New program helps former Mizzou students graduate

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- Growing up in Southern Illinois, Karen Ratay Green had her heart set on attending the University of Missouri.

Her mother thought otherwise. So after finishing high school in 1980, Green embarked on a journey that included a semester of nursing school, junior college in South Carolina, six years of active military duty, one year working on a cruise ship, marriage, three children and then divorce.

She finally made it to Columbia in 1999, but her hopes for a degree from Missouri were nearly dashed when her then-toddler contracted a staph infection and chicken pox. Green was forced to drop two courses, and then her alimony payments -- which she used to help pay for school -- ran out.

The voyage that started nearly three decades ago ended Saturday, as Green, 46, joined nearly 5,000 other proud University of Missouri-Columbia graduates at spring commencement. She is among 20 successful participants in Recruit Back, a new program designed to entice dropouts with at least 100 credits and a minimum 2.0 grade-point-average to finish what they started.

"You never want to go to college on the 30-year plan," Green said. "But the upside is you get to share it with your family."

The second-year program emerged from the office of provost Brian Foster, who oversaw a similar effort while provost at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. He tapped Ruth Wright, director of advising in the College of Arts and Sciences, to delay her planned retirement and oversee Recruit Back.

For Green and other successful Recruit Back graduates, the personalized touch provided by advisers who can adeptly maneuver the campus bureaucracy makes all the difference, Wright said.

"The university provides a lot of one-on-one, individualized attention -- if students know to ask for it," she said. "But sometimes they don't know to ask."

"A little bit of a nudge, a little bit of a helping hand extended goes a long way," Wright added.

Along with improving the flagship campus' graduation and retention rates -- statistics that are an important part of college rankings and other external measures of prestige -- the program also aims to reduce student loan defaults. The state Department of Higher Education provided a $25,000 startup grant specifically for this purpose.

"Data has consistently shown that students who graduate are less likely to default on their student loans," Wright said.

The former head adviser calls program participants those for whom "life got in the way."

That's an apt description of Alecia Farkas, 34, who dropped out of Missouri in 1994, a semester shy of graduation, when her new husband moved to Iowa to attend law school at Drake University.

Farkas briefly continued her higher education at Iowa State University but couldn't afford the out-of-state tuition. After her husband graduated, the couple moved back to their hometown of Sedalia and started a family.

Farkas, who earned a two-year paralegal degree in Iowa, worked as her husband's legal secretary before deciding to return to Missouri.

"I wanted to finish what I started," she said.

There would be more detours on the path to the finish line. Farkas initially continued to work three days a week in Sedalia, driving the 140 miles round-trip to Columbia twice a week for classes.

After getting pregnant with her first child that same year, Farkas put her studies on hold until 2002. A new job with the Pettis County Circuit Court clerk came with tuition assistance, paving the way for her to earn an undergraduate degree in Russian, 14 years after her first stint at Missouri fell short.

Farkas, now the mother of two girls, ages 2 and 7, hopes to use her new skills as a court translator in Pettis County, where thousands of Ukrainians have moved, many to work at a Tyson Foods plant.

"You spend all these hours studying. But if you don't have a degree, you may as well not have done it," she said.

The 20 graduates include 84-year-old Donald Krechel of St. Louis, a World War II veteran whose time at Missouri was interrupted by another call to duty when the Korean War loomed.

Krechel's daughter read about the new program in the Missouri alumni magazine and contacted school officials. It turned out that her father, a retired sales manager, had actually completed his degree requirement years earlier.

An additional 14 students who left campus have re-enrolled as a result of Recruit Back, Wright said. And 69 students have expressed an interest in completing their degrees but haven't yet enrolled in required coursework.

In the fall, the program will shift its attention to reaching out to more recent dropouts -- those who left campus the previous semester. Campus officials hope to reach more students with this approach, which they also call a better use of the limited resources available.

"It's more personally challenging to change your life after a long absence than to come back immediately," Wright said.

For Green, this weekend marks a culmination of several academic celebrations. Her oldest daughter -- who also hopes to attend Missouri -- graduates from Boonville High School, while her son graduates from junior high.

"All these years, I've always been very careful to say, 'I attended the University of Missouri,"' she said before graduation. "Now I finally get to be a Tiger."