TERI College Access and the College Info Centers

“The most effective strategy I have is to understand the neighborhood and the people in it, and cater to their needs.  What works in one center doesn’t necessarily work in another, so I’ve had to become an honorary resident of the neighborhoods I work in to fully understand the quirks and characteristics in order to really serve them. I’m still working on it!”

–Jodi DiGregorio, ASA Education Advisor at TERI in Hyde Park and East Boston, Massachusetts

ASA helped found The Education Resources Institute (TERI) in 1985 and has remained actively involved with its College Access Centers ever since. At the Centers, based in public libraries in Massachusetts’ Metro-Boston/Worcester area, facilitators give students and families individualized counseling to help them find sources of aid, create customized plans to pay for college, fill out forms like the FAFSA (see Terms to Know at right), and understand how college can translate into a career.

For Education Advisors like Jodi DiGregorio, teaching families about financial aid means more than just sitting at a desk. She takes ASA’s message of fiscal responsibility and early planning to high schools, college fairs, and community events, seeking out the students and parents who need help with the aid process but don’t know where to get it—or those who haven’t even begun to face the reality of paying for college. She knows that, at the TERI College Access Centers, these families will find all the resources they need to plan wisely for a successful financial future.

“So much of my outreach effort has been to students and parents regarding how financial aid works and what kinds of sacrifices families might need to undertake in order to make college affordable,” DiGregorio says. To bring the far-off idea of college into the everyday lives of the families she works with, DiGregorio has been known to take students to tour area colleges for a dose of inspiration. She’s also working to organize a local college fair near the Centers she supports.

According to DiGregorio, tactics like the Centers’ one-on-one budget lessons and her efforts to expose students to real college life are both “essentially trying to get families to change the way they think about higher education” and how to pay for it.

The most important thing, she says, is “we at the College Access Centers are a real resource for borrowers, even if they don’t live in the Boston area. I have people e-mail me, send me letters, and call me—just because it’s nice to go through the student loan process with a live person.”

ASA is proud to sponsor the vital work of Jodi DiGregorio and the other ASA Education Advisors at TERI College Access Centers.