Education gap bolsters recruits

JESSICA HUANG
news@columbiamissourian.com

It took a few minutes to find Gubitz. The lunchtime rush had filled the tables at Starbucks in MU’s Memorial Union, and the room was thick with men in suits. Gubitz, then TFA’s senior recruitment director for MU, huddled among them, working on his laptop. A pile of folders was stacked on his left, a pile of resumes on his right. His handshake was firm and backed up with bright eyes and a big grin.

He launched into his recruitment pitch — the one he used on about 15 prospective corps members each day this past spring.

“Do you know about the achievement gap?” he asked.

Then came the statistics: A disparity exists between high-income and low-income schools. Take St. Louis, for example. Kids educated within the ZIP code 63101 have a 50 percent chance of graduating from high school, and if they do, they’ll most likely read like an eighth-grader. Ten minutes away, he said, in ZIP code 63001, 80 percent of students graduate from high school.

“Our goal is to send talented people into these low-income communities and catch kids up,” he said. “And that’s where you would come in. Is that something you’d be interested in?”

To bolster its recruitment efforts locally, TFA hired four MU students to make classroom announcements, tack fliers on walls and search Web sites, sororities, fraternities and campus publications for students who might make a good fit. Then, the campus recruiters send a list of those students to regional recruiters or suggest a standout student apply directly. At the same time, back at TFA headquarters in New York, a staff member researches MU’s top students. Once a list is compiled, personalized e-mails are sent to the potential recruits that invite them to meet with Gubitz at the Memorial Union Starbucks.

Gubitz evaluates recruits in several ways. On applications, he looks for achievement, which can be demonstrated through academics, extracurricular activities or work. He seeks people who are leaders, people who persevere, people he can count on to go into a classroom and command respect, people he can count on never to back down from a challenge.

TFA candidates undergo rigorous screening that ivolves a written application, multiple phone interviews and, for those who make the cut, an all-day, in-person interview. The criteria: independence, tenacity and the drive to succeed.

MU has provided 132 corps members to TFA since 1997, 30 of whom started teaching last September. This past fall, applications from MU were up 200 percent, Gubitz said.