Coach for College – An Interview with Program Founder Parker Goyer

While most college students can find the time to study abroad, such an opportunity is generally not in the cards for Division I student-athletes. In addition to their studies and the pursuit of a degree, student-athletes competing at high-profile colleges also have to make a year-round commitment to their respective sports.

Such was the case for Parker Goyer, Birmingham, Ala., now in her first year of study at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. While studying at prestigious Duke University, Goyer was a member of the Duke tennis team that reached the Final Four indoors and the NCAA quarterfinals twice.

But the year-round commitment to school and to athletics left Goyer little opportunity to travel abroad or to partake in community service. Recognizing that there must be other student-athletes with similar sentiments, Goyer came up with a bold plan, creating the Coach for College program.

We briefly discussed the impetus for the program in our post yesterday. Today, to give interested readers the chance to get an in-depth look at the concept as well as Goyer’s future plans to expand Coach for College to other schools and regions of the world, we present a Q & A with the program founder.

Can you give some concrete examples of the lessons you sought to teach youngsters in Vietnam that you believe helped them develop some of the academic, life and other skills needed to successfully attend a college or university?

In addition to providing youngsters with fitness and sports-specific instruction and infrastructure, coaches taught youth through five academic modules that focused on the application of sport to academic subjects. These modules were entitled Sports and Health (Biology of Sport), Sports and Science (Physics of Sport), Sports and English, Sports and Leadership, and Sports and Education (Psychology of Sport).

First, the program helped equip youth with some of the intangible skills from sports which are translatable into other domains. The overarching idea is that skills like perseverance, determination, setting and achieving goals, and overcoming setbacks, all of which can be learned through sports, are the keys to success in education as well.

The second way the program sought to prepare youth for college was by providing them information about college, both in America and Vietnam, from the “experts” (current college students in the two countries). This information was provided through a 30 minute class on Higher Education at the end of every daily camp session, reinforcing the main goal of the program.

For youth in Vietnam to go to college, they must pass the university entrance exam. In order to be in a position to pass the exam, they must do well in their subjects in school, particularly the ones they hope to study in college. Thus the third way the program sought to prepare the youth for college was by teaching traditional academic subjects with examples from sports. Studies in neuroscience have shown that getting people excited enhances learning, even if the excitement is not strictly related to the material being learned. Hence by connecting academics, which is not always enjoyed by youth, with something they view as fun, like sports, we felt that we would be able to get the kids excited when learning traditional academic subjects, excitement which could eventually turn into passion for the academic subjects themselves. Once they became engaged in learning these subjects, the kids would hopefully be more motivated to learn these subjects during the school year and get good grades in them. Furthermore, excitement for academic subjects often leads to an increased desire to stay in school.

The fourth way the program sought to prepare youth for university was by providing them with ample opportunities to interact with a variety of role models. In many ways, because they were from similar cultural, geographical, and socioeconomic backgrounds (69% grew up in low income, rural areas), had faced similar obstacles (such as lack of money to pay for college), and had achieved the educational goals the program aspires for the youth to attain, the Vietnamese college students were perfect role models for the youth in the program and were well positioned to maximally impact the youth in a positive direction. The Vietnamese high school students functioned as “next step role models” whom the youth can emulate on their path to higher education. The American student-athletes showed the youth how to translate lessons learned from sports into success in the classroom; they were able to draw from their own experience to show the youth how the same skills needed to go far in sports can be used to go far in education. For each of these role models, youth can learn from their example and apply it to their own lives.

What have been two of the most important individual lessons you have taken from the enormous challenges associated with creating the Coach for College Program?

First, that anything is possible. A lot of people were skeptical at first and thought that I was too young, that this was too big of an idea, and didn’t know if I could pull it off. I think I was able to succeed by setting concrete goals, identifying key supporters early on, and using their advice and support to make steady progress towards my goals, one step at a time.

