"It’s my ministry to help kids make [the] transition into higher learning,” says Dorothy Jean Barnes-Griswold (M.Ed. ’80), a godmother of sorts to decades of graduates: nearly 700 in all, located throughout Minnesota. Those students received years of intense boosting, coaxing, and emotional and financial support—sometimes in the form of book money—from the nonprofit Minnesota COPE, which Barnes-Griswold oversees.

The Minnesota COPE Program, or Creating Opportunities for Post-Secondary Enrollment for All Youth, is a nonprofit that helps students overcome economic, educational, and/or class barriers to step up to college. COPE has existed under various names since 1999, when Barnes-Griswold’s son cofounded an earlier iteration with a mentor. Dorothy Jean has been CEO and executive director throughout.

Griswold has devoted her career to education. She taught elementary school for a year in Mississippi before spending the next 33 years teaching in St. Paul before her retirement.

“I didn’t like the South,” she says. In May 1970, just as she was graduating from Jackson State University (then College), police shot 14 students amid antiwar and racial tensions. Two of the students died. The Jackson State shootings occurred just 11 days after a similar tragedy at Kent State University in Ohio, when four students were killed during a Vietnam war protest.

A year later, Barnes-Griswold moved to Minnesota; four years later, she enrolled for her master’s degree at the U of M.

For decades, she’s dedicated herself to helping students find success in higher education. “We provide resources and academic scholarships to college-bound students attending public or private high schools in the Twin Cities metropolitan area and to students attending college,” she says.

Barnes-Griswold says that COPE generally assists at least 30 students at any one time, and she is still finding, keeping after, and encouraging young people and their families—not to mention donors, board members, sponsors, foundations, and nonprofits.

COPE offers college-bound teens—primarily students of color—college prep classes for ACT and SAT through colleges (including the University) and local high schools; field trips, college fairs, and tours; financial aid workshops; one-on-one coaching and mentoring; volunteer service projects to learn and share skills; and more.

While teaching, Barnes-Griswold witnessed the needs of area children in poverty firsthand, including those diagnosed (or not) with learning disabilities. And bright kids who fell behind in school because their families moved frequently, or because they had to care for younger siblings in a parent’s absence, or they simply didn’t have clean clothes.

It also allowed her to make connections that have come in handy in helming COPE. Barnes-Griswold has worked with fraternities, churches, nonprofits, foundations, and individual donors.

In general, COPE students must have at least a 2.0 GPA, volunteer 100 hours during high school; write thank-you letters to donors; and take part in orientation and annual wellness workshops. Those receiving a college scholarship must complete 50 hours of volunteer service annually.

“Ms. Dorothy has dedicated her life to serving others,” says Cristina Harbaugh Mazier (B.S.B. ‘24), who graduated from the U of M last December with honors. “I’ve never met anyone who has the passion that she has for the work that she does.” When the two paid calls on donor prospects, “It was always ‘Mr.’ and ‘Ms.’—I learned that from her,” Mazier says. “Also, that persistence is everything.”

Retired Minneapolis airline pilot Captain Thomas Bailey started volunteering at COPE with his wife nearly 20 years ago, including raising funds through the program’s silent auctions. He’s mentored students and introduced them to aviation careers, served on the board, and endowed a scholarship. Learning about everything from flight crews to maintenance to air traffic control as career options has expanded the world for many young people, Bailey believes.

And Barnes-Griswold’s background and her master’s degree inform her work, Bailey says, whether she’s tutoring, talking with students about their future, or demonstrating that nothing useful in life comes free. “I see it as teaching life skills, like communication and resilience, as much as academic skills,” he adds.

College visits are a good example, he continues. “A lot of these kids might not have been outside of their own neighborhood,” Bailey observes. “Just the travel can be eye-opening.”

Another volunteer, Patricia Jones Whyte (Ph.D. ’13), has worked with COPE for nearly 25 years, including chairing the board and guiding teens through writing essays and letters of thanks. Barnes-Griswold knew that Whyte, herself a first-generation college student, would connect with students unsure of their qualifications.

“COPE exists due to Ms. Dorothy’s determination,” says Whyte, who retired from the U of M as director of the Office for Diversity in Graduate Education in 2016.

Ellen Ryan is a freelance writer in Rockville, Maryland.

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