(light music)
- [Announcer] Good morning.
This is Faith in Our Hometown.
Brought to you as
a community service
and sponsored by
Mercy Hospital Joplin.
And now, here's your
host, Father J Friedel.
(light music)
- Good morning everyone,
and welcome to
another Sunday morning
on Faith in Our Hometown.
If you're watching at 6:30,
I give you kudos for being awake
at this hour of the morning.
All right.
And if you're watching at 9:00,
well get ready for church, okay?
That's all I can say to you.
But welcome, it's good
to have you with us.
And we are talking again,
about issues that affect us
as part of the greater
Southern community.
A couple weeks ago on our show,
I had a guest from Southern,
and one of the things
we were talking about
is the whole reality of a first
generation college student,
which is what we have a lot
of at Missouri Southern.
So we're gonna talk about
what the University is,
and what our community
can do to help these
first generation college
students to succeed.
How can we help them
to make the difference
so they can improve their lives
and the lives of their
families into the future.
So my guest this morning is
gonna be Dr. Debbie Fort,
who's the director of
MSSU's Project Stay.
She's a staff member there,
so grab a cup of coffee,
come back and join us.
We're gonna be right back
after this Mercy Minute.
- The whole purpose of screening
is to catch people who have
a significant smoking history
early enough where we can
do something about it,
and potentially improve
the duration of life.
The minimum recommendation for
screening is 30 pack years.
So usually people who've
smoked more than 30 pack years
are the ones that
we're screening.
If we start screening yearly
with low dose CT scans,
we can reduce the risk of death
from lung cancer by 20% to 25%.
Stage 1, 2, and 3 cancers
potentially can be cured.
When it becomes stage 4,
the possibility of a
cure falls significantly.
(light music)
- Well again, thanks for
joining us this Sunday morning.
My guest this morning
is Dr. Debbie Fort.
Debbie is, well Debbie's
got a long pedigree,
so I'm gonna let her
tell you about that.
But she is, right now,
currently the director
of Project State at
Missouri Southern,
and a staff member there.
So Debbie, tell us a
little bit about yourself,
and how you eventually wandered
by that path to Southern.
- Okay.
Well, early on, I knew I
was going to be a teacher,
and so I spent 33 years
in area school districts,
25 in Joplin as a teacher,
and then a counselor,
and then a principal.
And the tornado happened,
and my school was destroyed.
And then I stayed through that
when we put the two
schools together.
There was one principals
job, and two principals,
so it was my time to retire.
So I retired for 50
days, and got bored.
And said, what can I do now?
And fortunately for me,
there was an opening
at Missouri Southern.
I applied for it and was
fortunate enough to get it.
Started out there as
hiring the tutors,
learned a lot in that position.
Did that for two
and a half years,
and now I've been
the director of
Project Stay for two years.
- God love ya.
Well your pedigree is very
similar to my mother's,
so I'm already very fond of you.
- Oh, thank you.
- Because she was
a 52 year educator,
counselor, principal,
all those things,
and I just, but she
taught for 52 years
in the Catholic
schools, so wow, yeah.
- She's much better than
me, I like a little variety.
- She was tough,
she was tough, yeah.
But at any rate, so
this Project Stay,
tell us about Project
Stay at Southern.
- Well Project Stay
is a Trio Program.
Trio Programs were initiated
in the 60s by President Johnson.
He said, "Everyone who
wants to go to school
"should have that opportunity,
"regardless of their income,
regardless of their color,
"regardless of their
position in life."
- Right.
- Trio came to Missouri
Southern in 1999
first through Upward Bound,
which is a Trio Program
for high school students,
which still is in existence,
and all of our area school
students can participate.
That program's
purpose is to prepare
high school students
for college.
- And it's probably the most,
that's probably
the most well-known
of the Trio Programs,
right, yeah.
- And I'd just like
to encourage families
to get your children enrolled.
Because it's never too early.
Now we also have a
talent search program
that starts at
middle school level,
so you can start planning
for your child's future
in sixth grade now,
in this area, so.
But anyway, Trio as we
know it in Project Stay
came in 2001, and so it's a
federally funded grant program,
and our whole goal
is to make sure
students have
resources they need
to take them to graduation
in transitioning
to their careers.
