On the Education Frontier
By Sharon L. Crenson
Wharton alumni chart new territory while changing young lives.
Eric Adler, WG'96, was a high school physics teacher with eight years of experience
when he traded life in front of a classroom for a student's seat at Wharton.
Within two years of graduation, he was back before a room of expectant preteens,
this time under entirely different circumstances.
Rather than introducing affluent prep schoolers to inertia and velocity, Adler faced
potential street gang members, many of whom – at age 12 – were already badly behind
in school. Each looked to Adler for a second chance. Each hoped they'd find it at the
nation's first inner-city public boarding school, the brain child of Adler and business
partner Rajiv Vinnakota.
Both men fled well-paid consulting jobs to give the kids a radically different educational
opportunity.
"Management consulting didn't have the entrepreneurial feeling I was looking for, and
I didn't feel I was doing important work," Adler says now. "It's not quite the same thing
as standing in front of a physics class and watching a kid go 'Oh my God, I get that!'"
So Adler joined a small coterie of Wharton alums who have used their degrees in the
service of education. Among them: George Weiss, W'65, who has spent $20 million of
the money he earns in investment management to send poor kids to college; and Ed
Marcum, WG'01, who recently took the reins of a nonprofit that supports education
in Kenya, Tanzania, Indonesia, and Guatemala, as well as San Francisco.
There are others as well. Jason Green, WG'02, is
co-founder and senior vice president of development
of BEST Education Partners, a private company
that partners with charter school boards and
public school districts to enhance learning and
increase academic performance. Helen Frame
Peters, PhD'79, serves the other end of the educational
spectrum as dean of Boston College's
Carroll School of Business.
And more and more Wharton MBA students
are tutoring Upward Bound kids, a group of
students from low-income families or from
households in which neither parent holds a bachelor's
degree.
Susan Cespuglio, a second-year MBA student
and co-president of the Wharton Tutoring Club,
says more than 70 MBA students expressed an
interest this year, more than double last year's
number. The upturn allowed the club to pair high
schoolers with tutors who have expertise in particular
areas the younger students have trouble with,
rather than simply assigning tutors randomly.
"It feels really good," Cespuglio says. "Maybe
it's just because of the way I was raised. I know
how lucky I am, and it feels really good to help."
But Adler, Weiss, and Marcum are unique in
their reach, having dedicated themselves to the
very poorest, most disadvantaged children they
can find.
According to the 2000 census, approximately
1.56 million U.S. residents ages 16 to 19 were not
high school graduates and not enrolled in school.
That's about 10 percent. Underdeveloped countries
are far worse off. The World Bank reports that
only 67 percent of Tanzanian children have access
to primary education, a number down from 93
percent in 1980.
Adler, Weiss, and Marcum are out to change
those numbers for the better.
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