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Duke

Duke Rhodes Scholar has a vision of helping international kids

By Beth Brundage

Dec 5, 2008

In an athletic context, vision means much more than the quality of one’s eyesight. It includes the ability to perceive many things at once, the capacity to foresee what might happen next, and the facility to picture success even when faced with numerous obstacles.

Parker Goyer, a 2007 Duke graduate and former Blue Devil tennis player, often relied on her vision when hitting cross-court winners and deciding when to go to net. Now, she is shifting her gaze beyond the tennis court, setting her sights on promoting higher education in rural communities around the world with her innovative Coach for College program. Her program is one of the reasons she was recently awarded a Rhodes Scholarship.

The main goal of Coach for College is to motivate middle school students in these rural communities to pursue higher education opportunities, using sports as a vehicle. Additionally, Goyer saw the opportunity for the program to have an impact on student-athletes from American universities, by giving these athletes an opportunity to travel abroad and use their unique skills to serve the global community.

“Once I graduated, I started thinking back on my experiences as a student-athlete and how hard it was to do study abroad or a lot of service in the community,” Goyer said. “That same summer, in 2007, I went to Vietnam and Belize, and when I was there, I saw a lack of role models, educational infrastructure, and sports infrastructure in the rural communities.”

These experiences sparked the Coach for College concept, and through her participation in the Robertson Fellows program, which gives alumni the opportunity to explore research opportunities, Goyer’s vision gained further clarity.

When contemplating how her Coach for College program could tackle the problems surrounding higher education in developing nations, Goyer theorized that sports could be used to generate excitement for learning and provide program participants with skills that would help them take their education to the next level.

“I think that sports are a way to promote excitement about learning because a lot of kids are very much intrigued by sports,” Goyer said. “They love sports but don’t necessarily love academics, so by pairing sports and academics you can actually get kids more excited about school.”

“There are also a lot of intangible life skills that you can learn through sports, such as dedication, creativity, setting goals, overcoming setbacks, flexibility—things like that which can also help you do well in academics.”

These ideas served as the basis of the Coach for College curriculum, which is comprised of academic, sports, and team-building courses all centered on participation in organized athletics.

In addition, Goyer also felt that it would be important for program participants to interact with quality role models, and she worked to put together a coaching staff comprised of American student-athletes as well as high school and college students from the host country.

The student-athletes were selected from a pool of applicants representing both Duke and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Thinking back to her summer travels, Goyer selected the Hoa An Secondary School in southern Vietnam as the host site, and elicited help from college students from nearby Can Tho University as well as area high school students.

Everything seemed to be falling into place, but as Goyer learned during her days on the tennis court, extensive preparation means very little without the determination to see things through. After drafting the curriculum, selecting the coaches, and deciding on the site, Goyer knew that some of the biggest obstacles were still ahead. She was persistent in raising money and gaining the approval of various stakeholders, such as the NCAA, the Duke administration, and the Vietnamese government. Through the course of her work, Goyer also found valuable teammates at the newly formed Duke Center for Civic Engagement.

“The goals and mission [of Coach for College] were similar to our flagship program, DukeEngage, which is a program that places Duke undergraduates in service opportunities around the world,” said center director, Eric Mlyn. “This center is relatively new, so when Parker had this idea and got support for the idea, it made a lot of sense for it to come under the umbrella of the Duke Center for Civic Engagement.”

Mlyn also commented that while the center plays an administrative role, Goyer is still the driving force behind the program. A fact made even more impressive considering that Goyer graduated less than two years ago.

“Most of what we do is DukeEngage, which consists of the programs that were created by a task force…It’s really a very unusual model, not only for Duke but for universities across the country, for a recent graduate to come up with a program of this vision and scale.”

In the summer of 2008, just a year after her initial vision for Coach for College took root, Goyer and 20 student-athletes from Duke and UNC embarked on the ultimate road trip. The group traveled to Vietnam where local high school and college students joined them to officially implement the Coach for College program.

Over the course of two three-week sessions, the coaches led 200 students, ranging from sixth to ninth grade, through the sports, academic, and team-building courses outlined in the program curriculum. For Goyer, the positive impact that Coach for College had on the participants added to the excitement of seeing her vision become a reality.

“Talking to some the of the kids, I heard them say, through a translator, that they never thought about college before — they thought it was not for them — but now that they’ve learned more about college through the program and talking to the coaches, they feel like it’s something that they’re going to be able to do.”

“I also have a picture of a Duke lacrosse player high-fiving a Vietnamese student,” Goyer said, “and I think this shows the power of sport to bring about cultural exchange and to get people to interact that would never get a chance to interact otherwise.”

For some of the program coaches, Goyer’s vision proved to be contagious.

Casey Hales, a 2008 Duke graduate and former long-snapper for the football team, served as a program coach last summer. He has extended his involvement with Coach for College, now serving as the Associate Director of Operations and Development.

“I really believe in Coach for College as a program,” Hales said. “It’s just extremely unique to be able to take student-athletes from American to Vietnam to coach and teach the life lessons learned through sports to encourage higher education…I’ve always been involved in sports, and I’ve always had a passion for pursuing higher education. The intersection between academics and athletics is a passion of mine, and it’s something that I just really believe in and really want to stay involved with.”

Fueled by the success of the pilot program, Goyer and her growing staff are focusing on ways to make the program more effective and sustainable.

“I want to hire some of the Vietnamese college students to be the onsite directors who could facilitate things like sports leagues and programs during the academic year, but the overall idea is for the program to happen every summer in the same location, year after year, so that sixth-graders can continue through their ninth grade year, in high school [a student can] become a coach in the program, and then work in the program after they go to college.”

Goyer plans to leverage her higher education to benefit Coach for College.

As a doctoral candidate at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Goyer is focusing her studies on the improvement of education in developing countries, and she hopes to make the Coach for College program the focus of her dissertation.

Goyer will also be traveling to Oxford University next fall as part of the prestigious Rhodes Scholar program. While at Oxford, she will have an opportunity to interact with other scholars from around the globe, and she hopes that this experience will help aid in the growth of Coach for College.

“My main goal [while at Oxford] is to find out more information about the educational systems, personnel, and curricula in other countries for the purpose of adapting the Coach for College model to those other countries,” Goyer said.

“My ultimate goal is to make [Coach for College] a truly global initiative that has locations around the world, in other developing countries, and utilizes American student-athletes from different universities.”

Keeping with the spirit of fostering good will and cultural exchange, Goyer hopes to keep the rivalry theme alive and is currently looking into taking Coach to College to a second site in Vietnam this summer with students from Virginia Tech and the University of Virginia.

Those who have experienced Goyer’s determination first-hand are confident in her ability to carry out her long-term vision for the program.

“Parker is exceptionally determined,” said Hales. “She really saw the big picture early on and was able to fill in all the missing pieces to get us there and make it all happen.”

“For the long term, the sky is the limit for Parker,” said Mlyn. “I can see this becoming a national model for other universities who want to do the important thing of involving student athletes in service work around the world…She has just done an amazing job.”