- Yeah.
And again, we've got
so many at Southern,
who they're the first
person in their family
that's ever gone to college.
- That's true.
- I love that, when I was
at Southeast Missouri State,
and now that I've
been at Southern,
because of the
areas that we serve,
in those respective
areas of the state,
there were a lot of people
who were first time,
you know, first in their family.
We always at graduations
ask them to stand
if they were the first
ones in their family
to graduate from college,
and I was always amazed
at how many that was.
Because I mean, I grew up,
my mom was an educator,
so it just wasn't,
I could do it,
I was good at academics,
so there was never any question
is was going to college,
and I was going, and of
course I went through
professional school
and all those things.
It just wasn't an issue.
That was what we
were expected to do.
- Right.
Well I was a first generation,
and so I vividly remember,
even though it's
been a long time ago,
what a culture shock it was,
how college was so
different from high school.
And to be in Trio, you have to
meet one of three qualifiers,
one of those is
first generation,
one of those is limited income,
and one of those is
documented disability.
And you only have to meet one.
But 80% of our campus meets
one of those qualifiers,
but we only get to serve
175 students in our grant.
So there is a great need,
just a portion of
which we're addressing.
- Wow.
And those are new
statistics for me,
having been at southern now
for 12 and a half years.
It's like I didn't
realize the numbers
were quite like that.
- Yes.
- So that's interesting.
So 80% of our students
could receive,
even though we can't,
because of the amount
of funds we receive,
we can't do all of them.
- That's correct.
- Wow.
- Sad.
We've tried to replicate
some of the services.
- Well, and you try to,
even though you only get
so much of that
pie, if you will,
obviously we still try to serve
all of our students
to make them succeed.
- A really great
example of that is,
since we are grant funded,
we have four criteria
that every year
we're scored up against,
and one of those is
fall to fall retention,
and this semester at Southern,
that is the goal for all
of the faculty and staff,
is fall to fall retention.
And so that's a great
example of taking
one of the things that
applies to our program,
and applying it to
the entire university.
- Right, and again, for
anybody who doesn't know,
that is one of the big things
that our state legislators
really will have issue with
if we don't keep our students,
because we're not running
a very good institution
if we can't keep our students,
and help them succeed
to graduation,
'cause it's almost
like taking their money
and shuffling them out the door.
Which nobody thinks
we're doing our job right
if that's all we do.
- And graduations
are the end goal,
but we have to have
measurements along the way,
of how are we doing
along the way.
And so fall to fall retention
is an excellent measure
of how we're doing
along the way.
- Yeah, which is great.
Because you know, I love
watching students succeed,
I love watching them.
They come in, but since
most of them aren't
watching this
morning, I'll say it,
they come in these
goofy little freshman,
and you know, and
are just wide eyed,
and don't have any clue
what they're up to.
And I just love
watching them grow up,
because so many times,
by the time they're
juniors and seniors,
they have just gone through
this phenomenal transformation
of taking some great
steps toward being
a real, bonafide grown-up.
- Yes.
- You know.
And I love watching that
transformation in the students.
I love dealing with them.
I still wish I was
in the classroom,
it's one of my great laments
is that I don't have time
to teach at Southern the
same way that at Southeast.
- I teach a freshman
orientation class
just for that purpose.
I just love getting
in with the freshman
and saying, why are you here?
And the answers are so varied
as to why they're there.
But one of the freshman
culture shocks is
as a high school senior,
you went to school 8:00 to 3:00,
then you maybe played
sports, or you did a job,
and you did homework
at 11:00 at night.
So their brains are
used to doing homework
at 11:00 at night.
It never occurs to them,
oh I could be doing homework
at 10:00 in the morning,
or at 3:00 in the afternoon,
because you're not in class
8:00 to 3:00 in college.
So there's lots of changes,
it's a big transition.
- Oh yeah, and getting
everybody to think differently.
Again, there are so many of them
that are non-traditional
students, you know,
and by that term,
I mean not 18-25,
but like 25-35, and
all of a sudden,
they're used to multitasking.
I used to always tell my
non-traditional students,
don't worry about a thing.
If you can apply yourself
the same way here in class
that you apply yourself to
all the other
aspects of your life,
you're really gonna be fine.
