By Lee Reinsch
Correspondent
GREEN BAY – Jenene Calloway, Schreiber Foods vice president of talent and chief diversity officer, gave 81 area high school graduates a simple message July 15.
“Be the architect of your own life,” Calloway told the crowd at the annual CollegeReady Lamp of Knowledge scholarship awards ceremony held at the Meyer Theatre.
CollegeReady awarded about $225,000 in scholarships to the 81 students, and the same amount to renewing scholarships of CollegeReady recipients already enrolled in college.
“You determine where you go because others are happy to tell you,” Calloway said. “If I had listened to what was told to me in 1997-98 about the color of my skin being the reason I wouldn’t be able to get a college degree, I wouldn’t be here in front of you today.”
She is the first African American director in Schreiber’s 75-year history, and last month became the company’s first Black vice president.
Calloway not only has a bachelor’s degree, but a master’s degree in industrial-organizational psychology, and she’s working on her Ph.D. in global leadership.
Yet when she scored low on the ACT twice, she said a school counselor told her Black people often don’t do well on the ACT and she should forget about going to college.
Calloway spoke of repeat roadblocks and how she found workarounds.
Although her GPA was high, Calloway said her ACT score was too low to qualify her for financial assistance, but she got into college on “academic probation” by leveraging other factors such as her involvement in activities and academic record.
“I imagine some of you have been told things you can’t do, maybe because of your GPA, or your skills in writing, your math scores, or something you had done before,” she said. “Some of you will be told you can’t do something because of the color of your skin, or your gender, or the things you believe.”
In college, Calloway wasn’t one of 10 students accepted into a course in industrial and organizational psychology, so she asked to audit the class.
She said her enthusiasm and engagement in class eventually made her the 11th student.
CollegeReady is the former Scholarships, Inc.
After 58 years as Scholarships, Inc., the nonprofit changed its name to highlight its focus of helping students from underrepresented backgrounds develop the skills to get into college.
“A few years ago, we decided we should encourage and help underserved students get into college, not just pay for it,” Brent Roubal, executive director of CollegeReady, said. “So in 2014, we launched NEW Scholars college readiness program, helping students from underrepresented backgrounds know that college is achievable for them.”
NEW Scholars is a college readiness program for sixth graders.
Among this year’s high school graduates were some who started in the very first cohort of NEW Scholars.
Local scholarship recipients included:
Ashwaubenon
• Nathan Kelly and Braden Wittig.
Bay Port
• Myriah Hodgson, Skylar Rotter and Olivia Wahl.
De Pere
• Cecellia Berger, Rebecca Hoff, Sarah Mirkes and Jack Rosner.
Green Bay East
• Jaime Alvarez, Ka’Neisha Dawson, Tatiana Gonion, Addison Grant, Chris Lopez-Henriquez, Sydney Pozarski, Raquel Quevedo Vasquez, Jimena Sanchez Hernandez, Marc Sierra and Ashley Virgen-Soto.
Green Bay Preble
• Alejandro Arjón, Leslie Arriaga-Patino, Madison Basten, Olivia Boesen, Emily Brosig, Véronica Cruz, Paige Dessart, Zakaria Kassim, Michelle Lerma, Selena Perez, Alexis Peterson, Lisandra Rivas, Jose Rodriguez Cerda, Ingrid Sicairos Gonzalez, Carolina Silvan-Perez, Alexis Smeester, Breanna Smeester, Jennifer Valenzuela Castro and Deysi Vicente Rodriguez.
Green Bay Southwest
• Annebelle Dennis, Alyssa Sparacio and Abbigail Vanderwege.
Green Bay West
• Jayda Dobeck, Jack Thepphone and Lezly Vejar.
N.E.W. Lutheran
• Marshal Bukowski and Ava Mader.
Notre Dame Academy
• Kyra Merriman and Charlie Schott.
Pulaski
• Rebeka Knutson, Abigail Mahoney, Lexi Schuurmans and Isabella Scott.
Seymour
• Edward Hackl.
West De Pere
• Bailey Baeten and Jazmine Scott.