George Ladd hands on the College Bound program

After 14 years, education professor George Ladd has stepped down as the director of BC’s College Bound program.

Ladd was instrumental in establishing College Bound, a collaborative effort involving Boston College, Brighton High School, and West Roxbury High School that provides educational assistance to promising students from disadvantaged backgrounds. To date, 142 high schoolers have graduated from the four-year program. All have gone on to college, having won, in total, nearly $16 million in scholarships and grants.

The program has its roots in the mid-1970s, when the University’s President, J. Donald Monan, SJ, and LSOE dean Lester Przewlocki asked Ladd to be BC’s liaison to Boston’s public schools. A decade later Monan asked Ladd to establish a more formal relationship between the University and the city’s school system, and College Bound was the result.

In Ladd’s plan, BC undergraduates are paired with high school students, who are recommended for College Bound by their teachers and counselors based on their academic potential. Each BC volunteer commits to 10 hours a week of tutoring and mentoring, and meets regularly with senior College Bound staff members to design and revise education plans specific to each College Bound student.

College Bound also has a community outreach element, through which many BC faculty and staff volunteers pass on job skills, personal guidance, and career advice.

LSOE dean for students and outreach John Cawthorne has been acting as interim director since Ladd’s November departure, and will do so until a permanent replacement is named.

After 14 years, Ladd says, “it was starting to become too much of ‘my’ program.” By passing on the director’s job, he hopes to preserve the adaptability and creativity on which College Bound’s success rests.

Ladd, who joined the Lynch School of Education in 1969, will stay on as a professor.

Tim Heffernan

Photo: George Ladd (left) with Dean John Cawthorne. By Gary Wayne Gilbert


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