How RISE is working to address socioeconomic disparities among rural and urban communities
By Zainub Ali
Rural Students Igniting Success and Education (RISE), is a student-run leadership and community based organization at the University of Georgia (UGA) in Athens, Georgia, USA. Briana Hayes, a third year student at UGA from Baxley, Georgia, studying Health Promotion, established RISE in early 2019. RISE was started with the goal to provide rural students with a sense of community as the majority of the student population at UGA comes from urban areas. Briana hopes to ensure the inclusion and empowerment of minority students from small, rural towns like Baxley upon entering the crucial first few years of college. Since its inception, RISE has offered students at the University, especially first-year and transfer students, the opportunity to meet and interact with others who may be experiencing similar feelings of isolation at UGA because of their identity as a rural student.
Rural Students on Campus
Approximately 15% of the UGA student population identifies as rural. RISE acknowledges how difficult and isolating it can be for students coming from small, rural towns in Georgia to adjust to the university’s large campus. In high school, rural students may not have received exposure to careers that require a higher education degree, such as law or medicine. Many rural counties do not offer Advanced Placement (AP) courses or SAT prep courses. Furthermore, students may not have access to amenities such as WiFi or other basic necessities such as health care. Often times, rural students are placed in a completely different cultural context and environment that can be difficult to navigate alone. After considering the obstacles faced by students during their primary and secondary education, RISE aims to ensure that rural students remain motivated, connected, and involved during their college and graduate years.
RISE’s Strategies
RISE aims to connect students with similar lived experiences upon embarking on their new journey through college.
Collaborate: RISE leaders collaborate with the Division of Academic Enrichment at the University of Georgia and representatives from the ALL Georgia Scholarship Program, which provides financial aid for six exemplary students from rural Georgia studying at UGA, in order to identify existing infrastructure in place to best aid and support rural students.
Recruit: RISE believes in the effectiveness of individually meeting with and visiting students in person, in addition to simply emailing large groups of students and utilizing university-wide social media platforms. RISE founders are committed to establishing genuine connections with incoming rural students; one-on-one conversations have proven especially beneficial for the organization’s turnout rate. Furthermore, partnering with other student organizations such as the Student Government Association helped recruit rural students.
Organize: During their first semester as an official student organization on campus, RISE held two general body meetings with 40-50 students in attendance. At these meetings, students were connected to community service projects and campus resources for academic and personal health and wellbeing.
Outreach: RISE leaders continue to reach out to businesses in the area and other student organizations to establish partnerships to enhance their scope and involvement.
Challenges Faced
Enrollment and Retention: As a new student-organization on a campus with more than 30,000 students, RISE is working to maintain a consistent general body of members. The goal is for students to become members and stay members, so that one day, the current leadership board can pass down their roles to a new class of rural students.
Inclusion & Outreach: With a student body as expansive as the one at UGA, it can be difficult to ensure that all rural students are being reached, especially those who struggle to find a sense of belonging at UGA.
Identifying and Focusing on Key Vision: This early on, RISE is working to understand the exact needs of rural students so that relevant resources can best reach students. In part, this is why RISE wants to maintain a clearly established protocol as an organization; a foundation that they plan to establish by the end of their first full year in existence.
RISE’s Best Practices and Lessons Learned
Ground all Work in Passion: RISE’s founder, Briana Hayes embraces her passion for starting an organization like RISE, and recalls the conversations she has had with rural students who feel discouraged because of where they are from or what they look like in order to fuel her work.
Build a Community: For all of their goals to succeed, RISE focuses on the relationships amongst executive board members, general body members, and all faculty advisors. This way, RISE ensures all ideas and efforts are fully welcomed and supported.
Vision for the Future
The team at RISE is ambitious and inspired to launch new and engaging initiatives. RISE leaders will work to strengthen their network and involvement through community activities and engagement, so that new students feel that they have a tight-knit group to ask questions and to connect with. Ultimately, RISE intends to connect with rural high schools in Georgia to create a program in which active RISE members can serve as ambassadors to rural high schools and mentors to rural high school students who are in the process of applying to college. With everything that RISE will offer to its community of rural students, the organization aspires to cultivate leaders who will eliminate socio-economic disparities between urban and rural populations.
