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NWIC’s big athletics fundraiser tees off soon

Golfers will have a chance to win Seattle Seahawks tickets with sideline passes

Last year’s Northwest Indian College Big Drive for Education Golf Scramble garnered $19,000 and this year’s goal is to raise $25,000. Photo courtesy of NWIC

Source: NWIC

On Friday September 6, Northwest Indian College (NWIC) Foundation will host the 11^th Annual Big Drive for Education Golf Scramble, the college’s biggest annual athletics fundraiser that supports student athletes and athletic programs.

The scramble will begin with a 1 p.m. shotgun start, in which all golfers tee off at different holes at the same time. The event will take place at the Sudden Valley Golf & Country Club on Lake Whatcom in Bellingham.

Last year’s event garnered more than $19,000 and this year’s goal is to raise $25,000. The Golf Scramble provides financial resources, such as athletic scholarships, for NWIC student athletes, and supports the development of the college’s health and fitness programs.

NWIC sports include: women’s volleyball, men’s basketball, women’s basketball, co-ed softball, cross country, canoeing, tennis, and golf.

Registration rates are $800 for teams of four golfers or $200 for individual registrants who would like to be placed on teams. Costs include registration, carts, green fees, range balls, dinner and raffle tickets.

This year’s Golf Scramble will include a silent auction and a raffle with prizes that include Seattle Seahawks tickets with sideline passes. Players will also have an opportunity to win the “hole-in-one” car.

Winning teams will receive the President’s cup trophy and NWIC Golf Scramble jackets. There will be a jackets awarded to the top women’s team as well as medals to the winners of the side games.

Sponsorship opportunities for this year’s Golf Scramble are:

Premiere: $10,000

Reserved table and seating for eight at golf awards banquet
Name listing and logo in promotional literature
Golf registration for two teams of four (eight golfers)
Signage with logo at the event
Honorable mention throughout the event

Soaring Eagle: $5,000

Reserved table and seating for eight at golf awards banquet
Name listing and logo in promotional literature
Golf registration for two teams of four (eight golfers)
Signage with logo at the event
Honorable mention throughout the event

Hawk: $2,500

Reserved table and seating for four at golf awards banquet
Name listing in promotional literature
Golf registration for one team (four golfers)
Signage at the event
Honorable mention throughout the event

Birdie: $1,250

Reserved table and seating for eight at golf awards banquet
Name listing and in promotional literature
Golf registration for on team (four golfers)
Signage at the event
Honorable mention throughout the event

Tee Sponsors

$500: Name listed in promotional materials, signage at tee and green
$250: Signage at tee and green
$150: Signage at tee OR green

For sponsorship and registration information or for questions, email mariahd@nwic.edu or call (360)392-4217.

GED clock is ticking

Mark Mulligan / The HeraldVanessa Miller, 22, questions instructor Jennifer Jennings during her GED class Thursday at Everett Community College. — Mark Mulligan / The Herald
Vanessa Miller, 22, questions instructor Jennifer Jennings during her GED class Thursday at Everett Community College.

Erc Stevick, The Herald

EVERETT — It feels like a high-stakes game of Chutes and Ladders for thousands of people trying to improve their lives by earning a GED.

Their academic climb could slide into nothingness at the end of the year.

The five-subject national exam is getting an overhaul Jan. 1.

That gives less than six months for those hoping to pass the old version.

If they don’t pass each and every subject between now and then, they must start from scratch with a new set of exams that are expected to be harder.

There is urgency but not panic these days on the second floor of Everett Community College’s Baker Hall, where two rooms of mainly 20-somethings are trying to make up for lost time and missed opportunity.

One morning last week, EvCC instructor Jennifer Jennings led her students through a multi-step math problem that involved credit cards, percentages and interest rates. For most of the students, math is their biggest obstacle between now and the new year deadline.

Jennings remembers the last time the GED was changed in 2001 and the long lines at the college’s testing center.

“It was crazy,” she said.

The General Education Development certificate was started in 1942 to allow returning World War II GIs to continue their education when they came home. It was designed to show that they had earned basic academic skills many consider the equivalent of a high school diploma. People not in the military were able to start taking the GED in 1947.

Roughly 20 million people have earned GEDs over the years.

With the change in exams approaching, test preparation programs, such as ones at Everett Community College, are bracing for heavy enrollment through the fall.

Lanora Toth, 21, attended five high schools, but didn’t graduate. Life has been a struggle for the young mother who said she once held a cardboard sign at a street corner. It read, “Cold, homeless and hungry.”

Her goal in pursuing her GED is simple: to provide a better home and set an example for her young child.

Classmate Vanessa Miller nodded as Toth spoke.

“I want to give my 1-year-old the life I never had,” she said.

Skyy Sepulveda dropped out of Mountlake Terrace High School in her junior year when she fell hopelessly behind on credits. She took a GED class a year ago and didn’t finish. It stung a bit to see her classmates earn their certificates and that has motivated her this time around.

She said she is studying more than ever.

“It’s really nerve-wracking to get everything done,” she said.

Since 2009, more than 3,900 people have gone through EvCC’s GED programs and taken all or portions of the exam. More than 2,900 have passed.