Second, my experience in setting up the Coach for College program reinforced the value of sports in transmitting key life skills. I found myself drawing upon some of the same skills – persistence, work ethic, setting goals, overcoming setbacks, etc. — that I had used to make progress as a tennis player. At the NCAA National Student-Athlete Leadership Conference last May, I tried to convey to the student-athletes there that they all had similar skills, simply by virtue of their experience with competitive sports, and could utilize these to make a difference in their local and global communities.

Who do you think got more out of the program last summer – the students from America who were involved or the youngsters that you worked with?

Usually, in these types of civic engagement programs, people will say that the American students benefit the most. I really tried to devise the program in such a way that the youth and coaches (American student-athletes and Vietnamese high school and college students) would each derive significant benefits. Each group filled out surveys at the end of the program, and based on the information they provided, each group seemed to obtain the benefits that I had intended for them. Personally, my primary goal is to help the middle school youth, and I intended the benefits to the coaches to come as a natural by-product of their participation in the program.

We have read where you want to involve more American colleges and bring students to additional countries. What progress have you made thus far towards that goal and what is in the works for the future?

The goal is to utilize Duke and UNC student-athletes to continue the program at the Hoa An Secondary School year after year, so that Vietnamese students can participate in the program during their middle school years, become a coach in the program as a high school student, and receive support to continue onto college, where they can again participate as a coach in the program during the summers. Coach for College will also seek to raise money for scholarships that will allow program participants to attend high school and college. In the summer of 2009, a program will again be held at the Hoa An Secondary School. After the recommendations for improvement from those involved with this summer’s pilot program have been implemented, it is hoped that the next program can include more student-athletes from Duke and UNC and impact more youth from the Hoa An Community. Currently, the 2009 program is being financed by a $175,000 International Sports Programming Initiative Grant from the U.S. Department of State, along with $85,000 from Duke University ($75,000 from the Office of the Provost and $10,000 from the Athletic Department).

In the summer of 2009 programs may also be set up at other middle schools in Vietnam, involving student-athletes from other rival American universities, such as Virginia Tech and Virginia and Oklahoma and Texas. I have been talking to student-athletes at Virginia Tech and Oklahoma about developing programs with their student-athletes and student-athletes from a rival school (UVA for Virginia Tech and Texas or Oklahoma State for OU). I also gave two 20 minute presentations to 400+ student-athletes and administrators from universities across the country at the NCAA National Student-Athlete Leadership Development Conference in May of 2008. At this same conference I had a table set up at the career expo, and 100 student-athletes signed up to help bring the program to their schools. Things are farthest along with Virginia Tech. My liaison there has already met with several key administrators and I already have a site picked out for the second program, in Vietnam’s Ben Tre province, which I visited last March during an advance planning trip for the program.

For long term plans, as additional sites are included, the program will provide “gap year internships” to recently graduated college student-athletes who participated in the program. They will serve as U.S. based site coordinators who will help with the administration of the program. As additional sites are included, the program will also allow the summer program’s host country coaches and participants who have graduated from college to help with the administration of the program as in-country site coordinators.

The sports targeted in this program are standard and follow universal rules. They can also be played, enjoyed, and understood by a wide variety of people, regardless of their native language or cultural background. Therefore modules designed applying sport to subjects such as science, language, and leadership can easily, after being refined and efficacy assessed, become a standard curriculum for the Coach for College program. This will hopefully allow for replication throughout the Phung Hiep District, the Hau Giang Province, and eventually throughout all of Vietnam. If the program proves to be successful in Vietnam, it may also be useful in other countries, with necessary adjustments for culture.

The efficacy of the program in achieving the desired objectives will be assessed over time utilizing research methodology developed in conjunction with professors at Can Tho University. The results of the research will be used to improve and refine the program so that it has maximum benefit for everyone involved but particularly for the middle school students it is designed to aid.

