Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Youth Program and
Dr. Rudolph G. Gordon College Fair

Committee Chair: Bobby Clark (MLK Youth Program and Gordon College Fair)

2024 Program and Details ( Update 6/28/24)

We conducted a successful in-person program, the largest since the pandemic. We had 247 registered and only Streamed the Financial Aid session. The actual attendance was over 200 people; this is up from 230, where we had 175 attend.

Dr. Lee York was the moderator for the "First Year of College" Seminar and received great comments. We recognized 60 student winners (we had 52 from last year) as the student winners, although 80 registered on Eventbrite. It is a big improvement from last year. We hope we continue that trend. We had six colleges represented, down from 12 last year. We need to connect some earlier, and we are competing in ATL, which lowers our HBCU recruiters. Student participation was much higher than last year, with 274 students and 13 out of 16 high schools participating. We may see increases later this month. 

We had 23 volunteers for the program. Ms. Melanie Gordon was our award reader again, and she worked with the Committee to check in and "line up" our student winners.

We recorded the Financial Aid and College Recruiter portions of the program. We used a digital booklet for the event and printed 200 books for the program.  B. Clark delivered 214 unclaimed certificates to our schools. 

We have the consolidated program and plan summary into a separate document, which is available here. (You may need to request access.)

2023 Program and Details (Updated 6/28/24)

We conducted our first in-person program since the pandemic. We had 175 registered and only Streamed the Financial Aid session. The actual attendance was over 175 people; last year, the virtual attendance was 130-180 with 65 connections.

Dr. Arthur Doctor was the moderator for the "First Year of College" Seminar and did a fantastic job (especially on short notice). We recognized 45 student winners (we had 27 from last year) as the student winners. We know this will come to recover from the pandemic's effects. We had 12 colleges represented, down from 15 last year. Student participation was much higher than last year, with 241 students and 15 out of 16 high schools participating.

We had >20 volunteers for the program. Ms. Melanie Gordon was our award reader again, and she worked with the Committee to check in and "line up" our student winners. We will need to improve this process next year.

We recorded the Financial Aid and College Recruiter portions of the program. We used a digital booklet for the event and printed 200 books for the program.  B. Clark delivered 196 unclaimed certificates to our schools. 

We have summarized the consolidated program and plan in a separate document, which is available here. (You may need to request access.

2022 Program and Details (Updated 2/6/2022)

We conducted a successful virtual program despite the current COVID conditions (noting high school students are still largely unvaccinated). We had 140 registered and a high of 65 connections. One connection was probably equal to 2-3 people (student and parents). So, the actual attendance was 130-180 people. We will know better once we review the connection logs. 

Dr. Carlos Grant (GGL, Principal at WHHS), as moderator for the "First Year of College" Seminar, received great comments. We recognized 23 student winners (+1 from last year) as the student winners, although 41 registered on Eventbrite. Hopefully, we can improve this next year. We had 15 colleges represented with 14 breakout rooms. We had some connection issues with some recruiters and brothers, and we will resolve them in the future. Student participation was slightly higher than last year, with 217 students and 8 out of 15 high schools participating. We may see increases later this month. 

We had 16 volunteers for the program. We have started feedback requests and received two (2) surveys as of 2/6/22. We continue to promote until the end of February. Ms. Melanie Gordon was our award reader again, and she worked with Bobby Clark to use a Google form to check in to virtually "line up" our student winners.

We recorded the Financial Aid and College Recruiter portions of the program. We used a virtual booklet for the event, and we will print 217 books to be delivered with Student winner certificates. 

We have consolidated the program and plan summary into a separate document, which is available here. (You may need to request access.)

2021 Program and details (Updated 2/6/2022)

We had a successful event, despite the issue of being affected by the COVID Crisis and we had to conduct a virtual event.  We had 55 connections, with one connection being equal to 2-3 people (Student and parents). That means 110 to 165 people attended the event. We have 8 colleges attend the college fair and 22 Student Winners. We had 18 volunteers for the program. Bonnie Carson Durham (USC-Upstate) was Financial Aid presenter and Dr. Carlos Grant (GGL, Principal at Wade Hampton High School) was our Moderator for the "First Year of College" seminar with Students from Clemson and Furman Universities. We initially had 215 Student winners, but it climbed to 233 students after the program. We used a virtual booklet for the event and printed 233 books to be delivered with certificates.  We received 10 feedback surveys with positive comments. Ms. Melanie Gordon was our Awards Reader and she worked with Bobby Clark to use a google form to check-in form to gather the student winners. 

We have consolidated the program and plan summary into a separate document available here. (You may need to request access.)

2020 Program and details (Updated on 3/3/2020)

More than 200 attendees with 45 students attending and 230 unclaimed certificates to be delivered to schools. We have consolidated the program details and plan summary into a separate document available here. (You need to request access.) We had a total of 275 Student winners this year. 

Past Programs Information

2019 Program and details (Update on 3/15/2019)

More than 200 attendees with 60 students attending and 190 unclaimed certificates to be delivered to schools. We have consolidated the program details and plan summary into a separate document available here. 

2017 Program and details  (Updated on 2/16/2017)

Thank you for supporting our MLK Youth Program and Gordon College Fair event on 2/2.

We had a great turnout with ~250 people attending and ~75 of the 301 student winners receiving awards (301 is our large award count ever). We had 13 college recruiters at the program; we continue to review our college list to be sure we have correct contacts for next year.  We did have 14 out of 14  high schools participate this year - the third time in a row. One school submitted 60 winners. 