And most the time,
they just had to be,
we just had to prove it to them
that they could actually do it.
- Right, right.
Well actually, research shows
non-traditional students
generally do very well,
because they're
learned to multitask.
- They've learned to do it.
- Our average age at
Southern is about 24,
and in my program I have
students ages 18-69.
- Gotta love it.
- Just a wonderful variety.
- Yeah.
- wonderful.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And those 69 year olds can teach
our younger students
a whole lot.
I love it when those
friendships break out,
because again, they're teaching
each other how to succeed.
The younger ones are teaching
some of the older ones
some of the new tricks,
and the older ones are
teaching the younger ones
about how to make it happen.
- Right.
My students teach
me things every day.
Every day I learn something
new from my students.
- Yep.
And that is the route to go.
A couple weeks ago
when I was talking
to one of your colleagues
from the university,
we were talking
exactly about that,
is that we really
in so many ways
with our students,
it's kind of like
this partnership
that we don't stop to
think about very often.
And I think those of us that
are higher Ed are blessed,
because we really
get that opportunity
to form those partnerships.
And it's only when we
form those partnerships
that we figure out, well what
do we really need to learn,
and what do we really
need to approach,
and how do we help them fix it
so that they can be
about succeeding.
- Right, and empower
them to do it.
Maybe guide them, but empower
them to make the changes.
- Yeah.
- Definitely.
- So what's your actual job?
So what do you do?
- Okay, so my job
is, and I have three
wonderful teammates
in this journey,
we work with 175 students,
and our job is basically
to make sure they
graduate within six years.
Because we know four
year graduations
just sometimes is not realistic
if you're working, and you're
a parent, life happens.
- With all those
other challenges,
yes, it's very difficult.
And most of them
have full-time jobs
in addition to being
full-time students.
- And we know the
more hours they work,
the more difficult it is,
the more the GPA goes down, so.
But sometimes you
don't have that choice,
you have to work full-time.
I have a young man
who's probably 22,
who works full-time nights.
Comes to school,
does his classes,
goes home and sleeps
for a few hours,
goes back in to work.
I don't know how
he does it, but.
Anyway, we do a
variety of things.
We have kind of a
plethora of resources
that we provide for them,
that support them
on this journey
so that they do get
to go to graduation.
- So give us an example
of a couple of those.
- Okay.
If you were to ask the
students their favorite thing
that we provide, it would
probably be priority enrollment.
That means they get to
enroll before anyone else.
- Now that is a perk.
- That is a big perk.
If you're freshman,
and you have to wait
for three-fourths of
the school to enroll,
the pickings are
pretty slim by then.
So getting to enroll
at the same time
as the athletes,
the honor students,
the Yours to Lose medical
students, it's a big perk.
That's probably a big
one they would say.
A small one that
you wouldn't even
think is important
is free printing.
At 10 cents a page,
free printing adds up.
And so they can
come in our office,
we have three
student areas set up.
They can bring their flash
drive in, and they can print.
- So they can print
their papers for class.
- Print their papers,
their syllabi,
it's a big, big deal.
- Which, especially
if your printer
goes kaput the night before,
it saves you a long
circuitous route
of figuring out how
you're gonna get it
printed in time for class.
- Right, and ink is expensive.
And sometimes if they
have a printer problem,
they'll email me
their paper and say,
"Will you print this for me?
"I'll be in in the morning."
And of course, we're happy
to do that to help them.
- As long as they don't abuse
the privilege, I'm sure.
- Right, right.
- 'Cause part of the whole thing
with some of them is growing up.
So my guest this morning
is Dr. Debbie Fort,
the director of the MSSU Project
Stay at Missouri Southern.
So stick around, we're
gonna be right back
after a real quick break,
so don't go away, stick with us.
(light music)
- [Announcer] You're watching
Faith in Our Hometown,
on KSN TV, brought to you
as a community service
of Mercy Hospital Joplin.
(light music)
- Well again, thanks
for sticking with us
for another Sunday morning.
My guest, Dr. Debbie Fort,
a long time educator
in the area,
and currently the
director of Project Stay.
We were just talking about
some of the little things
that we do to help
our students succeed.
