The Path To Success

This story originally appeared in the 2016 issue of Arising, the Research Journal of Savannah State University.

Story by Amy Pine. Photography by Hon Low.

When Aaron Johnson first arrived at Savannah State University in 2012, the Augusta, Ga., native was overwhelmed. While juggling his classes was easy in high school, Johnson struggled to manage his new schedule. One day during his sophomore year, a professor told him about Student Support Services, a program on campus designed to help students succeed academically. Today Johnson is excelling in his classes, tutors fellow Student Support Services participants in his spare time and will graduate in December with a bachelor of science degree in biology with a concentration in secondary education.

Student Support Services was started by the U.S. government in 1968 to help students from disadvantaged backgrounds. The program is part of TRiO, a group of federal outreach and student services programs designed to help students progress through the academic pipeline from middle school to college and beyond. Savannah State offers three TRiO programs on campus: Student Support Services, Upward Bound and Educational Talent Search.

Student Support Services has been operating at Savannah State University since 1992. Today, the U.S. Department of Education-funded program assists 175 students on campus, facilitating student success by providing services that promote academic excellence, degree program selection and completion, financial and economic literacy, cultural competence, and graduate and professional program application and enrollment. In 2015, Savannah State received more than $1.4 million to continue the program through 2020.

“Our goal is to provide students with the support they need to help them matriculate and graduate,” says Gary Guillory, Ed.D., director of Student Support Services on the Savannah State campus.
SSU’s Student Support Services office serves students who are from low-income backgrounds, first-generation college students or those with disabilities. All of the students must demonstrate the need for academic support.

Once in the program, students attend workshops on an array of topics such as time management, engage with faculty during critical thinking and discussion hours, receive academic advisement and tutoring, attend sessions on financial planning, and learn about graduate programs and the application process.

Student Support Services participants also have access to the Center for Success, a comfortable space in Whiting Hall where students can go to study, have access to resources and receive tutoring services. The space has served as a home away from home for Johnson, who has spent countless hours in the center attending workshops and studying.

“Student Support Services gave me somewhere outside of the library where I could do my work comfortably,” Johnson says. “It also gave me an environment of like-minded people. Everyone is doing homework or working on a project or assignment or doing something business-wise or just trying to do better.”

Johnson excelled in Student Support Services and today serves as one of the program’s three student success coaches, tutoring classmates and guiding them in other aspects of college life.

Guillory says that the peer-to-peer coaching is one of the many reasons why Student Support Services has continued to succeed on the Savannah State campus. Based on recent statistics, 90 percent of students who utilized Student Support Services during the 2014-15 academic year were in good academic standing at the end of the year, and 76 percent of students re-enrolled in the university for the Fall 2015 semester.

“We serve students who are coming out of foster care, many of our students are coming from disadvantaged circumstances [facing] housing insecurity and food insecurity, some have experienced horrific violence in their lives,” says Guillory, who is assisted by a staff that includes Assistant Director Tameka McDaniel, Coordinator of Tutorial and Computer Services Lottie Scott, and Programming Specialist Desiree Johnson. “The program is very successful, even though students are coming from those very difficult backgrounds to achieve their college goals.”

For Shermia Fluker, a junior political science major from Augusta, Ga., Student Support Services has helped guide her on the path to graduate school and a professional career. “I have taken advantage of the free workshops for example [on topics such as] financial aid assistance, critiquing your resume and learning how to pay back student loans,” says Fluker, who has used Student Support Services grant aid money to help pay for school.

Fluker and Johnson are two of many Student Support Services success stories. Program participants in recent years include Jordan Riles-Ogden, Miss Savannah State University 2010-11 who now works as a career development specialist at SSU, and Brittany Bush, an honor graduate who received the university’s prestigious President’s Second Mile Award in May 2015.

“Student Support Services helps students to realize their college success goals, and in doing so, we’re helping to change lives,” Guillory says. “We’re helping students build confidence in their future careers, in their personal and professional lives. We’re helping to produce productive citizens who will advance this democracy of ours.”

Homeward Bound

“Homeward Bound” originally appeared in the 2016 edition of Arising, the Research Journal of Savannah State University.

Story by Amy Pine. Photography by Hon Low.

On an unseasonably warm Saturday afternoon in February, teachers, professors and students gather in the home of Savannah State University President Cheryl D. Dozier. With the smell of traditional Ghanaian cuisine wafting through the hallways, she leads the group through her home, a bright, airy space adorned with relics from the Dozier family’s travels through Africa.


As the group makes its way from room to room, Ghana native and SSU graduate Jonas Subaar beats a Fontonfrom, a traditional drum from Ghana’s Ashanti Region, while SSU Professor Kisha Cunningham, Ph.D., demonstrates an African Fanga dance.

Ghana native and Savannah resident Jonas Subaar, who facilitated a workshop for GGPA participants, demonstrates Ghanaian drumming techniques on a Fontonfrom

The group pauses in the foyer and listens intently as trip consultant and Ghana native Kwesi DeGraft-Hanson, Ph.D., explains the significance of drumming. Drums, DeGraft-Hanson says, are central to Ghanaian culture. When Africans were brought to the U.S. as slaves, plantation owners banned the use of the instrument because it could be used as a means of communication.

The group has gathered at the home of Dozier and her husband, Arthur Dozier II, to learn more about Ghanaian culture in preparation for a trip to the West African country in May.

