Students whose parents have never been to college can have a hard time of figuring out what steps to take along the way to their dreams, and Cyndie Shepard wants to help them get there.

Shepard, the wife of Western Washington University’s new president, Bruce Shepard, will bring college students and fifth-graders together in a program called Compass 2 Campus.

Compass 2 Campus is a pilot mentoring program that will send 450 college students into fifth-grade classrooms in 10 school districts in Skagit and Whatcom counties. In all, about 800 fifth-graders will be served, Shepard said.

Shepard said she was looking for schools that had children who were underrepresented, diverse, low-income and whose parents had not been to college.

“We are trying to encourage them to stay in school and to consider a college education,” he said. “That’s really the mission of the program.”

Three districts in Skagit County — Burlington-Edison, Mount Vernon and Sedro-Woolley — each have one school participating next year. Fifth-grade students at Lucille Umbarger, Mary Purcell and Washington elementaries will participate in the program, which includes a visit to WWU paid for by Compass 2 Campus, Shepard said.

The initiative is an effort to help fifth-graders in schools with a high percentage of low-income students, Shepard said.

The program will continue to support students as they move up in grades, Shepard said. College students will spend at least three hours per week in their elementary classroom.

At Sedro-Woolley’s Mary Purcell Elementary School, about 60 students will be served in the program, said Principal Rebecca Goertzel.

“Right now, only the students in the gifted program take a field trip to Western,” Goertzel said, noting that those gifted students “already have a much higher opportunity to go to college.”

The mentors will help her fifth-graders have a realistic view of what it takes to get into college, she said.

“A lot of students do have big dreams. They want to be a veterinarian, or a lawyer or a police officer,” Goertzel said. “But they don’t know what it takes to get there.”

College students will help during class and recess and also tutor the fifth-graders before and after school, she said.

The program continues as students move up in grades.

“That continued connection with the university will be very powerful for the students as they wade through the difficulties of becoming an adolescent,” Goertzel said.

Cyndie Shepard co-founded a similar program at University of Wisconsin at Green Bay in 2003. The program, called Phuture Phoenix, will graduate its first seniors next school year.

Shepard said a fifth-grader’s first glimpse at a college campus is priceless.

“Many of them have never been on a college campus,” she said. “They are so excited to be in a place of higher education.”

The program will be funded through private donations, Shepard said.

Kate Martin can be reached at 360-416-2145 or at .