Banks Pledge Support for Northern Essex Early College Seacoast Promise Eastward Expansion

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Northern Essex Community College’s Early College, already operating in Greater Haverhill and Lawrence, received recognition Tuesday as it expands eastward to additional high schools with local business support.

Building on the success of the Lawrence and Haverhill Promise Programs, the new Seacoast Promise will provide full tuition, fees and books to Early College graduates from Seacoast area high schools who wish to complete their associate degree at Northern Essex.

In a ceremony Tuesday, leaders from Northern Essex, Newburyport Bank, Pentucket Bank and surrounding communities celebrated the launch at Newburyport Bank’s State Street location. Local high school guidance counselors were also in attendance, along with students who spoke about the benefits of Early College and affordable higher education. The expansion was made possible by a pledge of $250,000 from Newburyport Bank and $50,000 from Institution for Savings.

Newburyport Bank President Lloyd Hamm Jr., who participated in an early college program when he was in high school and was a first-generation college student, explained how taking early college courses while in high school played an important role in his development.

“Forty-nine years ago I was sitting at Framingham State College at 15 years old, as an early college program student making a film strip and, like many of the students, I was first generation, the first of my family to ever go onto college, and I graduated from High School at 16 and college at 20, and a lot of it was because of the early program,” he said.

Hamm went on to say that even though his undergraduate studies focused on biology, chemistry and physics, he ended up in the banking industry following a side trip to working in higher education as chief operating officer and dean of the business school at Anna Maria College.

“I spent a lot of time in Worcester with families who were considering sending their children to college, and one of the messages I came back to the campus with and  redesigned the curriculum was parents, particularly first generation, have two things they want answered: will my child graduate and will they get a job when they are out? They can’t afford six years of school, they can’t afford four. How are they going to afford six?  So, one of the things Northern Essex does, and I’ve learned through my association both with the Foundation and the board, is they graduate their students. They get them out and onto the next stop, and the next stop is a career or whether the next stop is a career or whether that next step is into a four-year institution or into employment. The fact is they play an important role in transitioning and changing a young person’s life, which in turn can change their family’s life for generations to come.”

“Because of the generosity of Newburyport bank, we’re going to be able to expand this opportunity to so many other students who may be able to achieve something they never thought possible before,” said Allison Dolan-Wilson, the college’s vice president of Institutional Advancement and executive director of NECC Foundation.

Leila Grasso, a senior at Newburyport High School who is taking early college classes at Northern Essex, pointed out “When I graduate high school this spring, I’ll have taken 15 early college classes. It will allow me to move right into my core classes in my major when I get to UMass, and I’ll finish in two years.”

Since its inception in 2018, the Northern Essex Early College program has grown from 250 students to more than 1,000 participating this year. Students must meet certain requirements including maintaining a GPA of 3.0 or higher.