What would you do, for
some of our readers,
readers, some of our
listeners, viewers,
who would say, "Well that's
just coddling those kids."
Or those adults, whoever
they happen to be,
'cause obviously
you've got them,
as you said, from 18 to 69,
some of those are not kids.
But what would you
say to them that say,
"Well that's just coddling them.
"We need to help them
to snap out of it
"and make their own way."
- Well I think
that's what we do.
We provide some
services for them,
but it's up to them
whether they chose
to take advantage of
the services or not.
For example, we have
personal counseling available
at the university level
for all of our students,
but we have a personal
counselor in our office too.
It's up to the
students whether they
take advantage of that or not.
Some students never see her,
some may see her if
they have a break up,
or their pet dies and
they're 3000 miles from home,
some may see her
on a regular basis.
We do job shadowing.
Some wonderful
things have happened
because of job shadowing.
Students have
obtained positions,
they've made good
networking connections.
They've also changed majors.
We had one student who wanted
to be a respiratory therapist,
or I'm sorry, an
x-ray technician,
went to observe
that, and the patient
actually expired on the table.
It had never occurred
to her she might
lose a patient while
doing an x-ray.
She changed her major.
So it's really
important to job shadow.
But we don't make you go job
shadowing, it's your choice.
It's a service available.
It you wanna take
advantage of it, you can.
But if not, you don't have to.
But we know that for
first generation students,
it's harder for
them to graduate,
'cause no one has
gone before them.
No one tells them,
withdraw from a class
before you take an F.
No one tells them,
file your financial aid
by February 1st so you also
get your Missouri Access Grant.
They don't know those
things because no one
went before them to
tell them those things.
So that's what we do.
- Well, and there's a lot
of those little things that,
I've been working in
higher ed now for 25 years,
so I mean, you know what
people to send them to
at the university, if
you haven't done that,
it's a little late you guys,
you really need to get on that,
and push them to
do those things.
It's only if you've,
it's kinda like I say,
it's kinda like being a
missionary in a foreign land.
You know.
And instead of going
to a different country,
you go to this different
world that's called higher ed.
And when you go into
that different world,
it's like anything else,
it takes you a little while
to learn the language,
it takes you a little
while to learn the customs,
it takes you a
little while to learn
what the rules of life are,
and how you function in it.
And in some ways,
what the Trio program
is designed to do
is to help people
even from middle
school, or high school.
And once they get there,
to navigate that new land,
and to speak that new language,
and to make the
right translations.
Again, 'cause we're just
trying to help people succeed.
Sometimes you get
pinched by rules
that you never know exist,
and you guys are just there
to help make that a
little bit easier.
- Correct.
We also do, we take them
on trips in the area,
because a lot of times,
students never leave Joplin.
Which I know is surprising
to us, but not unusual.
And so we try to
expose them to art,
like we went to see
Mamma Mia in Kansas City.
But we're also going to go
to the Bookhouse Cinema,
because we want to
promote a lot of things.
We also, I'm also a
strong believer in,
to whom much is given,
much is required,
so we do community service.
This year, or this semester,
we're doing Joplin
Humane Society,
we're doing Fostering Hope,
and we're doing a food drive
for the MSSU Food Co-op,
calling it Love Thy Neighbor,
and we are challenging all
the different departments
at Missouri Southern for
the entire month of February
to get health and beauty aids,
and food items
for our new co-op.
- And so to do some
of those things,
again, this requires, I
would say it's a depth touch
of just helping
people to grow up,
and to take a new look at,
and a new role in
their grown up lives.
- To get them to look
outside of themselves to say,
what's my role in
this community?
Because we're all
required to give back.
- Yeah.
Yeah.
What's your favorite
story of a student
that you were worried
about that suddenly,
I mean, changing the
names, of course,
of the innocent and/or guilty,
but what would your
favorite story be
of someone that you just
knew that's the reason
why you were there
doing that job?
- Yeah.
I have a lot, but to go back
to the 79 year old woman
in our program entered
a non-traditional field.
And I'm just so proud
of her that at her age,
she decided to come back
to school and get a degree
in CIS, which is Computer
Information Systems,
which she's similar to my age,
and we didn't have
that opportunity.
We could be teachers,
or we could be nurses,
or we could be moms
when I was young.
