{"id":4022,"date":"2015-10-07T13:53:18","date_gmt":"2015-10-07T17:53:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/2016\/02\/03\/bridging-the-gap\/"},"modified":"2024-07-24T15:47:08","modified_gmt":"2024-07-24T19:47:08","slug":"bridging-the-gap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/bridging-the-gap\/","title":{"rendered":"Bridging the gap"},"content":{"rendered":"

The blunt truth is, after her parents divorced when she was 10 Furman wouldn\u2019t have been on many people\u2019s list of potential futures for Casey Crisp \u201909. It was on the only one that mattered, however.\"1006257_642801849082966_397026073_n\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cMy dad called Furman\u2019s main phone number and said I\u2019d love to talk to someone about something my daughter could get involved with this summer to be around some good people,\u201d Crisp said. \u201cHe said, I don\u2019t really know what I\u2019m asking for but . . . I feel like she needs something that I can\u2019t really provide.\u201d<\/p>\n

Judith Chandler, Ph.d., then the director of Furman\u2019s Bridges to a Brighter Future program, quickly got Crisp involved with the school\u2019s scopes youth program<\/a>. Maybe it didn\u2019t save her life. Then again, maybe it did.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy mom still does and did at the time really struggle with drug addiction and alcoholism. It was really bad growing up. I have a very limited relationship with her even now,\u201d Crisp said. \u201cWe were very poor. I remember there were weeks where we only ate beans, where we didn\u2019t have enough gas to get to school.\u201d<\/p>\n

Crisp clung to the structure the Scopes camps offered, going back to campus every year and becoming a counselor for younger campers. Still, actually attending Furman\u2014or any other college\u2014remained little more than a fantasy when she entered high school.<\/p>\n

Chandler knew by that point, however, that Crisp couldn\u2019t have been a more perfect candidate for Bridges to a Brighter Future if she\u2019d been created in a lab. Established in 1997 thanks to the vision and founding endowment of Mamie Jolley Bruce<\/a>, Bridges is a seven-year program designed to help low-income and first-generation students in the Greenville area \u201cwhose potential outdistances their circumstances\u201d earn college degrees from any school of their choosing.<\/p>\n

Candidates are nominated by their guidance counselors, and once Crisp was selected at the end of the ninth grade she joined her classmates in attending four-week summer residential programs at Furman for three years and participating in a year-round monthly academic support program called Bridges Saturday College. Crisp excelled and was eventually admitted to the place she\u2019d come to see as a second home.<\/p>\n

\u201c(Furman) was definitely where I always wanted to go. I grew up as a kid going there to feed the ducks,\u201d Crisp said, and she credits Bridges with making her believe it could be a reality. \u201cIt was never something I felt like wasn\u2019t going to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

A \u201chodgepodge\u201d of loans and financial aid, including a Bridges teacher who sometimes bought her books, allowed Crisp to pay the bills and earn a history degree with a secondary-education certification. She also soaked up everything else Furman offers, including twice being elected Chi Omega president, and when she graduated her 2009 senior class gift was $43,650 to support a scholarship for a Bridges student.<\/p>\n

\u201cI found a lot of value outside of the classroom, maybe too much,\u201d she said with a laugh. \u201cI always joke that\u00a0I really wish I would have spent as much time focused on my classes as I did the extracurriculars, but I just really wanted to take advantage of everything that I could there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not that things were always fun. The final component of Bridges is \u201cCrossing the Bridge,\u201d which provides academic and emotional support to students during their time in college in the form of personal visits, texts, and phone calls. Crisp needed every bit of it once she entered a world that was foreign in many ways while simultaneously trying to maintain relationships with family members who didn\u2019t support and sometimes resented her attempts to change her life.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard to come somewhere like Furman and have all of that stuff as part of your background,\u201d Crisp said. \u201cMy junior and senior year I wouldn\u2019t come home for Christmas break because our house was just so bad and there was no money and there was no telling if the power was going to be on or if I was going to have a place to sleep, those kinds of things . . . Parents weekend, I remember people would come to town and take (my classmates) to these really amazing dinners. Parents weekend was really hard for me, because it was like, I don\u2019t have this.\u201d<\/p>\n

What she did have, however, were others in Bridges.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Bridges we talk a lot about how do you own your story and share that in a way that leaves you feeling empowered versus feeling resentful, because it\u2019s really easy to fall into that trap,\u201d Crisp said. \u201cI always wanted to forget who I was and not be the kid of drug-addicted parents. I didn\u2019t want that to be my life anymore. A big benefit of Bridges was having other people who understood what you were going through.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the goal, according to Tobi Kinsell, who headed Bridges for 11 years.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a mistake we make by assuming that once you get to college everything\u2019s going to be OK, because actually those challenges that students have . . . of poverty and low educational attainment come with them,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The circumstances that make teenagers eligible for Bridges are unimaginable to most people, but even with assistance current director Pam Davis<\/a> says it\u2019s ultimately the kids who do the heavy lifting.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Bridges alumna Willie Gosnell with Casey Crisp at Travelers Rest High School graduation<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re looking for that student who we feel like Bridges is going to work for,\u201d she said. \u201cWe see that they\u2019re going to be able to dig deep and persevere and meet us halfway. I think it\u2019s just that combination of the program and all the support that Bridges provides but also that student who is going to be able to shine.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not a coincidence Kinsell uses similar words to describe her one-time prot\u00e9g\u00e9 and longtime friend.<\/p>\n

\u201cCasey just has a tremendously bright personality . . . She\u2019s got a lot of energy and a light in her, and that definitely helps,\u201d Kinsell said. \u201cWhat separates Casey from other students like her is her grit and determination.\u201d<\/p>\n

After graduation, Crisp taught high school for a couple of years and took a job at Bridges before deciding to pursue a Masters in Higher Education Administration at George Washington University. She says she misses Bridges \u201ca lot,\u201d but that feeling made her realize she wants to help others facing the same seemingly insurmountable hurdles that blocked her way.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know that I knew this when I was in college, but I would say that my passion area has definitely become college access,\u201d she said. \u201cI know that my heart is with working with students who need support. In my own life I don\u2019t know how I would have made it without those people along the way. They came in many different forms and at many different times, but I definitely didn\u2019t go that path alone.\u201d<\/p>\n

And as hard as Crisp has worked to escape her past, she\u2019ll never forget or regret it. She has yet to miss a Furman Homecoming, and she will always be thankful for the one person who was wise enough to know what he didn\u2019t know and never stopped trying to help\u2014her father, Al, who passed away recently.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe really cared and wanted me to do better than him but just really didn\u2019t know how to go about that. That really defined my family support or lack thereof,\u201d Crisp said. \u201cBut I know me graduating from college was the most proud I think he could ever have been. I was really lucky to have him. He was always a good dad.\u201d<\/p>\n

For more on Bridges to a Brighter Future, click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The blunt truth is, after her parents divorced when she was 10 Furman wouldn\u2019t have been on many people\u2019s list of potential futures for Casey Crisp \u201909. It was on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":15300,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-alumni-profiles"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4022"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4022\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33306,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4022\/revisions\/33306"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}