The Mann children: Alston Mann, Ellen Mann O'Connor, and Katherine Mann '07.

 

Who doesn’t like a good analogy? As a tool for understanding the world, the analogy, especially the metaphor, is invaluable. It’s useful in music (“All in all, you’re just another brick in the wall”), advertising (“Red Bull gives you wings”) and literature. “All the world’s a stage,” Shakespeare wrote, “and all the men and women merely players.” For educators, the analogy is as handy as the periodic table and the white board.

The family of Tom and Jane Mann has used one particular analogy as a guide as they’ve decided where to disburse funds from their family’s nonprofit. As a boy, Tom Mann was told by his Methodist minister: “If the rest of us are starting the 100-yard dash on the starting line, and everybody who doesn’t have our advantages is starting on the minus-10-yard line, we need to help.”

A group of students at Wingate are reaping the benefits of the Jane and Tom Mann Family Foundation’s adherence to the spirit of that analogy. The foundation is one of the primary supporters of the University’s First-Gen Bulldog Program, a “bridge” program that provides academic and social support for students who are the first in their families to attend college.

The process of entering college often mystifies first-generation students. How do I buy books? Am I going to be able to live with a bunch of strangers? What happens if I miss a class? Is help available if I struggle in freshman English? Without being able to lean on parents, older siblings and other mentors who have been through it before, they can feel alienated and fall behind.

The First-Gen Bulldog Program was designed to ease some of their worries and make the path smoother.

“What appealed to the Foundation was that students have simply not had the benefit of parents, or other siblings, to help them acclimate to the college-level environment so that they are at the same starting line as everyone else,” Tom and Jane’s daughter, Katherine Mann ’07, says. “This is what the Mann Family Foundation is about: leveling the playing field and letting everyone start on the same starting line.”

At Wingate, the need is acute: The University’s population of first-generation students is large – an estimated 30 percent of first-time freshmen in the fall of 2022, many of them among the 40 percent of Wingate students who qualify for Pell Grants.

Incoming students who opt into the First-Gen Bulldog Program (it’s open to all first-generation students) arrive a week earlier than other first-time students, getting to know each other, learning a few tips and tricks for surviving college, discovering what resources are available for students, and generally getting to feel comfortable on campus before the crush of Move-in Day.

Throughout the year, students have access to additional peer mentors (older first-gen students), attend events and get-togethers just for their cohort, and hear from guest speakers. Some even live together in a Living-Learning Community.

In its second year, the program has been a big success so far. As a group, students who went through the inaugural First-Gen Bulldog Program, in the summer of 2021, recorded a higher GPA and better retention in their first academic year than the average first-time student. Three-quarters of participants in the program returned to Wingate as sophomores in the fall of 2022; that compares with 68 percent for all first-time freshmen.

Tom and Jane Mann started their foundation as a way to lift up people in lower socioeconomic demographics, especially people of color. An exception was the endowment they established to honor Katherine, who majored in athletic training at Wingate. The foundation established endowments at the alma maters of all three Mann children (Katherine and her older siblings, Alston Mann and Ellen Mann O’Connor, both UNC Chapel Hill grads). The Wingate endowment provided a scholarship to a student studying athletic training until the University stopped offering the major last year, which led Katherine, along with Spencer Percy, Wingate’s director of development, to search for another way to make use of the funds.The First-Gen Bulldog Program was an obvious fit, dovetailing nicely with the Mann Family Foundation’s goals. They transferred the $50,000 in the fund to the First-Gen program.

“It just struck a chord with all of us,” says Katherine, who is now in marketing with Monumental Sports and Entertainment, which owns the Washington Wizards, Capitals and Mystics. “We knew it was something we needed to be involved in.”

Last year, Percy and Dr. Antonio Jefferson, assistant vice president of diversity, equity & inclusion and the head of the First-Gen Bulldog Program, approached the Manns about contributing even more to keep the program going. The Jane and Tom Mann Family Foundation agreed to provide an additional $250,000, with $150,000 going into an endowment.

“I believe the Manns’ contribution will make a tremendous and long-lasting impact on our first-gen students,” Jeffersons says. “We are grateful that they have decided to support underrepresented students and understand the vital role they play in the overall success of our campus community.”

"If the First-Gen Bulldog Program helps someone who fits in there to stay enrolled and succeed at Wingate, then we want to be able to help them."

The family, impressed with the reach of the program and with the fact that the Jessie Ball duPont Fund had already ponied up $133,250 to get it going, hopes that the investment will bring even more donors on board, so the program can expand.

“We want to give you money that will help you raise money, to make this sustainable,” Tom told Percy. “This gives you the runway to go out and build other fundraising to support this initiative.”

The family wasn’t a hard sell.

“We liked just about everything they were doing,” Jane says. “In essence, the whole program was designed to make people who are less comfortable in a new environment – i.e., going to college – it’s designed to make them comfortable. It’s designed to tutor them. It’s designed to meet their particular needs as they try to assimilate into Wingate.

“Antonio probably couldn’t have designed a better program for today’s needs.”

“I loved my time at Wingate,” Katherine says. “I needed the small classes. I needed the small campus. It was where I fit in. If the First-Gen Bulldog Program helps someone who fits in there to stay enrolled and succeed at Wingate, then we want to be able to help them.”

Want to support the First-Gen Bulldog Program or give to another area of campus? Contact Brittany Peper, with the Office of Advancement, or give here, and be sure to show your support during One Day, One Dog, on March 30.

— OneDog, #OneDog, and One Day One Dog are registered trademarks of Wingate University.