A first-generation college student is returning to New Haven to help city kids get the same chance she had.
Her name is Patricia Melton. New Haven Promise announced Monday that she will become the group’s new executive director.
Yale and the Community Foundation launched Promise in conjunction with the city’s school-reform drive in November 2010 to guarantee New Haven kids college scholarships if they do well in school. In some cases they pay the full freight for city kids’ college tuition in state schools.
Melton succeeds Emily Byrne, Promise’s first chief. Byrne left the job after a year to take a policy position with state education chief Stefan Pryor.
Melton originally came to New Haven from Cleveland. The first in her family to attend college, she earned her undergraduate degree at Yale, according to a Promise press release issued Monday. A track runner, she was an All-American and a U.S. Olympics trials finalist.
She comes to the new position with a background in working with higher ed and kids trying to get there. As an assistant dean at Vincennes University she helped run a program in which high-school students took college classes and helped Indianapolis high schools develop strategic plans. She also worked on a program pairing first-generation aspiring collegians with campus mentors. Before that she worked for the public schools.