And so I'm very,
very proud of her.
We have Hispanic
mom that language
was somewhat of a barrier.
She's in a healthcare
profession,
and there's lots of
vocabulary, as you know.
So just being able to
connect her to people
to help her to understand that.
And she will graduate with
her nursing degree, so.
Just helping them.
- And she's going
to be so employable.
- So employable.
- Oh yeah, because,
all of our institutions
and doctor's offices
and everything
need to be able to deal
with that part of the area.
And some of our
elderly Hispanic people
are still struggling with
some of the language,
so that ought to
be a great skill.
- She's going to be
a wonderful nurse
and make a big difference.
- Yeah.
- Yes.
- That's a great
story of success.
And I will say, I mean again,
sometimes working near
higher ed, and in it,
you almost get, you
almost get to where
you take some of those stories
of success for granted,
because it's just
what we do every day.
- Right.
- You know?
- Every once in a while
you get a reminder
that you're making a difference
in the lives of people.
You're maybe advocating
for those who can't
speak for themselves
for the moment.
- Yep.
I love it when they
come back and their
own kids are getting
ready to go to college,
and they'll quote
me, and they'll say,
"Well you taught me that."
And I'll be like, I did?
Wow, good for me.
Good for me.
- Yes.
A really fun thing is that
I have some of my students
that were my students at
Irving when I was a principal,
are now in my program.
- You gotta love that.
- I love it.
And I have three or four
parent/child in my program,
so parents who have
come back to learn,
and they're just graduated
high school students,
I have about four
mother/daughters,
or father/sons, or
father/daughters in my program.
And that's just really fun
to get the different
perspectives.
- Right, like I say,
I'm just now coming
into that second college thing.
I of course have had
kids in my grade school,
but now they're starting
to come back into college,
and I'm like, oh my gosh,
your child is
going into college,
and I'm, (groans).
- When I got the
grandchildren of the children,
I started at Joplin High School,
I started, typically,
18 year olds.
But when I got the
grandchildren at Irving
I was like, I think it's time.
(laughing)
Three generations.
- So in terms of these first
generation college students,
are they, I mean across
the board are they
from a larger part of the area?
- It's across the board.
We have every representation
culturally, age wise,
just a good variety of people.
We have some first
time students,
we have some honor students,
we have some athletes,
we have some single moms,
we have some single dads.
It's just a, grandmothers,
we have just a variety
of people in the program,
and it's a great joy
every day to go to work.
- Well that's good.
- Yes.
- Yeah.
You look like you're very
happy at what you do.
I am, I'm very blessed.
- Yeah.
And so to have a
little bit of change
in your career along the way,
and now you're performing
at the college level,
which is fun.
Yeah.
I've often said, I love the
little kids, they're fun,
but I just gotta say, I love
teaching at the college level.
Because their brains
are just zipping
at such an entertaining level.
And they can really ask
the tough questions.
And it just makes it more fun.
- The conversations are great.
- Oh my gosh.
I mean, you know,
I don't mind going
to reading to the
kindergarteners,
or singing, 'cause I have
a lot of little kids too.
But I love teaching
the college students,
because it's just
such a challenge.
'Cause they don't take
anything for granted.
- Oh no.
- You're just like
- They challenge everything.
- If you try to boss
them around, they're like
wait a minute,
where's your proof?
Why don't we talk about
this, and you're like.
- Right. That's true.
- Which is kinda fun.
I personally enjoy it.
Now, I know some of my
kindergarten teachers
that would say, oh Lord,
I couldn't, just no.
Yeah, so we've all
got to find our niche.
- Kindergarten teachers are
the hardest working teachers.
(chuckles)
- I tell you what, they
are, they are something.
They're a blessing.
- Definitely.
- But I say, give
me the college ones,
and they'll usually
look at me and go,
no, no, no, you can
have the college ones.
Which is good there. So.
In terms of that,
what are you...
It's been a while since I
had somebody who's focused
on all these different
aspects and levels of education.
- Mmm-hmm.
- But, say a little bit
about life long learning.
- Okay.
- 'Cause I really
just think that's a,
it's one of my
big drums to bang,
and I just haven't had a
chance to bang it for a while.
- Absolutely.
