CAREER

Middle class in NJ: Is Monmouth University program a blueprint for upward mobility?

Michael L. Diamond
Asbury Park Press

Editor's note: The Asbury Park Press and the USA TODAY NETWORK New Jersey are exploring the broken ladder to the middle class and what it will take to repair it in a five-part series. Learn which neighborhoods in New Jersey offer your family the best chance at a better life. Follow us for our continuing coverage and consider subscribing today.  

WEST LONG BRANCH - Looking back at how he made his way from Manalapan to become a professor at Monmouth University, Walter Greason can remember the turning point.

He was 9 years old when he began spending his Saturdays on the Monmouth campus in West Long Branch, where scientists from Bell Labs and Fort Monmouth taught minorities science, technology, engineering and math.

"That completely changed my framework," Greason said.

Esra Celik, a Monmouth University student, tutors Mallik Akbar during a science lesson at the Program for Acceleration in Computer Science Careers.

The Program for Acceleration in Computer Science Careers, now in its 35th year, offers underprivileged students from the Shore lessons designed to give them a path to a better life.

Part I:Middle class in NJ: Where you grow up determines if you will be rich or poor

Part 2: Monmouth program 'completely changed my framework'

Part 3:NJ businesses step in to fill opportunity gaps but often don't know where to turn

Part 4: Next task for Ocean vocational school: rebuild a ladder to the middle class

Part 5: NJ trailblazers offer 6 secrets to success

They get one-on-one lessons in science and math, but there is more to it than that. It is a chance to branch out beyond their neighborhoods to spend time on a college campus and work with students from other communities. 

The program is geared to guard against a troubling trend. Generations raised in the global, digital economy are no longer virtually guaranteed to do better than their parents. And their outcomes are connected to the neighborhoods where they grow up, new data from Harvard University has found.

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The shift in the economy is prompting New Jersey policymakers, educators and business people to search for ways to reach out to children in disadvantaged neighborhoods and provide them opportunities they don't get at school, home or in their communities.

If you can get the kids to become well-rounded students by the time they get to high school, "they will have the bandwidth needed to get through college," said Herman Redd, 80, of Eatontown, a retired Fort Monmouth engineer who is an instructor here.

Meet PAC graduate Autumn Williams in the video below.

The program, called PAC, consists of two 10-week sessions a year. The free program is open to students in Monmouth and Ocean counties from the third to 12th grades. And its instructors include both Monmouth University students and members from what Greason calls the "Black Brain Belt" — black scientists who worked at Fort Monmouth and Bell Labs.

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Like many nonprofits, it is searching for a more stable funding source. PAC is trying to raise $3,500 to add underwater robotics in part by selling candy bars.

While students pick up technical skills, Larrick Daniels, the program's director, said they also get to spend time on a college campus and meet students from other schools, filling in a key need that often goes unmet: Once you get to college, can you navigate your way through the culture shock of, say, fitting in with a student body that grew up in an entirely different setting?

"It was definitely an outlet," said Autumn Williams, 19, of Toms River, who attends Ocean County College and wants to go to Princeton University. "Math wasn’t always my favorite subject, but once I finally started to just adjust to it, I began to stand out tremendously in my math and science classes and everything like that."

"Now math is just my thing," she said. "I love math. I do. I love math. As crazy as it sounds."

Greason, 45, specializes in economic history at Monmouth University and has been quietly leading the charge to extend more opportunities to underprivileged students.

His perspective is unique. He grew up in Manalapan and was raised by parents who were nurses at the Marlboro Psychiatric Hospital.

Walter Greason, a Monmouth University professor, has been working to rebuild the ladder to upward mobility.

Greason was steered to the PAC program by a cousin, Jay Ham, who was a satellite engineer manager at Bell Labs. And he eventually went to The Ranney School, a private school in Tinton Falls, where he was the only black student in his grade.

It made for an uneasy adolescence. But the two worlds gave him choices when he got a scholarship to Villanova University outside of Philadelphia. He could study information technology or education.

To his father, the choice was clear: There was no money to be made in software.

"Maybe the single-worst piece of advice I've ever gotten in my life," Greason said with a laugh.

Now he is working with his students, businesses and governments to help them create a new ladder to upward mobility. It includes better coordination among the public and private sectors.

And it includes an overhaul in education that better aligns schools with the economy, teaching students not only technical skills, but also how to turn access financial markets so that they can turn their ideas businesses and create wealth, not only for themselves but also the community.

How optimistic is he that the ladder can be rebuilt?

"Very," he said. "I see the kinds of economic miracles that happen when you invest in places and you believe in people. That’s the other side of telling economic history stories. You get these extraordinary, outsized Andrew Carnegie stories, but the same time you get a lot of folks who can actually just live a better quality of life."

"That’s the story of the great migration of folks moving out of the South to come to northern cities. They still didn’t have perfect lives where everything was paved with gold. But you can have a substantial improvement and make a better opportunity for your children."

Michael L. Diamond; @mdiamondapp; 732-643-4038; mdiamond@gannettnj.com