Looking for a strategy to boost college attainment rates?

Brian Coleman, who will offer the keynote address at this year’s Guiding the Way to Inclusion conference, adheres to a simple formula: awareness followed by action.

“I think about what are we doing as a district? What am I doing in my role as a counselor? What is my team doing? What is my school doing to really name the institutional barriers that exist?” Coleman said Tuesday during a Facebook Live conversation with NACAC’s Crystal Newby. “…Then (I think about) the interventions—what are we actually going to do about it.”

An eloquent and enthusiastic advocate for college counseling, Coleman is a school counselor and counseling department chair at Jones College Prep in Chicago. He was named the 2019 School Counselor of the Year and was also this year’s recipient of the Upstander Award from the Human Rights Campaign Foundation.

Coleman hopes GWI attendees leave the conference feeling inspired. Access to postsecondary education changes lives, he added.

“This work is so valuable,” Coleman said. “(We) can really create positive outcomes for our students and for our communities.”

Watch the full conversation and learn more about this year’s GWI conference. The three-day event kicks off in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on July 28.

Admitted writer/editor Mary Stegmeir welcomes additional comments and story ideas at mstegmeir@nacacnet.org.