F&M Stories

A nondescript parking lot in Charlottesville, Virginia, may seem an unlikely spot for making history. Yet, the future of education in America was changed profoundly by what happened in that parking lot one day in 2004, when Nicole Hurd had the brainstorm that would eventually give rise to College Advising Corps (CAC). 

As the then-Assistant Dean and Director of the Center for Undergraduate Excellence at the University of Virginia, Dr. Hurd had been invited that day to a meeting with local business leaders and representatives of the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, which was interested in improving college access for lower-income students. In the midst of that conversation, she learned two statistics that would change the lives of hundreds of thousands of college students and aspiring college students across the country.

Dr. Hurd learned there is a critical shortage of high-school guidance counselors in the United States, with the average counselor being assigned nearly 370 students, and the average student receiving only about 20 minutes with a counselor each year. A short while later, standing in that parking lot and reflecting on the part of her job that involved helping University of Virginia students apply for prestigious honors, fellowships, and public service opportunities after graduation, she wondered if it might not be possible to keep some of them on campus to do college advising work instead.

The idea sparked the interest of the Cooke Foundation, and a year later, it provided $623,000 for a pilot program with 14 college advisers drawn from recent Virginia graduates. The mission: to provide low-income high schools with the kind of college counseling services often found in more affluent schools.

Today, roughly $120 million in additional philanthropic investments later and with Dr. Hurd serving as its chief executive officer, CAC has grown into the largest college access program in the country—currently serving more than 200,000 students in 646 under-resourced high schools—and has received many accolades for its innovative work, including the 2012 National Service Impact Award from the Corporation for National and Community Service. It now draws new college graduates from 24 partner colleges in 14 states, among them Franklin & Marshall, which is home to Pennsylvania's College Advising Corps and has, to date, sent 60 graduates into service with CAC. Dozens of current F&M students or recent alumni have come to the campus thanks to CAC, which, it was announced recently, will enroll 1 million first-generation, lower-income, and under-represented students into higher education by 2025.

With this success has come increasing national acclaim for Dr. Hurd, a graduate of the University of Notre Dame, Georgetown University, and the University of Virginia with a Ph.D. in Religious Studies. In 2016, she was honored as a White House Champion of Change for College Opportunity and named to Washington Monthly's list of The 16 Most Innovative People in Higher Education. She is also the recipient of the 2013 Excellence in Education Award from the National Association for College Admission Counseling; the 2012 Executive Leadership Award of Excellence from the National College Access Network; and a 2011 American Marshall Memorial Fellowship.

Nicole Hurd, for your insightful solution to deliver high-quality advising to underserved high school students in many of the nation's lower-income communities, for your creation of College Advising Corps, and for your ongoing leadership of that great organization, Franklin & Marshall College bestows upon you the Honorary Degree, Doctor of Humane Letters.

Nicole F. Hurd, Ph.D., CEO of College Advising Corps