Passing him on the pristine Lynn University campus, where it is easy to feel at ease and youthfully optimistic in the Florida sunshine, you would never guess 22-year-old Jack could be a homeless student. It was hard even for him to believe.
"I did not really think I was homeless," he said. "But then, at a certain point I had to say it. I was actually homeless. Everything I had was in my car."
Earlier, Jack was on track with his studies and living off-campus with his sister and a roommate when tragedy struck. His apartment burned down, leaving him with no savings and nowhere to go.
"I stayed in a hotel. I stayed with a couple of friends for a couple of weeks," Jack said. "I just floated around."
After meeting Jack—a pseudonym—and a handful of other Lynn students through research for her dissertation, Emmanuella Sainthilaire '19 felt moved to transform her academic study about hunger and homelessness among college students into an accessible social action plan. She created the Education is the Key Scholarship. It is now an active program that assists Lynn students experiencing food and shelter insecurity.
"Once I started the interview process with these students, it hit me," Sainthilaire said. "Research is one thing, but hearing the stories of their struggles firsthand, I couldn't ignore this invisible population. Like many people, I just assumed that because Lynn is a private school in Boca, if you're a student there, you couldn't possibly be experiencing homelessness and hunger. But this problem exists everywhere."
According to the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, 27,487 people in Florida experienced homelessness on any given day in 2020. Of those, 1,331 were young adults aged 18–24. Nationwide, 36% of American college students consider themselves housing insecure, with 9% identifying as homeless. Among them was 19-year-old Chelsi, a Lynn student who called her residence hall home during the school year but struggled to find shelter during academic breaks.
"I have been trying to figure out where I am going to stay for summers," said Chelsi (a pseudonym). "Summer is the hardest because it is a three-month period. Thank goodness I have good friends I can stay with for winter break because winter is just two weeks. I lucked out, so I didn't have to stay on a bench outside or anything."
Sainthilaire believes luck should have no role in making sure students like Chelsi and Jack remain in school, housed and fed. The Education is the Key Scholarship is a flexible, dispersed-as-needed fund for students who find themselves missing meals and needing a place to lay their head at night.
"All of the students I interviewed work. And they all receive financial aid and scholarships for tuition," Sainthilaire said. "This isn't about mismanagement of their money. Aid only covers what they need on campus. There is no additional money for unforeseen circumstances or, like Chelsi, for spring or winter break."
Larger Florida schools provide a free food pantry and a fully staffed department to help address shelter and food insecurity. Lynn's homeless and hungry students are on a smaller campus that can provide personalized and discreet solutions.
"Perhaps as the scholarship grows, we can create a food pantry or develop more resources to help these students find long-term housing," said Sainthilaire, now a program manager at Miami-Dade College. "But for now, we're focusing on the hunger issue by dispersing funds through students' meal cards."
The scholarship is a collaborative effort of key individuals on campus: annual giving staff, financial aid and academic advisors, student affairs personnel, faculty, dining hall managers, and the education and counseling departments, whose undergraduates helped Sainthilaire develop the concept. Aware of the stigma associated with hunger and homelessness, any of them may tactfully identify students in need, then provide them with a scholarship-funded meal card, no questions asked, no waiting for approval—and absolutely no shame.
Jennifer Lesh, associate professor in the College of Education, was Sainthilaire's professor and evaluated her dissertation. Lesh wasn't surprised that Sainthilaire's study of student hunger and homelessness evolved into a sustainable social impact project, sincere in its concern for each student's dignity and success.
"We take for granted the power we have as individuals to change someone's life," Sainthilaire said. "Anybody at any time can become food insecure or shelter insecure—the pandemic has taught us that. Just a little extra can help a student make it through."
A National Institutes of Health study from February 2021 found that the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in nearly 60% of U.S. college students becoming less food secure. A well-documented negative correlation exists between food insecurity and academic performance, affecting student grade point average, attendance and graduation rates.
As is true of homeless and hungry students across the country, Sainthilaire's research participants come from diverse backgrounds. Some aged out of the foster system, some from abusive homes and others from supportive but low-income single-parent households. Still, she identified commonalities in their experiences and their determination to overcome all obstacles.
"They have so much perseverance," she said. "Their whole goal is to put themselves in a better circumstance, to get out of homelessness, to find a good job to provide for themselves and their families so they're never worried about their next meal. What motivates them is earning their degree. That's the light at the end of the tunnel."
That certainly was true for Jack.
"I was like, well, if you do not graduate, you are not going to be able to do better than you are doing now," he said. "Stuff happens, but I'm still okay. I had professors who helped me out, and so I was able to get it done."
Of the 10 students in Sainthilaire's study, nine have graduated, Jack among them.
If you would like to contribute to the Education is the Key Scholarship fund, please contact Sherry A. Henry.
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