Prospective college students from rural communities will be given access to campuses across the U.S., including the University of Iowa.

The UI and 15 other colleges will be part of the STARS College Network to give students free travel to college and receive education in college enrollment process.

The Network was supported by a $20 million gift from Trott Family Philanthropies, which is a foundation of billionaires Byron and Tina Trott.

Byron Trott is from Union, Missouri, and went to the University of Chicago where he received undergraduate and Master of Business Administration degrees. Byron has provided support to students not only through the creation of the STARS network but also through the launch of rootED Alliance, which trains college and career counselors in rural high schools.

According to data from STARS, 59 million people nationwide live in rural areas with 9.7 million being high school students. Only 29 percent of 19 to 24-year-olds are enrolled in college compared to the 42 percent of students in metro areas.

The network allows universities in the network to identify students in rural communities and share best practices for recruitment.

Brent Gage, UI associate vice president for enrollment management, explained this grant is a four-year pilot to test and build the network. Each college is allocated an amount of around $1 million and after the four years are up, they will present the accomplishments to the Trott Family Foundation which will then determine next steps for the program.

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The Trott Family Foundation has given grants relating education, youth, health, arts, and culture as well as the general Chicago community.

“This is really just a first step and what might even become a bigger program as we look to the future,” Gage said.

Gage said the network provides a unique opportunity for students from rural communities to have access to colleges and programs that best suit them.

“It’s that collective working together to kind of raise the opportunities for these student’s,” Gage said. “We’re a collection of one of 15 institutions that include some of the top institutions of the country, and we’re a part of that group. It really emphasizes the quality of the University of Iowa.”

The universities that are also participating in the STARS College Network include Brown University, California Institute of Technology, Columbia University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northwestern University, Ohio State University, and the University of Southern California, among others.

Scott Shaw, UI associate professor in the Department of Chemistry, is from a small town and has been involved in helping students in rural communities have access to college opportunities at the UI.

Shaw created the Rural Scholars program, which annually brought five to six students from rural towns to conduct research in labs. Shaw said that research opportunities help get students involved in STEM careers. Shaw predicts that this program will merge nicely with the UI’s efforts to engage in the STARS network.

In addition, Shaw said he was glad programs like this are happening, especially after the state Board of Regents paused all incoming DEI programs. He said rural students provide a different perspective on the college community, which is inclusivity.

“These people in these rural places, these first-gen students, can benefit from these types of programs,” Shaw said.

The Stars College Network started at the University of Chicago in the 1960s.

Marjorie Betley, senior associate director of admissions for the University of Chicago, said the first program for rural students was called the Small School Talent Search. The program existed for decades with minimal growth.

This changed when Trott approached the University of Chicago and asked how many rural students were on campus, which the university estimated was around 3 percent at the time, Betley said.

Efforts to increase the number of college students from rural communities helped establish new research for the program, the Emerging World Leaders in 2018. The program was successful in bringing rural community students to the college campus, and later bloomed into initiatives to create the larger STARS College Network.

“We put together a team of a lot of great public and private institutions, kind of with some geographic diversity across the United States to say, okay, let’s create a really wide network and let’s share our best practices; let’s work together; let’s collaborate,” Betley said.

Betley said that the percent of rural students at the University of Chicago has increased to 9 percent in the past year.

“It’s been some massive growth,” Betley said. “We’ve seen an influx in terms of applications, which also just gives us a larger pool and then a larger class of admitted students too. So, it’s been really successful so far.”

Ultimately, Betley says the goal of the program is to have a comprehensive and holistic support system for students.