Based on the success of the pilot program, Coach for College would like to partner with professional athletes, sports related companies such as Nike, and the local government of the Phung Hiep District in providing a sports court (with a set/standardized design and cost) for all lower secondary schools in the District by matching 50% of the funds to build sports courts at each of the District’s other 13 schools. The building of the sports courts would coincide with the standardization of the schools by the government. Under this plan, an all sports court would be built for a school at the same time the government moves to bring the school’s infrastructure up to the standard level (since the same materials used to make improvements to the school’s infrastructure could also be used to build the sports court). The proposed court construction program would be for the Phung Hiep District only as a pilot, with potential expansion to the Mo Cay District, then others through the provincial level (beginning with the Hau Giang province in particular) based on the success of the program. In addition, utilizing professional athletes to provide funding for the material costs of one or more sports courts can help raise the profile of the program, provide resources for the construction of further courts, and create a list of sponsors who will feel personally connected to the Coach for College program and the partner middle schools it serves.

The all-sports court built next to partner middle schools in combination with the summer camps can be used to facilitate the development of sports leagues during the academic year, consisting initially of teams of students from the same school and eventually of teams from different schools which compete against each other in a commune, district, or province wide sports league. The sports leagues can be designed in conjunction with international and United States sports experts. If these sports leagues are successful, they may be eventually transferred to the university and college level, as in the United States. There is great potential for this as sports leagues of any kind outside of state-sponsored professional teams do not exist in Vietnam. There is also considerable room for entrepreneurial development of junior and community sports leagues in both rural and urban areas, facilitated by the American and especially the Vietnamese summer camp coaches.

In the coming years, other universities will be asked to become a part of the Coach for College Network, spearheaded by Duke University with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, by inviting them to send student-athletes to participate in the Coach for College program. Universities which are athletic rivals will be invited to sponsor Coach for College programs at new sites, utilizing the existing conference structure present in intercollegiate athletics. Conferences can sponsor programs in particular regions of the globe, with partner rival universities working at the district or provincial level.

In the future, Coach for College will seek to raise money to pay the high school ($225 per year per student) and college ($1218 per year per student) fees for youth who have participated in the summer camps, who excel academically, and who exhibit the sportsmanlike qualities of cooperation and leadership skills and motivation to stay in school.

Eventually Coach for College will be linked to Peacework’s Village Network to integrate the program into a larger community development context. Peacework most often begins its initiatives in rural villages via assistance to schools in the form of infrastructure improvements and educational enhancement. Peacework then matches these communities with universities who engage in a variety of disciplines such as agriculture, engineering, social work, education, medicine, and business to systematically meet that community’s comprehensive development needs. This cooperation would lead to a rollout of the Coach for College program in Peacework partner communities around the world. In turn, should Coach for College begin in a new site outside of Peacework’s network of partner communities, Coach for College and its beneficiary schools could feasibly become an entry point for larger community development via the Peacework Village Network.

If you were to select one person (family member, teacher, coach, professor) as your primary role model in life thus far who would you select and why?

I’ve always been very much an individual and have sought, for the most part, to do things differently from others, as a means of trying to create my own unique impact. A quote I’ve always liked is “Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson). Thus I wouldn’t say I’ve ever really had a role model but there are definitely people I admire — Wendy Kopp, the founder and CEO of Teach for America, Paul Farmer, who founded Partners in Health while a student at Harvard Medical School, and “Greg Mortenson, who builds schools in remote parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan (described in the book Three Cups of Tea). I try to pick and choose from the experiences of different people like that to guide my own thinking. That said, I’ve been blessed to have had dedicated mentors throughout my life — my AP U.S. History Teacher and AP Latin teacher in high school, several professors in college, particularly within the fields of neuroscience and education, and most recently, several administrators who have been involved in helping me launch the Coach for College program, such as the provost at Duke and former Chancellor of UNC-Chapel Hill. The importance of such mentor figures in my own life influenced me to make mentor-ship a key feature of the Coach for College program.

Next up, Parker Goyer earns a Rhodes Scholarship.