A Better Chance moves to Girard College

A Better Chance, a nonprofit that works with talented minority students and helps place them in college-prep schools, is teaming up with Girard College.

A Better Chance is moving its three-person mid-Atlantic office from Drexel University to Girard's 43-acre campus in Fairmount on Thursday.

"It's a great move for us," Keith Wilkerson, senior program manager for A Better Chance, said Monday. "It will allow us to think more broadly about the type of programming we provide for students."

He said A Better Chance had spent nine years at Drexel, but space was tight. At Girard, the program will have access to facilities on weekends when students at the boarding school are off campus.

He said Girard would be an ideal spot for everything from college fairs and SAT-prep classes to workshops for parents.

"The mission of Girard College is to prepare scholarship students for advanced education and life as informed, ethical and productive citizens," said Henry Fairfax, Girard's vice president of enrollment management and institutional advancement. "Partnering with another organization dedicated to increasing access to better education is a natural fit."

He also said aligning with A Better Chance would help Girard widen its applicant pool.

"For us to be able to partner with them expands our admissions funnel," Fairfax said.

Although there are no students from A Better Chance at Girard now, the school has offered admission to 17 in the fall. So far, five have signed on.

Girard president Clarence D. Armbrister said partnering with A Better Chance "is one more example of strategic plans we have set in motion to ensure a better future for Girard College and for its students."

A Better Chance, which was founded in 1963, works with minority students in fourth through ninth grades, and helps place them in private schools for grades six through 12.

Wilkerson said the program has 403 students at day and boarding schools across the mid-Atlantic region. Abington Friends, which has 19, has the most.

He said the five-year lease with Girard calls for his organization to pay a below-market rate for an office in the library. The program also will cover the costs of using Girard facilities on weekends.

Girard was established through an 1831 bequest of the merchant and banker Stephen Girard.

martha.woodall@phillynews.com215-854-2789@marwooda