A $10 million endowment has been awarded to College Advising Corps, a national non-profit based in Chapel Hill that places recent college graduates from partnering universities in underserved high schools as full-time advisors.

The Charlotte-based John M. Belk Endowment will help College Advising Corps increase access to higher education for low-income, underrepresented and first generation students in high schools throughout the state and the nation.

College Advising Corps Founder and CEO Nicole Hurd calls the endowment a “game changer”.

“Not only is it going to allow us to place advisors in rural North Carolina and increase our footprint in some of our urban locations,” said Hurd, “but what it’s really going to do is allow us to hold up the effectiveness of the work, think more about partnering with school districts, universities and businesses to figure out what do we really need to make sure our students are ready for the workforce.”

The counselor-to-student ratio nationwide is around 490 to one, which means that the average high school student is only seeing their counselor for about 20 minutes a year.

Hurd believes that spending time with a counselor, especially one that may share similar experiences with them, is crucial in propelling high school students towards highereducation.

“It’s really that near-peer piece of it,” says Hurd. “To have someone who looks like you, who came from a similar neighborhood or part of the state as you, say ‘I have your story, I had the same concerns, and if I can do it, you can do it too.”

The College Advising Corps current North Carolina partner schools include UNC, NC State, Duke and Davidson.

More information on the College Advising Corps can be found at their website.