Veteran journalist Andrew Gumbel will discuss his work in uncovering the human stories behind Georgia State University’s innovative initiatives to support and retain students as they realize lifelong dreams of graduating from college. Gumbel will be joined by two former and current students who appear in the book, Cary Claiborne and Tyler Mulvenna. The panel will be moderated by AJC education reporter, Maureen Downey. 


About the book:
Won’t Lose This Dream: How an Upstart Urban University Rewrote the Rules of a Broken Systemis the inspiring story of a public university that has blazed an extraordinary trail for lower-income and first-generation students in downtown Atlanta, the birthplace of the civil rights movement.
Over the past decade Georgia State University has upended the conventional wisdom that large numbers of students are doomed to fail simply because of their economic background or the color of their skin. Instead, it has harnessed the power of big data to identify and remove the obstacles that previously stopped them from graduating and completely transformed their prospects. A student from a mediocre high school working two jobs to make ends meet is now no less likely to succeed than a child of wealth and privilege—an earth-shaking achievement that is reverberating across every college campus in the country.

With unique access to the key players and drawing on his skills as an investigative reporter, Andrew Gumbel delivers a thrilling, blow-by-blow account of a long battle to determine whether universities exist for their students or vice versa. The story is told through the visionary leaders who overcame fierce resistance to tear up the rules of their own institution and through the many remarkable students whose resilience and determination, often against daunting odds, inspired the work at every stage. Their success shows how the promise of social advancement through talent and hard work, the essence of the American dream, can be rekindled even in an age of deep inequalities and divisive politics.


About the author:

Andrew Gumbel is a British-born journalist and author, with a long track record as a foreign correspondent, investigative reporter, and political columnist. His previous books include Oklahoma City: What The Investigation Missed -- and Why it Still Matters (HarperCollins, 2012), a colorful, thorough re-examination of the 1995 bombing, and Down for the Count: Dirty Elections and the Rotten History of Democracy in America (The New Press, 2016), which asks why the United States, alone among developed democracies, has never settled basic questions about the right to vote and the fair, transparent conduct of elections. Andrew lives in Los Angeles and his work appears regularly in the Guardian, among many other publications. Won't Lose This Dream is his first book about education; he has worked on an occasional basis as a writing teacher, including a stint helping students in struggling, predominantly lower-income Los Angeles public high schools find their confidence and their voice through journalism.

About the students:
Cary Claiborne is associate director of student success at an institution he was once kicked out of. After a checkered community college career, Cary eventually found his groove -- and earned two degrees -- at Georgia State. He was also part of the academic advising team that introduced big data to analyse and predict student performance and turn what had been a reactive advising service to one that reached out to all students as a matter of course. After the five campuses of Georgia Perimeter College -- Cary's first alma mater -- merged with Georgia State in 2016, he helped lead the effort to bring Georgia State's student success revolution to community college kids who had previously been earning their associate's degrees at just a 6% clip. That number has now more than tripled.

Tyler Mulvenna earned a triple major in international business, marketing and French from Georgia State in 2017 and was, among other honors, a student ambassador with the university's 1913 Society. He almost didn't make it out of freshman year, however, because of a big financial crunch and an unexpected struggle to earn the credits he needed to qualify for the state HOPE scholarship. Tyler was one of the first recipients of Georgia State's celebrated micro-grants, known as Panther retention grants, which are awarded to deserving students with no application necessary and have been instrumental in rescuing student careers that might otherwise have gone off the rails for lack of just a few hundred dollars. After graduation, Tyler worked with the IHG hotel group and with IBM.


About the moderator: 
Maureen Downey is a longtime reporter for the AJC where she has written about local, state and federal education policy for 21 years. However, she's learned more about schools from having four children.  
Her own education includes an undergraduate degree from the University of Delaware and a master's degree from Columbia University. She has worked for newspapers in New Jersey and Florida. She's also taught college classes in mass communications and journalism in Georgia and Florida
She was one of three finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in editorial writing. (The jury ended in a deadlock in her category that year.) She also has been a National Headliner award winner and a two-time winner of the Cox Editorial Writer of the Year award. She also won the Atlanta Press Club Journalist of the Year Award for opinion writing. Two years, ago, the Education Writers Association named her Opinion Writer of the Year. 
She now writes a weekly column for the AJC on education and the popular AJC Get Schooled blog on AJC.com. She and her husband, Bo Emerson, a fellow journalist, live in Decatur.


Won't Lose This Dream: How an Upstart Urban University Rewrote the Rules of a Broken System by Andrew Gumbel available from local, indie bookstore Charise Books & More


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Judy Turner Award Winner, Andrew Gumbel: Won't Lose This Dream