“I really believe in the importance of education,” said Karen Verstraete, College and Career Counselor at Webster Groves High School.
Jon Clark, principal of Webster Groves High School, nominated Verstraete for the St. Louis American Foundation’s 2012 SEMO Counselor of the Year award because of her “service to students, families and commitment to the counseling profession.”
For more than 10 years, Southeast Missouri State University (SEMO) has recognized commendable counselors in St. Louis who have nurtured first-generation and historically underrepresented students in postsecondary education.
Kynedra Ogunnaike, a guidance counselor at Vashon High School, is the other counselor receiving the foundation’s 2012 SEMO Counselor of the Year Award.
It’s an equally joyous occasion for one of Verstraete’s former students.
The St. Louis American Foundation will award Kevin Redmond, 18, with the 2012 Dr. Donald M. Suggs scholarship. He is a recent graduate of Webster Groves High School who is studying mechanical engineering at the University of Missouri – Columbia.
“I am so proud of him,” Verstraete said. “Kevin taught me a whole lot last year about perseverance, dedication and character. He’s just a special person.”
Verstraete, Redmond says, goes above and beyond as a counselor and he considers her like family.
“She’s the one who initially told me about the Suggs scholarship,” he said. “She was originally going to be my guest at the Salute to Excellence.”
The two were pleasantly shocked to hear that Verstraete would receive her own award. “I was very honored and humbled,” she said.
Verstraete strives to reduce the amount of stress associated with students who are transitioning from high school seniors to college freshmen. She says the challenges are often greater for first-generation students whose parents never attended college. The issue isn’t that their parents don’t want to help their children, they just may not be prepared to do so.
“There’s a lot of jargon that gets thrown around in the college admissions process that gets really overwhelming for a lot of parents who’ve not gone through it themselves,” she said.
It is during these moments in her role as counselor that she has the greatest impact on her students.
“We can call her any time day or night and she is always there for us,” said Cari Hill, 18, Verstraete’s former student and recent Webster Groves High School graduate. Currently, Hill is studying at William Jewell College in Liberty, Mo.
“Mrs. Verstraete means absolutely everything to me,” she said. “She was like a second mother.”
Verstraete strives to dispel a common myth among her students of lower socioeconomic backgrounds.
“Sometimes the students who think they can afford college the least are the ones who can afford it the most,” she said. “Because there are government grants, institutional grants and scholarships to help students meet their college goals.”
Verstraete relates to these students because she, too, was a first-generation college student.
Verstraete has been employed at Webster Groves High School since 1999. Overall, she has worked in education for 17 years.
Verstraete wants her legacy as a counselor to be that of a person who made a difference in the lives of her students. As her students reflect on their lives and education 10 or 15 years later, she said, she wants her students to say, “Mrs. Verstraete helped me.”
That certainly is true for Cari Hill, one of those students who didn’t think she could attend college on her budget.
“She was looking up different scholarships that personally fit me,” Hill said of Verstraete, “and now I’m going to college for free.”
