By Jon Marcus / The Hechinger Report
When she became the first person in her family to graduate from college, Virginia Hughes invited the three people she credited most with getting her to that milestone: her mother, her grandmother and a retired hospital administrator named Laura Harrill.
Even though she’d been a perfect stranger until Hughes’s senior year in high school, Harrill helped her navigate the shoals of paperwork, financial issues and personal dramas that prevent many students from ever getting into, let alone completing, college. “I consider her an extension of my family,” said Hughes, of Maryville, Tenn., who graduated from Pellissippi State Community College in Knoxville and is now pursuing a bachelor’s degree in anthropology at the University of Tennessee. “Even if I had a bad day and just needed somebody to talk to, I knew she’d be there.”
Harrill is one of 2,785 volunteer coaches in 26 Tennessee counties who mentor students like Hughes in a privately funded, “it-takes-a-village”-style community approach aimed at guiding more high school graduates toward college and helping them earn degrees. tnAchieves, which also offers scholarships as a last resort, is among a small but growing number of similar programs underwritten by private donations, chambers of commerce, foundations, the federal government, and a handful of colleges and universities where the word “coach” no longer only refers only to someone who’s in charge of the football team.