EdCircuit Staff 
Where the Rocky Mountains slope to meet the Great Plains and the distance between towns stretches for hundreds of miles across America’s raw and native landscape is where Dr. Travis Anderson is shrinking that vastness with virtual instruction in an effort to gear up the motivation for higher education.
Twenty years ago, Dr. Anderson entered a middle school science classroom ready to engage, motivate, and inspire students to become lifelong learners. After five years of classroom teaching, he moved into school administrative positions while furthering his own education with earning a doctorate, all the while never losing sight of his core philosophy of education.
Now, he is utilizing his passion and expertise to draw awareness and provide support to the vast open skies that await students across Montana’s higher education landscape.
Shifting Gears to America’s Big Sky State
When Dr. Anderson’s wife accepted a position in Helena, Montana, he shifted positions from K-12 education and moved to Montana University System’s GEAR UP program. Standing for Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs, GEAR UP remains true to Dr. Anderson’s mission twenty years ago as a classroom teacher; helping others achieve academic success.
He is one of the few people at GEAR UP with the K-12 perspective as opposed to higher education, which brings a unique eye to the program. “My knowledge of educational practices, both as a classroom teacher and as a school and district level administrator, as well as having knowledge of school finance and state or federal guidelines, has been a big advantage in coming into this position at a state agency,” shared Dr. Anderson.
The core mission of GEAR UP is to help students from high-poverty, underserved communities in Montana access post-secondary education, from trade schools to certificate programs, to earning a 2-year or 4-year degree. This mission is multi-tiered and begins with students in 7th grade all the way through their first year of post-secondary schooling, ensuring that students are aware and prepared for all that the state of Montana can provide to help them achieve their career goals. These services include academic preparedness such as additional tutoring support to ensure high school graduation, post-secondary planning and career pathways, financial aid knowledge, and orientation to college and support during students’ first year on a campus or in a program.
To achieve this, Montana GEAR UP partners with 18 schools across 16 districts in the Big Sky State, creating a total of over 5,500 students that they serve. Of those 18 schools, 14 of them are either on or near an American Indian Reservation. Therefore, 70% of the students GEAR UP supports identify as American Indian.
In addition to that, they have campus partnerships on five Montana campuses. One of those being a tribal college campus where GEAR UP sponsors first-year services for those students on campus. Dr. Anderson explained, “This includes everything from access to tutoring to a more robust orientation to help from understanding the parking plans and meal plans. We provide support with housing applications and how to access student health services. We cover all of those things that happen on campus that a lot of kids aren’t used to.”
Higher education often seems so out of reach for many of Montana’s first-generation prospects, but with people like Dr. Anderson and his colleagues at Montana GEAR UP, it really is accessible and attainable no matter your background… as long as the motivation exists.
“The thing that worries me? That we may lose a generation.”
Dr. Anderson is proud to be a first-generation college graduate himself, and he strives to open the doors for others to feel success in their post-secondary schooling, but it’s proving to be a challenge with this current generation of students.
“What keeps me up at night is that we have this low engagement coming out of this pandemic,” shared Dr. Anderson. “And I worry that we are going to lose an entire generation of students because of the ripple effects of all this chaotic change that has been part of our lives for the last two-plus years.”
He explained, “One of the things that Montana GEAR UP provides are summer programs on different campuses. We get students on campus to explore various programs and aspects of campus life. In the years before the pandemic, we had really high levels of student engagement and support. But this year, it was down across the board. We had about half the student participation in 2021 than we normally saw in previous years.”
This current low engagement could certainly affect students in middle and high school in that they may not choose to pursue post-secondary schooling.
“We’re doing everything we can at GEAR UP so that we can help – in any way that we can,” said Dr. Anderson. “The clock is ticking on how you make up this time lost from the pandemic.”
Time and Place – The Need to Connect Students to Teachers in the Here and Now
Time is a crucial component to GEAR UP’s mission of supporting students in their post-secondary education so as to not lose this generation.
But so is the place.
“Montana is an incredibly remote state, so a lot of our communities have hundreds of miles between them and the next town, and the one thing that some of our schools were telling us is that they had issues finding after-school tutoring to support their students,” explained Dr. Anderson. “Some communities may have the money and funds for after-school tutoring and academic support, but if they are unable to find qualified teachers, then what’s the point?”
Qualified teachers are certainly key, and Dr. Anderson said, “GEAR UP started looking at what we can do from managing a larger contract at the state level, and that’s when we found iTutor.”
iTutor provides virtual instruction to students on Mountain Time, which is crucial to scheduling and ensuring equitable access. The instruction is provided by certified educators who are trained and proficient in first building rapport with students, which every teacher knows is a key factor in actually teaching them anything.
Dr. Anderson shared, “We had one student in Libby, Montana, a town in the very northwest corner of the state, who was doing math tutoring with iTutor, and actually submitted a request to their principal to see if they could hire the tutor because the student liked that tutor so much and the tutor did such a nice job of explaining math in a way that the student could understand it.”
One community that bordered a reservation was so impressed with the iTutor services provided to the indigenous population that when a Spanish-speaking student moved in, they found additional resources to set up an iTutor plan solely for that particular student.
Technology consumes our lives, and now through programs like iTutor, education can be consumed through its engaging power. This level of engagement is key to motivating this generation of students and instilling in them a lifelong love of learning, and thankfully there are people like Dr. Anderson and his colleagues at Montana GEAR UP who will continue to serve as the support and encouragement for those students to achieve their dreams.
About the Author
Maria Grosskettler a Staff Writer of EdCircuit is a lover of the written word. She knows the power and magic it holds. As a teacher, she strives to inspire this same love into young readers and writers. As a journalist and published author, she strives to bring that magic into the hands and minds of readers- no matter the genre. When not reading, writing, or teaching, Maria enjoys spending time with her husband and two sons seeking adventures every day. As a family, they enjoy traveling, hiking, biking, kayaking, and playing disc golf. She lives in Maryland for part of the year. The rest of the time, she travels the world creating her own adventures which are often the inspiration behind her stories.
Chaz Austin