By Katelyn Aluise, The Herald-Dispatch
HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — When Scott Robertson was a senior at Wayne High School in 2001, job opportunities in the area were starting to take a downward turn, and as a low-income student whose parents didn’t graduate from college, he didn’t know what his next step might be.
“If I would have not had Upward Bound, I probably wouldn’t have went to school. And I don’t know what would have happened or what my future would have looked like,” he said.
Between then and now, the coal industry has nearly died out in Wayne, Robertson said.
“I definitely would have struggled if I tried to enroll (in college). More than likely, I would have still enrolled at Marshall. But I doubt I would have ever made it past the first semester when I would hit my first … roadblocks or lacked confidence or felt like I didn’t belong in the classroom.”
