Beating the odds
Program may help students reach potential
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STEUBENVILLE -- Officials with Eastern Gateway Community College and Beating the Odds, a foundation dedicated to empowering kids to overcome obstacles in their road to success, spent hours Thursday exploring the potential for a partnership.
EGCC President Mike Geoghegan, Beating the Odds founder and CEO Rocco Scalzi and Beating the Odds Co-Chairman and Pittsburgh Steeler great Rocky Bleier emerged from their several-hours long conversation to discuss in general terms how they could work together to help individuals achieve their dreams, though at times it sounded as if they’d already come to a working agreement.
“We just got together for the first time,” Geoghegan insisted. “There’s going to be follow-ups.”
Bleier described it as a get-to-know-you opportunity allowing the Beating the Odds envoys to learn more about EGCC and vice-versa.
“We both have something to offer each other,” Geoghegan said.
Beating the Odds focuses on strategies and techniques to inspire young people to overcome the barriers in their life, including school-based educational opportunities and campus visits; EGCC has done the same with higher education, finding ways to remove the barriers that prevent individuals from earning degrees.
Based on those two similar missions, the organizations see many different opportunities to partner together.
Scalzi, a former police officer in Altoona, Pa., started Beating the Odds in 1990, after an incident in his rookie year a decade earlier forced him to refocus. After choosing to turn his own life around despite the obstacles in his path, Scalzi took his message of hope to kids across the country, encouraging them to develop a “never-give-up attitude.”
Geoghegan said that kind of emotional support, coupled with the educational opportunities EGCC can offer, “is a real win-win.”
Scalzi agreed, saying the three of them will be “putting a blueprint together.”
“There’s a lot of potential, a lot of opportunities to keep going what Rocco and I started 31 years ago,” Bleier added. “It all starts by giving kids the opportunity to go to school.”
He said organizations like NASA want young people struggling to overcome obstacles in their own lives to know that “the top scientists and engineers working with great companies all have stories,” they’ve faced the same hurdles in their lives.
“That’s why we call it ‘Beating the Odds,'” Scalzi added.