A montage displays Clarke Central High School college advisers hired through the Georgia College Advising Corps from 2012-2024. According to current CCHS College Adviser Gabriel Smallwood, his time at CCHS was enjoyableand hopes to build upon this work over the last two years. “After I leave CCHS, my plan is to attend law school where I will continue to be an advocate for the underserved,” Smallwood said. “I am also practicing the same advice that I tell my students by keeping my options open to whatever life leads me to, but it must be something service oriented since that is something that I am passionate about.” Montage by Jesse Dantzler.
CCHS will hire a new college adviser for the 2024-2025 school year through the Georgia College Advising Corps.
Clarke Central High School has worked with the Georgia College Advising Corps since 2009 to hire and place a full-time college advisor for CCHS students. The most recent hire was Gabriel Smallwood, who began in the 2022-2023 school year and will finish out his two-year term at the end of the school year.
According to the GCAC’s website, the GCAC is a program that places newly-graduated college students in underserved high schools all across Georgia for terms of two years to advise students on postsecondary pathways.
GCAC Program director and former CCHS College Advisor Alyssa Yuhouse says candidates must be eager to serve and able to relate with students.
“The biggest quality we look for is public service motivation. A lot of our advisers will either be first-generation (college students) or from an underrepresented population. If you come from that background and you do have some public service motivation, you want to help the people that you wish you had. We look for their ‘why’ is what we call it, so why did they want to serve and a lot of it would be, ‘I wish I had an adviser to help guide me’.”
— Alyssa Yuhouse,
GCAC Program director and former CCHS College Advisor
“The biggest quality we look for is public service motivation. A lot of our advisers will either be first-generation (college students) or from an underrepresented population. If you come from that background and you do have some public service motivation, you want to help the people that you wish you had,” Yuhouse said. “We look for their ‘why’ is what we call it, so why did they want to serve and a lot of it would be, ‘I wish I had an adviser to help guide me’.”
Smallwood believes that GAGC work is mutually beneficial to both the advisor and the school.
“The adviser gains a lot of experience while doing such impactful work and the school and students benefit by having someone so well trained and passionate about helping them with their after high school goals,” Smallwood said. “Serving the CCHS community has been an honor and I would not trade my experience from the past few years for anything else.