Bringing Ghanaian culture to American classrooms

The Ghana Group Project Abroad (GGPA), funded by a U.S. Department of Education Fulbright-Hays Group Project Abroad grant, aims to improve modern foreign language and social studies curriculum, course offerings and performance in Savannah’s educational institutions. Participants include teachers from the Savannah-Chatham County Public School System, along with SSU professors and students.


The GGPA trip is especially significant because of the city of Savannah’s relationship to Ghana.

“The city of Savannah used to be a major port city during the Atlantic slave trade. Here in what is called the Gullah-Geechee Corridor, you find a large concentration of African-Americans, and many of them have traditions and culture that have similarity with the traditions and culture in the Western coast of Africa,” says trip organizer Emmanuel Naniuzeyi Sr., Ph.D., professor of political science and director of SSU’s International Education Center. “Those enslaved Africans who were brought to the United States, their cultural aspects are still visible in this area. But a lot of African-Americans do not understand the connections that exist between the East Coast of the United States and the West Coast of Africa.”

Naniuzeyi believes that by having local educators visit Ghana and experience the culture first hand, they will be able to better enhance the teaching of social studies and language in local educational institutions.

Among the 13 GGPA participants who will travel to Ghana in May are Naniuzeyi, five SSU professors, two SSU students who plan to pursue careers in education, four SCCPSS teachers and
Ann Levett, Ed.D., SCCPSS’s chief academic officer.

Pictured from left to right: SSU student Tyree Wright; SSU professor Boniface Kawasha, Ph.D.; SCCPSS teacher Rachel Hopkins; SSU professor Adrian Anderson, Ph.D.; SCCPSS teacher Jacilyn Ledford; SSU President Cheryl D. Dozier; SSU professor Kameelah Martin, Ph.D.; SSU professor Benn Bongang, Ph.D.; SSU IEC Director Emmanuel Naniuzeyi, Ph.D.; SCCPSS teacher Arlette Houghton-Parker; SCCPSS teacher Carey Bray; and SSU professor Kisha Cunningham, Ph.D.

During the four-week trip, the group will travel throughout the country, attending workshops and lectures, visiting historical sites and learning Twi, a native language of the Ashanti people. A highlight of the trip will be a meeting with Otumfuo Nana Osei Tutu II, king of Ghana’s Ashanti Kingdom.

GGPA participants will also spend time conducting independent research related to their area of expertise. At the end of the program, they will write a report on their studies, which they will present to the U.S. Department of Education and the SCCPSS.

Ja’Andra Wheeler, a senior Africana studies and history major from Atlanta, has studied African culture throughout her four years at SSU but has never had the opportunity to travel to the continent.

“This is my first time ever leaving the country,” says Wheeler, who hopes to one day teach Africana studies on the college level. “I’m excited to see everything in person. It’s different when I watch videos in class and see it in my textbooks. But to actually see it in person will be a life-changing experience.”

For Jacilyn Ledford, a social studies teacher at Savannah Early College High School, the trip will be an opportunity to incorporate her own personal experiences into her curriculum.

“It’s important that we’re able to show our students other cultures in order for them to empathize and have more of a worldly view,” Ledford says. “(African culture) is already in the standard (curriculum), but we’re going to be able to go deeper with it and show our kids through relics and stories and personal experience. They’re going to be able to do activities and have lessons in the classroom that expand on their knowledge of Ghana and Africa.”

Dozier shares pictures of her travels with Ghana native Phillip Acheampong, Ph.D., a lecturer at Central Texas College who serves as a trip consultant.

Levett, who is tasked with providing leadership and guidance to district schools in pursuit of academic excellence, says the SCCPSS is proud to be a partner in the project. “We are honored to send a talented and committed group of educators to represent our district and SSU as they study Ghana and its history, literature, language and culture. Each participant has agreed to share his/her experience and use his/her knowledge to enhance the curriculum offered in K-16 in our community,” she says.

Benn L. Bongang, Ph.D., professor and chair of the political science department at Savannah State, plans to study Ghana’s political structure during the trip and use his knowledge to give his students a more-well-rounded education.

“I want to incorporate [into my classes] what is lacking in most of the texts we use today, and what is lacking is a very comprehensive or informational content that talks about African political structures,” Bongang says. “We draw examples mostly from Western countries, especially here from American political institutions, so it will be interesting to have a syllabus that provides students an opportunity to see structures that are very different from the ones they are familiar with and also for them to begin to appreciate the political challenges that some countries face that are different than the ones that we have here.”

Ready for flight

The GGPA participants file into the Doziers’ kitchen, where they load their plates with traditional Ghanaian dishes, which have been prepared with love by caterer Joanne Ofosua, a Ghana native who resides in Savannah. The attendees enjoy every bite, from goat stew to fried plantains.

Guests were treated to a Ghanaian feast

The group will have several more meetings before they travel to Ghana in May, each time covering a topic relevant to the trip. At the Dozier home, they learn important lessons from the president and her husband about Ghanaian culture, everything from being sure to ask for permission before taking photographs to how to barter for the unique wares they find in local markets.

Dozier implores the participants to take advantage of their unique opportunity and to bring the lessons they learn back home.

“Understand the meaning of Sankofa,” says Dozier. “Go back and learn the past — the history, the people, the culture — so that you can pass it on to future generations.”