We are planning to re-printing certificates by March 1st  and delivery them by March 15th with a final deadline of April 1st for any additional corrections. 

2016 Program and details  (Updated on 2/16/2017)

We had another great turnout with ~180 people attending and 36 of the 237 student winners receiving awards. We had 11 college recruiters at the program; we need to review our college list to be sure we have correct contacts for next year.  We did have 14 out of 14  high schools participate this year - the second time in a row.

We delivered 201 unclaimed certificates to the District by June 1st.

2015 Program and details  (Updated on 5/18/2015)

We had another great turnout with ~200 people attending and 60 of the 231 student winners receiving awards. We had 10 college recruiters at the program; we need to review our college list to be sure we have correct contacts for next year.  We did have 14 out of 14  high schools participate this year - a first in some time.

We continue to receive many positive comments about the program from students, parents, and recruiters. Special recognition to Brother Richardson and USC Upstate's Bonnie Carson for their great help with the College Fair seminars.

We did try to move the location from Trone Center to University Center in McAlister Square. However, there was a significant cost to make this move (>$1500) and there would be many compromises to the program. The extra cost would include Furniture rental, Insurance, Program overflow, and other factors that would be required by the move. Ultimately, we decided to keep the program at Furman University for now.

We did see an issue with the program listing and the coordinating list. We have identified the process issue and we will have it correct for next year. We will post a corrected Program (PDF) on the foundation website and send those programs to Berea and J.L. Mann High Schools with their unclaimed Certificates. 171 Unclaimed and Corrected Certificates were be sent by May 12th, since we have an April 1 deadline for corrections. We may change that deadline to March 1st next year. We set the second deadline for correction for June 1.

Here is a final summary of the program numbers for 2015, and we have an update after compiling the survey data.

Please share your feedback on the Chapter's Feedback form www.gglapa.org/feedback.html

2014 Program and Details  (Updated on 2/8/2014)

Thank you for supporting our MLK Youth Program and Gordon Fair event on 2/1. We had a great turnout with ~180 people attending and 53 of the 204 student winners receiving awards. We also had 16 colleges recruiters at the program;  this is our largest college attendance since 2009.  I have received many positive comments about the program from students, parents, and recruiters and we have every right to be proud of this event and its impact.

Notable observations from this year's program:

• • We continued our experiment with Eventbrite for the registration and it allowed 24 of the 53 Winners to register.We need to implement this feature in the information sheet. We had 102 visits who tried register up to  the day of event.

  • We need to should Eventbrite to allow College Recruiters to register next year.

  • We had some conflicting events which cause travel issues for parents, brothers, and winners (5-K Run in particular) to the Trone Center.

  • We had the same two High Schools not turn in winners this year and last year: Carolina and Woodmont High Schools. We need to address this for next year.

We will have articles and pictures for the event on the Foundation and Chapter sites in the next few days.

Believe it or not, we do have some post-event work to do. We’ll have to send, correct, and collect information to go back to schools over the next few weeks. If you want to be helpful with those tasks, please let me know.

We are sometimes been asked to attend high school award ceremonies, so I am looking for volunteers to attend those programs in May and June.  Most of the schools use our unclaimed awards in their programs. 

I shared with the Counselors & Brothers that we have a feedback form on our website,http://www.gglapa.org , if any of you want to give us any feedback about the program.  Just click on the feedback link above the recent recent events listing. We would love to hear your feedback about the program – that will help us improve for next year.

2013 Program and Details

Thank you for supporting our MLK Youth Program and Gordon Fair event. We had a great turnout with ~200 people attending and 53 of the 217 student winners receiving awards. We also had 14 colleges recruiters at the program. 

We experimented with Eventbrite for the registration and it allowed 32 of the 53 winners to register.

On February 23, 2012, our brother, Dr. Rudolph G. Gordon passed away. Dr. Gordon was extremely committed to educational efforts have served as a Superintendent of Greenville County until 2000. He was particularly dedicated to this program, and as a fitting gesture, we have decided to rename the College Fair to be the Rudolph G. Gordon College Fair.  His daughter, Melanie, attended the program and we recognized her.

Committee Chairs: Bobby Clark (Youth program),  Edward Young (College Fair)

2012 Program and Details.

Updated on March 18, 2012. 

I wanted to thank you for all your assistance with this year's program.  We had about ~210 people attend and about 57 student winners at the program on Saturday. We also had eight college reps at the fair this year. We had 233 awards winner submitted by Deadline, but we ended up with 253 winners (Wade Hampton turned in their awards, on Friday). 

Youth Program Winner Total & Analysis

Click to see Larger view

Summarized Survey Results

Click to see Larger view

We (Bobby) has delivered the unclaimed certificates to the schools this month for their award programs. He delivered the certificates to them at their March meeting on the 15th.  We may still receive corrected certificates from the high schools. The deadline for those corrections is April 1 and we'll deliver the certificates to those high schools by May 1. 

Winner during the College Discussion 

Mr. Kim Jenerette gives talk on Financial Aid

2011 Program and Details.

Event completed on February 5, 2011. 203 awards created, 48 winners given at the program. ~200 attended the event.  There is a survey on the Public web site for Brothers and we are gathering feedback from students and recruiters. All Certificates will returned to High schools by end of March. 

2010 Program and Details.

Event completed on February 6, 2010. 231 awards created, 69 given at the program. ~230 attended the event. 

There is a survey on the Public web site for Brothers and we have gathered feedback from students and recruiters. All Certificates have been returned to High schools. 

Here is a Summary of the certificates and attendance for the program. Click to view full size.

Here is a Summary of the event Budget.  Click to view full size.