Over the last four years alone, that leaves 1,016 others who must reach the finish line between now and Jan. 1 or start anew. Nationwide, there are about 1 million people whose scores could expire Jan. 1 under the new testing program.

“We want people to know that these changes are really happening and they are happening soon and to get all their ducks in a row,” said Katie Jensen, EvCC’s dean of basic and developmental education.

College officials are reaching out through fliers, letters, word of mouth and mention on the reader board at the college’s Broadway entrance.

These days, GED testing is done by appointment and Jensen warns that prospective exam takers should not procrastinate getting ready.

“I think our testing times are going to fill up,” she said.

Instead of five sections, the new GED test will be reconfigured into four: reasoning through language arts, mathematical reasoning, science and social studies. The existing stand-alone essay section will be folded into writing assessments within the language arts and social studies sections, It also will all be done on the computer.

Jessica Cleveland, 25, is a mother of three who quit school after the eighth grade. She hopes she never has to see the new GED exams.

“It scares me,” she said. “I want to be done by then.”

Cleveland has worked in coffee stands and at a pizza restaurant, but believes she needs a GED to get a foot in the door for better-paying opportunities.

“I want an education so my kids have a good role model to look up to, so they don’t drop out of high school and can see where I went wrong,” she said.

Devona Fields, 31, is married and has three children.

As they get older, she hopes to find a job to help with family expenses and figures a GED could be a big help.

Fields has passed two of the five GED exams.

Her husband, Wilson Fields, recently earned his GED and is taking pre-college math to prepare for college courses.

Wilson Fields tries to encourage Devona with each subject she passes.

Devona resists patting herself on the back.

She still must get through the math test, which gives her anxiety.

“I will cheer and celebrate when I have all the scores back,” she said.

Eric Stevick: 425-339-3446; heraldnet.com.

About the GED

To learn more about GED preparation help at Everett Community College, call 425-388-9291 or email www.everettcc.edu/ged.

For opportunities at Edmonds Community College, call 425-670-1593 or email devediv@edcc.edu.

Student Loan Rate Increase Impacts Neediest Native Students Most

Rob Capriccioso, Indian Country Today Media Network

With the U.S. Congress’ failure to curb vastly increasing student loan rates, Native American college students are on par to become some of the greatest harmed in the nation.

Rates on new federal subsidized student loans doubled from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent July 1 after Republicans blocked legislation that would have maintained lower student loan interest rates. That means it will take much longer for students to pay back loans after graduation, and they will be saddled with debt for much longer.

Carrie Billy, president of the American Indian Higher Education Consortium, says that this situation is especially dangerous for Native American students, since for many taking out federal student loans is unavoidable—especially for those who choose to attend public or private universities or who go on to graduate school after attending tribal colleges or universities, many of which do not offer advanced degrees.

“For these American Indian students—who have some of the lowest family income rates in the country and who will return to their reservation communities to work after graduation—doubling the interest rate on their loans could mean the end of their education,” Billy says. “They simply will not continue. They cannot afford to carry such a heavy financial burden.”

Billy also makes the case that high interest rate loans not only harm students and their families, they also hurt the economic progress of tribal nations and the country as a whole. “[E]very student we lose is one less student contributing to the rebuilding of our tribal economies and contributing to America’s future workforce,” she says.

Quinton Roman Nose, executive director of the Tribal Education Departments National Assembly, predicts that costlier student loans will cause major problems for Indian college students.

“The student loan situation is even more detrimental to Native American students, especially if the student quits school and then defaults,” Roman Nose says. “They are put in a Catch 22 situation where they probably won’t be able to get a job that’s going to give them a chance to earn a living and make their student loan payments.”

On top of this, Roman Nose says that some colleges are not helping Native American students become aware of the long term effects of taking out student loans.

“With the loan interest rates subject to rise for all students, it creates a larger burden for our Native American students,” he warns, saying that financial education is especially important for such students.

Attempts to block the rate increase have currently stalled in the U.S. Senate, with S.1238, the Keep Student Loans Affordable Act of 2013, failing by a procedural vote of 51 to 49 on July 10. The bill needed to get 60 votes to proceed to debate. It would have kept the interest rate on federal subsidized Stafford student loans at 3.4 percent for an additional year.

Democrats have vowed to continue the effort to maintain lower rates. Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) is one who has been working to prevent the increases through reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. “The Higher Education Act, the appropriate vehicle to change the way interest rates are calculated, doesn’t expire until the end of this year,” Heinrich said in a statement. “Passing a year extension gives Congress the time to consider all the proposals in the context of containing college costs, not just loan rates.”

After voting for the failed Keep Student Loans Affordable Act, a bill he cosponsored, Heinrich added, “Earning a college degree shouldn’t be a luxury, but something that every American family can afford… We need to give students a fair shot at succeeding in a tough economy, not saddle them with debt.”

Republicans are currently supporting a proposal that would reset interest rates each year, even as they rise–“a move that could cause student loan rates to more than double over the next 10 years, burdening students and families with more debt,” Heinrich said.

Billy, meanwhile, says that AIHEC and other Native education groups are currently working with national partners, led by the American Council on Education, to urge Congress to take action immediately helping to ensure that all Americans, including American Indians, have access to high-quality and affordable higher education.

“A key tool in making postsecondary education accessible and successful is affordable student loans,” Billy says.