Upward Bound Honors Payne with Scholarship, Lifetime Achievement Award

Hal D. Payne, vice president for student affairs, has played a crucial role in making a college education possible for more than one million low-income, first-generation students across the country.

In 1981, Payne was elected the first president of the Council for Opportunity in Education (COE), a Washington-based nonprofit organization that works to advance and defend the ideal of equal educational opportunities for students.

COE now serves almost 800,000 students annually at more than 1,000 colleges and universities in the United States. At SUNY Buffalo State, approximately 90 Buffalo high school students have participated annually in Upward Bound, one of the programs under the COE umbrella, since its inception on campus in 1986.

To recognize his important work, Buffalo State’s Upward Bound Program has created the Hal D. Payne Upward Bound Scholarship Award, a $500 privately funded scholarship to be awarded to a high school graduate who excelled in Upward Bound over the past four years. Additionally, it established the Hal D. Payne Educational Opportunity Lifetime Service Award to honor a national, state, or local leader who has demonstrated a commitment to advancing educational opportunities for college students.

The inaugural lifetime service award will go to Arnold L. Mitchem, COE’s current president. The scholarship will go to Ibrahiim El Amiin, a 2013 graduate of Math and Science Technology High School. Both recipients will be honored, along with Payne, during the Upward Bound Summer Program Awards Banquet, Thursday, August 8, at 7:00 p.m. at the Adam’s Mark Hotel and Event Center, 120 Church Street in Buffalo. Mitchem also will serve as the keynote speaker.

Mitchem introduced the concept of “first-generation students” through his congressional testimony in the late 1970s, and the term was defined in the education amendments of 1980. Since then, Mitchem has testified before Congress more than a dozen times, sharing his expertise on education reform, the availability of quality education, and student loan issues. He worked tirelessly with the eight federally funded pre-collegiate programs known as TRIO that serve low-income individuals, first-generation college students, and individuals with disabilities.

“Dr. Mitchem’s career-long leadership of the national TRIO community, his outspoken advocacy for policies and funding to strengthen TRIO and access programs, and his unwavering belief in the potential for individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds make him the most worthy inaugural recipient of this award,” said Charles Kenyon, associate vice president for student affairs and dean of students.

Local dignitaries including U.S. Congressman Brian Higgins,’85; New York State Assemblywoman Crystal Peoples-Stokes, ’74, ’02; and Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown, ’83, are expected to attend the banquet,  which celebrates the academic work 48 students from Lafayette, McKinley, and East high schools completed during a six-week summer residential program on the Buffalo State campus.

The personalized attention the students receive pays off. In the high-need schools where poverty and other hurdles make a college education a slim reality for many, 90 percent of Upward Bound students go onto college, said Don Patterson, director of Buffalo State’s Upward Bound program.

“It’s a civil rights issue. Everyone deserves the chance for a college education,” Patterson said. “Through Upward Bound and other TRIO programs, we are connecting students who have the aptitude and the willingness to do the work with the college experience.”