- So say a little bit
about life time learning.
- I'm a firm believer
that you should learn
something new.
If you go to bed at night and
you've not learned
anything new that day
you've kind of wasted that day.
And so, I think
that learning occurs
every single day of your life
and we can learn from everybody,
every single day.
Sundays, I learn from my pastor.
During the week, gosh,
today I had my five year old
grandson, and I
learned from him.
And so, if we just open
our minds to other people,
we can learn
something new everyday
that makes us a better person
so we can make the
world a better place.
- Yeah.
- Love life long learning.
- Yeah, and I'm the same way.
You stop and you think,
you spend all these years
in school and what
you really learn,
I think, if you,
if you do it right,
and you have any
humility at all,
is by the time you get finished,
you realize, you really
realize what you don't know.
- Absolutely.
- You know, there's
so many more things
out there, so many
more things to capture
your imagination
or just you know,
if I could go back now,
when I do my retirement,
I hope I get to retire
near a university
so that I can do
one of those things
where you just take classes
- [Both] For free!
- Just for fun.
- Yes
- You know, some of the
stuff that I had interest in
and didn't get a chance to
do the first time around
because I was too busy
getting through it
and doing my thing.
And now..
- And we have so many wonderful
offerings at Southern,
there's so many varied
classes to take,
that every semester I
can take something new
and learn something new.
- Yeah. Which is great.
My guest this morning
is Dr. Debbie Fort
who's on the staff
at Missouri Southern.
She's the director of
Project Stay, which is one
Trio programs.
And the Trio programs are
definitely designed to help
people to get into
and to succeed
in graduating college.
So, we're going to be right back
after this Mercy Minute.
Don't go away, we'll
be back to wrap up.
- The dreaded tagged photo.
I married the love
of my life in October
and when I got home
that night, I saw this.
Frankly, this is every obese
person's worst nightmare.
You have no control, none
over what other people post.
And up until that day,
I'd been very careful
about how I presented
myself on social media.
In fact, I generally only
posted photos like this.
What's sad is that I haven't
always been like this.
Confession? I've been a yo-yo
dieter for roughly ten years.
When I met this amazing
guy three years ago,
he didn't care how
much I weighed,
but he did care about my health.
A month after our wedding,
I talked to my doctor
and my journey began.
Here's an honest and usually
pretty entertaining look
at how I got to bariatric
surgery and beyond.
Buckle up, check out my blog,
Confessions of a yo-yo dieter.
- Well, thanks again for
joining us for another
Sunday morning for
Faith in our Hometown.
My guest this morning,
Dr. Debbie Fort,
who is the director
of Project Stay,
because one of the
things we're all about
at Missouri Southern,
and I would hope for
at all of our
educational institutions,
is that we want to keep
them there long enough
for them to succeed.
Now, we don't want to keep them,
we don't want them to stay
beyond their graduation,
but we do want
them to finish up,
and we do want them to graduate,
because that's how
our students succeed
is by going through
those different levels
of their educational progress
and for those who are
cut out for college
and have those dreams,
it's about doing something
that they need a
college education for,
that's what we're there for.
So, what we'd like to do
is, we like to get them in
and we like to
help them succeed.
Sometimes that's
with a little extra
TLC along the edges,
sometimes it's special
attention to those
who are the first
ones in their families
to ever graduate from college
or even attend college.
We do whatever we need to
do in order to help them
to succeed and to be on
about the next stage in life.
Isn't that what we all
want for each other?
For us to fulfill and
succeed at some of our dreams
here in the greater Joplin area?
So, if you know somebody who
needs a little bit of support
as they head toward that dream,
get in touch.
Think about Upward Bound.
Think about Project Headstart.
Think about all those things
that we can give all of our
students in our area, a
little bit of a leg up,
especially if they need it.
So, again we're grateful
that you spent some of your
Sunday morning with us
in Faith in our Hometown.
Let's continue to take
care of each other.
God bless. Enjoy the
rest of your Sunday.
(guitar music)
- [Announcer]
Thanks for watching.
Faith in our Hometown can
be seen Sunday mornings
at six thirty and
nine am on KSN.
Brought to you as a
community service and
sponsored by Mercy
Hospital, Joplin.
(guitar music)
