overcoming adversity and achieving dreams through higher education
We enter fall and the holidays with keen excitement, thankful to be back to in-person teaching and meeting classrooms full of new students. Some programs suspended during the pandemic are resuming, like UW–Parkside’s Shakespeare Prison Project at Racine Correctional, with strong demand among students. And new technologies developed during the pandemic are allowing more people …
“Odyssey is the pencil of life with which we can erase past regrets and rewrite our future. Every ‘word’ formed solidifies our resolve, those periods at the end a proud stamp of success. Sentence by sentence, we forge a new tale.” — Anthony Jefferson, Odyssey ’17 The award‑winning, multigenerational UW Odyssey Project prepares students for college and life by …
UW Odyssey Project Co-director Emily Auerbach likes to quote Helen Keller: “Alone we can do so little. Together we can do so much.” Emily knows that as a small program, Odyssey depends on the strength of its numbers — the hundreds of grassroots supporters who may not be able to write a large check themselves …
When Kayanna Branch applied for Odyssey’s Class of 2022, she knew her baby (named Summer) was due on September 17, just two weeks after the course began. “I’ll do my homework, join Zoom for a couple of classes and make sure I finish the class!” Kayanna assured Emily and Kevin during her interview. Baby Summer …
“Odyssey is an amazing program, a lifeline, a source of strength that keeps me going and lifts some of the weight off me.” So said Jeannine Shoemaker, a graduate of Odyssey’s Class of 2014, now enrolled in Kevin Mullen’s UW writing course for Odyssey alumni. “I had started to take Kevin’s writing class two years …
When the pandemic struck in March 2020, Odyssey classes shut down and so did Emily Auerbach’s Tuesday Morning Booktalks, a long-running series of community discussions of literature held at the public library. “I naively sent out an email to participants in the series saying we’d postpone our discussion of Toni Morrison for a few weeks …
“I love Odyssey and am honored to be invited to join the board to help Odyssey succeed.” Last month, Brenda González became the newest member of the all-volunteer Board of Directors for the Friends of the UW Project Inc., a nonprofit formed in 2009 to provide supplementary wraparound support to Odyssey families. Currently serving as …
“I’m excited and nervous.” New students in Odyssey’s Class of 2022 chose “excited” and “nervous” more than any other adjectives when describing their feelings about starting the college jumpstart program. As they entered the classroom on September 8, students received new books, laptops and UW notebooks. By the second week, they beamed under their masks …
The 19th year of the award-winning UW Odyssey Project will begin on September 8, with 30 adults embarking on a two-semester journey leading to six UW credits and a new sense of hope. Newly admitted student Brandyn writes in his application, “When my mom completed Odyssey, I was proud of her. Now I ask of …
“I’m really excited and nervous to start my new chapter,” Jayda says as she moves into the residence halls before starting classes at UW–Madison. A 2021 Odyssey Junior graduate, Jayda calls it “cool” to have graduated from high school the same year her mother, Shiquita, graduated from the adult Odyssey class. Shiquita proudly describes her …