructors have enlisted the help of an additional person to work with students on bridging the gap between the program and future education, and instructors have given vocational surveys and distributed literature about additional opportunities. But Odyssey teachers said they can’t spend too much time on a bridge program without shifting focus off their original goal. 

“It’s mostly just informational at this point, and we wanted them to stay focused on the primary objective which is the class itself,” Burns said. “When time and space permits, then they can start to consider what they do beyond the project.” 

What Burns would like to see in an Odyssey bridge program is preparation for prerequisite tests for Parkland and other community colleges, especially for math and science exams. Many community colleges require entrance exams to test an incoming student’s ability to handle college-level courses, and the outcome of those tests determine whether an incoming student can begin taking credit-level courses, or have to invest more time and money on introductory zero-credit courses.

 As a humanities program, Odyssey doesn’t have the resources to teach those additional courses. But Burns and others have contemplated an expanded Odyssey Project where college-level math and science are part of the curriculum. 

“Depending on where our findings come from and who issues the credits, for students who can successfully complete the program, that influences what courses we can offer,” Burns said. 

James said Odyssey is a challenging experience, something requiring a constant effort and persistence. 

“I have to get those credits. I need those credits,” he said. “I want to give up, but I can’t afford the credits.” 

In spite of the difficulties, he intends to keep attending, doing work, and eventually graduate. He encourages his peers to stick with the program and graduate with him, and not let all the work be for naught. 

“It’s just like building a house and letting someone light it on fire,” he said.