CMU Off-Campus Success Stories
CMU Graduate Works to Save Kids from the Streets
It takes a village to raise a child, and no
one could agree more than recent CMU graduate Bob Howard.
Bob, who is the outreach coordinator at Covenant House in Atlanta, graduated
this past December with a Master of Arts Degree in Education with an
Instructional concentration. His position with Covenant House takes him into
some of Atlanta’s toughest neighborhoods seeking out sexually exploited
youth, drug dealers and gang members in hopes of saving a life.
“It’s really hard to see the conditions some of these young people live in.
Many of them are in trouble with the law and are facing the prospect of
spending the next several years in prison,” Bob explained. “We bring them to
Covenant House and work with the courts to get their charges reduced. They
have to agree to work on getting their lives back on track and we hold them
to it,” he added.
The lives of the young people Bob encounters are troubling. “These kids are
starving, couch surfing (bouncing from home to home, staying wherever they
can find a place), and most of them have been sexually exploited.”
“Our outreach program has been fortunate to have Bob working for us,” Misha
Nonen, director of programs at Covenant House stated. “He has his hands in a
lot of different areas. “In his position he has to be well organized and be
able to juggle a lot of projects. He was able to manage his work schedule
and attend classes at CMU.”
Bob said after he had earned his undergraduate degree he was looking for a
graduate program that would fit his often hectic work schedule. CMU’s
program offered the flexibility to meet his needs.
Bob also teaches substance abuse classes at Covenant House. His capstone
project for his master’s degree from CMU was titled “The Relationship
between Marijuana Use and the Decline in Educational Attainment and Drop-out
Rate among African-American Males.” His research project has been used by
several agencies in the metro-Atlanta area.
“I have kids as young as ten years old that I meet on the street late at
night,” Bob noted. “Drugs and anger are the two top challenges I encounter
with these young people. These youth are angry because of the issues they
face in their lives. They blame their parents for their situations, rather
than taking responsibility for their own actions. We work to help them
realize they have to be responsible for themselves.” He noted he has had a
100 percent success rate dealing with youth with legal issues.
Bob stresses the need for community and family involvement to help combat
the growing problem of youth violence facing all U.S. cities today.
“I encourage everyone in the communities to get involved,” Bob said. “There
are enough programs in Atlanta to supply the city with help, but
organizations are not working together to meet the needs adequately. We need
to start by setting examples for these kids and I have to say the adult
black males are dropping the ball in the metro-Atlanta area. I often ask
youth, ‘Where is your father?’ Sixty to seventy-five percent of the time the
answer is ‘in jail’ or ‘on drugs.’ You can’t solve an internal family
problem with external solutions. We need family involvement and community
involvement, because this is not something that can be done in isolation. It
really does take a village to raise a child.”
Bob Howard,
Master of Arts degree
in Education